Glessner House attention

Chicago’s Glessner House is getting fresh attention online, with new posts this week steering visitors to one of the city’s best-known 19th-century house museums. (x.com) The house at 1800 South Prairie Avenue was designed by Henry Hobson Richardson, begun in 1885 and completed in 1887 for industrialist John J. Glessner and his family. It is now operated as a museum and cultural center. (glessnerhouse.org) Glessner House offers a 75-minute full-house tour through the coach house, courtyard, and more than 16 family and servant spaces, and the museum says nearly all of the artifacts are original and in their proper location. The museum also runs a two-hour architecture tour on selected Saturdays, limited to eight participants. (glessnerhouse.org 1) (glessnerhouse.org 2) What sets the building apart is its plan: Richardson turned the usual outward-facing Victorian mansion inward, placing the main rooms around a private, light-filled courtyard. The Society of Architectural Historians says that “inside-out” layout made the house one of Chicago’s most unusual residences. (sah-archipedia.org) The exterior looked severe enough that neighbors once called it “the fortress” or “the jail,” but architects embraced it for breaking with the ornate style common on Prairie Avenue’s “Millionaires’ Row.” The National Park Service says the house stood out precisely because it departed from the look of its neighbors. (greatamericantreasures.org) (nps.gov) That reputation has lasted. Glessner House says the design influenced Louis Sullivan, Mies van der Rohe, and the young Frank Lloyd Wright, while the Chicago Architecture Center describes it as an urban residential masterpiece whose courtyard plan helped create a new American style of residential architecture. (glessnerhouse.org) (architecture.org) The building also survived when much of old Prairie Avenue did not. The National Park Service says the house opened for tours in 1971 after preservation efforts, and the site later received National Historic Landmark status in 1976. (nps.gov) (wikipedia.org) For visitors, the draw is not only the stone exterior but the interiors: the Chicago Architecture Center says the museum holds important original furnishings tied to the Aesthetic, Modern Gothic, and Arts and Crafts movements. The museum also offers an online virtual tour for people who want to preview the rooms before booking. (architecture.org) (glessnerhouse.org) The burst of attention this week points people back to a house that has been famous among architects for more than a century, and that still sells its history the old-fashioned way: by walking visitors room by room through 1887 Chicago. (x.com) (glessnerhouse.org)