A Voice from the Past: Rediscovering the Writings of John Jacob Glessner

Presented by William Tyre, Arthur Baer Fellow

Chicago Literary Club

Monday, February 8, 2010

It is a privilege to speak to you this evening about John Jacob Glessner, an individual I never met but have deeply respected for many years. You may know the name because of the home he and his wife Frances built on Prairie Avenue - an internationally recognized work of architecture that has functioned as a house museum for over 40 years. Beyond that, you may know little about the man and his contributions to the City of Chicago. Fortunately for us, he left behind a rich collection of writings that help to shed light on his character, his intellectual pursuits, and his passions.

Glessner was a devoted member of the Chicago Literary Club. He joined the club in 1883, less than a decade after the group was formed, and remained active until his death in 1936, a remarkable 53 years of membership. During that time he served as Chair of both the “Rooms and Finance” and “Officers and Members” committees and delivered a total of six papers. The museum is fortunate to have four of those papers in their archives, along with several others that he prepared for the club but never delivered.

He was also a dedicated member of the Cliff Dweller’s Club, so it is especially appropriate that this talk is being given in these surroundings. When the original club rooms were dedicated in January 1909, his wife recounted the following in her journal:

“John went to the opening of the Cliff Dwellers room above Orchestra Hall. John

presented the club with the two mantel pieces and fire irons. They had a ceremony

lighting the two fires.”

The Chicago Tribune provided additional information on the ceremony, stating that the andirons were piled with driftwood from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, sent by the Tavern Club of Boston and the Bohemian Club of San Francisco. When the Club was forced to abandon their old club rooms and move to this location in 1996, one of Glessner’s mantels and the oak paneling surrounding it, were carefully disassembled and reinstalled directly behind where I am standing.

Glessner’s ancestors arrived in this country about 1745, emigrating from the Alsace region of France during the war of Austrian Succession. Although this province had belonged to France for nearly a century, its people were still German in customs, language, and sentiment, and that was true of the Glessner family as well. They settled in western Pennsylvania, where Glessner’s father Jacob was born in 1809. Of his ancestors, John Glessner said:

“I come of good stock; not especially distinguished perhaps, but there is good blood

in my veins. My forebears were cultivated, gentle people, and so far as I have been

able to discover there is no taint of dishonor or scandal connected with any of them.”

In the 1830s, Jacob Glessner moved to Ohio where he purchased and edited various local newspapers. He married in 1837 and took up residence in Zanesville Ohio. Our subject was born there on January 26, 1843 in a comfortable two-story brick home on Market Street, the third of six children. When he was seven years of age, his father built a spacious frame home on ten acres of land at the eastern boundary of town, naming it Elmwood Place. It was here that he grew to adulthood.

In 1928, John Glessner wrote an account of his life, including his early years in Zanesville entitled “All the Days of My Life.” It is here that we first catch a glimpse of his character – what he thought of himself and how he wished to be remembered. The piece begins:

“Once upon a time – so ran the tales that beguiled my youth. A more modern

fiction writer has said that men are born, live, make love, marry, suffer, and fall

asleep. Only one of these experiences is due to me: the others are mine already.

I am moved to set them down, not in ordered sequence of time or of subject, but

haphazard as memory comes, and not thinking them important, but for my own

entertainment principally. Possibly my son or my daughter, or perchance my

grandchildren, may spend an hour with before discarding them.”

In spite of Glessner’s characteristic modesty, the manuscript makes for fascinating reading. He captures the era of his youth with utmost precision, from the games he played to the characters he encountered. He relates learning Pitman shorthand directly from its creator; observing travelers on the National Road, which ran directly past his childhood home; and his father’s involvement in the “Underground Railway.”

In 1861, Jacob Glessner was elected to the Ohio state legislature where he served two one-year terms. During that period, John ran the Zanesville City Times, serving as both publisher and editor. Upon his father’s return in 1863, John Glessner started out to make his own way in the world. He visited his sister Mary, now Mrs. Thomas Kimball, in Canton Ohio where he made acquaintances that led to his employment with a mower factory in nearby Springfield owned by Warder & Child. He continues:

“My father gave me my railroad ticket and ten dollars in money. He would have

given me more had he been able. With these small funds I started for Springfield,

as callow and inexperienced as any boy every was, and as lonesome, but

determined to succeed if I could, and I have been in that same business ever since.”

An interesting side note involves his sister’s house, which she and her husband had built. After they moved from there, the house was sold to a friend, Major William McKinley, who later served as Governor of Ohio and President of the United States. It was from the porch of that house that McKinley made his electoral campaign speeches.

Glessner did well for himself, focusing mostly on the accounting end of the business, and quickly earned the respect and trust of his employers. As various other men in the company went off to the Civil War, his duties expanded to include overseeing the shipping department, so that frequently he was putting in 18 hours a day. His industriousness paid off – within five years of starting with the firm he had saved in excess of $10,000, a good return on the $10 he had in his pocket when he arrived in Springfield. In 1866, the company was reorganized as Warder, Mitchell & Company, and Glessner was taken in as a junior partner.

During this period, his lodging consisted of a rented room with the Macbeth family. It was here that he met his future bride Frances, five years his junior. With sufficient funds in hand, and the position of junior partner, he felt ready to make the next major step in his life. He approached Mr. Warder and asked that he be allowed to go to Chicago and take charge of the firm’s business there, with the understanding that he would have “supreme control.” With this agreement secured, he and Frances made arrangements to be married.

The wedding took place on December 7, 1870 in the Macbeth home. Immediately afterwards, the young couple came to Chicago and set up housekeeping in a rented two-story frame dwelling at 69 Park Avenue, near what would today be the intersection of Hermitage and Maypole. Of the house, Glessner said, “When we had it furnished, it was a sweet, attractive home, and we lived in it happily.” It was here that their first child George was born on October 2, 1871. One week later came the devastation of the Great Chicago Fire. Glessner recounts the facts of that terrible Sunday:

“The watchman from my office and warehouse, faithful Dick Cunningham, came that

Sunday evening to say I ought to go down to look after things, as the fire was but half a

block away. Of course I went, and stayed there or nearby until morning. I crossed the

river and stood at the corner of Madison and Market Streets – that very wide street, and

saw the blaze blown across the river, strike the west wall of a large brick building on

the opposite corner, suck down that wall and back along the roadway to my feet, so that

I had to get away. It is impossible to express the grandeur or the scene, and the horror.

Had there been plenty, no amount of water could have extinguished that blaze. Fanned

by a strong southwest wind, it swept over the whole business section, crossed the main

branch of the river and burned the North Side, factories, residences, water works, and

everything. Fortunately the fire did not come nearer than the half block to my building,

and my home was a mile and a half away.”

The business grew steadily from the day Glessner arrived in Chicago. The firm was not well known in the “western country” and their previous representative F. G. Welch & Company, had not had a first-class reputation. So it was left to Glessner to “blaze the way” and he enjoyed the competition and strife, tempered with success. In the first few years he increased sales by fifty percent each year. The firm reorganized as Warder, Bushnell, & Glessner in 1879 and soon after it built a larger headquarters on the northwest corner of Adams and Jefferson. That building, designed by family friend and architect Isaac Scott, was partially destroyed during construction in a windstorm, and as a result was completed under the direction of architect W. W. Boyington. It was sold after Glessner’s company and four others merged to form International Harvester in 1902, but still stands and is known today as the Glessner Center.

A second child, a son named John Francis, was born in October 1874, but was sickly from the start, and required constant care from his mother day and night. Glessner recounts the infant’s passing just eight months later:

“Frances held him in her arms when he died, and he looked in her face, and with his last

breath, and with apparent effort, spoke the only word he ever uttered in his life – Mama.

Loving friends laid his little body out. I feel sure that had medical science known as

much then as now we could have saved his life.”

It was at this same time that the Glessners purchased a house on the west side at the northeast corner of Washington and Morgan, originally built by prominent lumber dealer and mayor of Lake Forest, Sylvester Lind. The property occupied half the block, with Thomas Avery, president of the Elgin Watch Company, owning the remaining frontage along Washington. They remodeled the house extensively, incorporating many pieces of neo-Gothic furniture designed by Isaac Elwood Scott. In 1878, their third child, a daughter Frances, was born here. A few years later, they acquired a large tract of property in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, near Littleton, where they constructed a summer home known as The Rocks. They occupied that house for four or five months every year, and the property eventually encompassed nearly 1,700 acres. The buildings were designed by Isaac Scott, Hermann von Holst, and Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, with the landscape design by Frederick Law Olmsted and later his sons.

As business began to encroach on the west side, its character as a fine residential neighborhood was negatively impacted and the Glessners decided to move once again. Glessner at first considered purchasing the old William B. Ogden property, a full block on the north side now occupied by the Newberry Library. He soon abandoned the idea however, and purchased a lot at the southwest corner of Prairie Avenue and 18^th Street for $50,500. That was in March 1885, exactly 125 years ago. It was here that the Glessners would live for the rest of their lives.

The story of that house at 1800 South Prairie Avenue is fascinating in and of itself, but that is not the main topic for this evening. However, we cannot fully examine John Glessner’s life without looking, at least briefly, at his house. He recounts:

“Let me repeat here what a dear old lady, called long years ago to her well earned

reward, who had cultivation and wealth and refinement and discriminating intelligence,

and was an ornament to the best social circles, once said to me – ‘You have a high

position in Chicago, Mr. Glessner, you are a man of great prominence and importance:

you get it from your house and your wife.’ Well, I built the one and I selected the other

and – there you are! Perhaps some of the glory belongs to me after all.”

When the Glessners purchased their property on Prairie Avenue, this was the premier residential street in the city, and one of the most prominent in the country. Neighbors included Marshall Field, George Pullman, Philip Armour and many other business and social leaders of the city. A guidebook published by Rand McNally and Company for visitors to the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, summed it up nicely:

“That remarkable street is home to merchants whose business affects every mart on the

Earth . . . and who possess wealth that at last aroused the jealousy of New York.”

In 1923, Glessner wrote a wonderful account of his home entitled Story of a House, the title borrowed from a volume in his own library by the well-known 19^th century decorative arts and architecture theorist, Viollet-le-Duc. Photographs by Kaufman and Fabry complimented the text. Two copies of the text and photographs were made and placed into bound leather volumes as keepsakes for his two children, so that they might better understand how important the home and its collections had been to their parents. He opens the text with the following:

“Mankind is ever seeking its comforts and to achieve its ideals. The Anglo-Saxon

portion of mankind is a home-making, home-loving race. I think the desire is in us all

to receive the family home from the past generation and hand it on to the next with

possibly some good mark of our own upon it. Rarely can this be accomplished in this

land of rapid changes. Families have not held and cannot hold even to the same

localities for their homes generation after generation, but we can at least preserve

some memory of the old.”

“The description of this home may give some indication of how a man of moderate

fortune would live in the latter part of the 19^th century and the earlier part of the 20^th –

an average man with a modicum of this world’s material possessions, but by no means

rich, except in family and friends.”

Of particular interest, the text relates in detail the Glessners interactions with H. H. Richardson, architect of the house. The relationship was as perfect as any client-architect relationship could have possibly been. The Glessners sought out an architect with bold new ideas to create a house distinctly their own. Richardson sought out a client who would let him express his ideas fully, in spite of their departure from the traditional architecture of the time. After Richardson’s death, his office assistants related to Glessner that it was the one house Richardson had designed that he would have liked to have lived in himself. The house was recognized immediately for its bold and innovative design, and one that would influence future architects including Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, and would forever alter the direction of modern residential architecture.

Richardson died shortly after completing the plans for the house, he never lived to see ground broken. It was the last of his four commissions in Chicago, the other three were all demolished in the lifetime of the Glessners. These included the monumental wholesale store for Marshall Field and the mansion of Franklin MacVeagh on Lake Shore Drive. In Story of a House, Glessner closes with a tribute to his architect and friend:

“Richardson was not yet forty-eight years old when he died. He left few monuments

to his worth and ability. If genius is the capacity for taking infinite pains he was a

great genius, for he took infinite pains with everything he did. He built, if not for

eternity at least for time. The monumental structures were few, but all were striking.

The latest of these, the County buildings at Pittsburgh, he considered his best. All of

his work was stamped with his individuality. It had great influence upon contemporary

architecture and that which immediately followed, and his early death was a distinct

loss to this country.”

By the time Glessner wrote Story of a House, the neighborhood around him had changed enormously – most of his neighbors had long since abandoned the street, and many of the houses had been converted to business use. The Glessners were determined to stay as long as they could. In a heartfelt letter to his son George, Glessner states, in part:

“Your Mother and I may have to leave our house 1800 Prairie Ave after a while – how

soon can’t be told. Mrs. Gregory, Philo Otis, and Morris Johnston are our only

neighbors on the North, and Mrs. Blackstone and Miss Buckingham on the South. The

Pullman and McBirney houses on corners of 18^th Street have been torn down and the

Henderson house, the Kimball house, and the Otis-Jenkins house are high class

rooming houses, and nearly all the others are business, though of very satisfactory and

unobjectionable kind. In this state of transition of course we cannot tell how soon

something may happen to make our place unsatisfactory. We have hoped we could

live here as long as we needed a house at all, and perhaps we can, who knows. At any

rate we shall not move until we have to.”

To ensure the preservation of the house, the Glessners deeded it to the Chicago Chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 1924, retaining a life interest. Unfortunately, by the time of John Glessner’s death in 1936, the country was in the midst of the Great Depression, and the AIA declined the gift, returning the property to the heirs. It passed to the Armour Institute of Technology, forerunner of the Illinois Institute of Technology, who utilized it as classroom space for a number of years, eventually leasing and later selling it to a printing foundation. When that organization left Chicago in 1964, plans called for the demolition of the structure. However, a group of architects and others interested in historic preservation raised the necessary funds and purchased it in 1966. In time many of the Glessners original furnishings were returned by the family, so that today, visitors to the museum can see the house just as the Glessners knew it in their lifetime.

The years spent at 1800 South Prairie Avenue were happy and productive. The home was filled with an interesting and significant collection of furnishings representing the English and American arts and crafts movements. The Glessners were truly ahead of their time – others in Chicago started collecting similar objects nearly a decade later. They were truly avant garde and forward thinking with their furnishings, just as they had been with their house.

An interesting feature of the home was its library, a large room modeled after Richardson’s own office. The library contained 5,000 volumes, making it the largest on Prairie Avenue. According to the book, List of Private Libraries I – United States and Canada, published in 1898, most private libraries were compiled by local intellectuals including George Upton and Eugene Field and family friends Theodore Thomas, conductor of the Symphony Orchestra, and William Rainey Harper, president of the University of Chicago. The Glessners’ library placed them amongst these intellectuals, not the merchants of Prairie Avenue. Moreover, the Glessners’ library was unique in that it concentrated on “editions De Luxe of current publications” rather than the professional libraries of medicine, law, and theology compiled by Chicago’s wealthy medical men, lawyers, and clergymen. John Glessner also bought books that demonstrated his desire to create a significant library, and he owned volumes such as The Book Fancier, and The Romance of Collecting.

Both John and Frances Glessner were active in civic and cultural affairs. Their strongest passion was for the Symphony Orchestra, and they were intimate friends of the founding conductor Theodore Thomas. Glessner was a lifelong trustee and he and his wife personally raised much of the funding for Orchestra Hall, completed in 1904. They were presented with Box M, directly behind the conductor’s podium, and it remained theirs until their deaths. Frederick Stock, who succeeded Thomas as conductor, dedicated his First Symphony to the Glessners in 1909. His dedication read, in part:

“This symphony was written in honor of two well-beloved people, man and woman, who

have won for themselves the highest esteem and loyal friendship of many of the most

worthy dwellers in this land. Far away from this big city of ours, with all its worldly

strife and struggle, these two people have built for themselves and for their kin a sylvan

retreat, where Nature’s charms are beautiful beyond belief. It was here that the

Symphony was first conceived, that a large part of the Scherzo and still larger portions

of the slow movement were laid out, and here, too, the Finale was fully outlined. To

these two people, whom the composer is privileged to number among his best

and dearest friends, his symphony is most affectionately dedicated.”

Glessner served as a trustee, board member, and officer at other institutions as well including the Citizen’s Association, Rush Medical College, the Chicago Orphan Asylum, and the Chicago Relief and Aid Society. While president of the Citizen’s Association he was responsible for getting the bill through the state legislature for the construction of the Chicago Drainage Canal. All of this was done based on the following philosophy he adopted early in life. In speaking of himself, in the third person, he stated:

“He has been reasonably successful in business and accumulated a moderate fortune, is

somewhat charitable, fairly public spirited, considerate of the rights of others, and his

duty to his community – all in the wish to justify his claim to be a good citizen.”

As president of the Commercial Club, he led the first discussions regarding the hiring of Daniel Burnham to create the Plan of Chicago. He also wrote three books for the Club:

· The official club history, published in 1910;

· A history of the Merchants Club (which merged with the Commercial Club in 1907) published in 1922; and

· Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot?, a light-hearted look at members of the club through the years, printed in 1924 as a Christmas gift for current club members. This last publication is a great read for anyone with an interest in the men who made Chicago great, because it is written from the perspective of a friend, not a biographer. Glessner opens the book with the following:

“All were friends; of enemies there were none, yet some were friendlier than others,

some alas were old when I was young, and some had gone to their reward before I

became a member. Most of them have passed away now, each leaving as much void as

humanity does when it is done. These were doing men: of these I would speak. I hold

them in honored memory, and would rejoice to call them back for an hour to talk over

the changes since their day.

“I would not make an exhaustive study or give an estimate of each man, or tell of his

important work – rather would I recall some pleasing incidents, some personal traits

or characteristics that may bring them to mind with those who knew them, or knew of

them.”

John Glessner wrote actively throughout his adult life, with a significant number of manuscripts written in the 1920s, after he retired as Vice President at International Harvester. His writing can be grouped into three broad categories:

· The first is his personal writings. These include the previously quoted All The Days of My Life, as well as several papers focusing on the Glessner family genealogy – An Account of the Early Glessners; Migrations, Emigrations and Transmigrations of the Glessner Family; and Earliest Recollections.

· The second category includes writings related to 1800 South Prairie Avenue and its activities. Among these are Story of a House; Architecture and H. H. Richardson; Ghosts of Yesterday (an account of prominent visitors to the house); Dear Ladies (a presentation to Frances Glessner’s Monday Morning Reading Class regarding the furnishings in the house); and a history of the Monday Morning Reading Class written in 1925.

· The final category features papers written for presentation to the Chicago Literary Club. These include six that were actually delivered and several more written but not presented. Those delivered were:

Two Noted Diarists, 1885;

Potatoes, 1908;

And Thereby Hangs a Tail, 1913;

Farming, 1915;

An October Sunday in Massachusetts, 1916; and

Graveyard Literature, 1921.

Papers completed but not presented, all written in the 1920s include:

Characters I Have Known – Some Noteworthy – Some Not Worthy – Some Commonplace;

Men and Women; and

Daddy Roots and His Kind, this last being an interesting look at Glessner’s view on the Negro population based on his personal interactions through the years. He had an unusually sympathetic and forwarding thinking view towards African Americans given the time in which he wrote the paper. The following is a good example:

“The negro cannot follow the vocation for which he is best fitted; the choice is not

left with him; he is restricted to certain generally meaner and poorly paid occupations –

tar, gravel and paving industries and such like; yet he is a citizen without any entangling

alliances, not an immigrant, and does not owe nor ever has owed allegiance to any

nation but the United States.”

Glessner was one of a dozen business leaders who lunched with Booker T. Washington in April 1908. Of Washington, he stated:

“I met him, as many of us have and as all of us might have. To me there was in his face

a look of cunning which I believe belied him. He was an able man, and a good man,

deeply interested about his people, and devoted to their advancement. Dr. Washington’s

hope for the development of the race seems ideal to me – to make good, self-respecting

laborers first, then good mechanics, and so up to higher levels. The Negro came from

slavery ill-educated, ragged, and despised: some have yet been able to become good

farmers and mechanics, and acquire property, and more will. The self-respecting man,

whatever his color, not too aggressive, who does well and honestly what he does, will

deserve and receive respect. The modern man of color, I am convinced, is to be a great

factor in the industrial history of this country.”

His other manuscripts show consistency in his modesty – thanking the reader or listener for their time, and apologizing for supposed lack of literary style, although much style is clearly evident. A dry sense of humor also pervades his works, which also adds to their readability.

John Glessner lost his wife and helpmate of almost 62 years in October 1932. It must have been a devastating blow to him, for theirs was a bond of unusual closeness. Not surprisingly, his last manuscript is a beautiful tribute to his wife written within a few months of her passing, perhaps as a way to cope with the grief over her loss. It is entitled Mrs. John J. Glessner – An Appreciation, A Little History, A Tribute. A small number of copies were printed and bound for family members. That tribute, in part, reads:

She was a home-maker, a home-preserver – that was her first ambition, that was her

most desired and profound success. But the home was not to be confined within its own

four walls. It was to bring other friends within its sweet influence. She was a home-

making woman who sought not public applause. These are not idle words: they are true

in every sense.

“And now her busy hands are still; her active brain is quiet; her heart and soul have

passed beyond this earthly sphere. What would she have thought could she have stood

beside me and looked down at that placid countenance in its last sleep. It was dignified,

it was impressive, it was lovely. It was not the same. Its spirit had fled.

“After sixty-two years of happy married life, no tribute that I can offer seems adequate

to her merit. Rarely shall we look upon her like again.”

John Glessner died on January 20, 1936, less than one week before his 93^rd birthday. He was interred at Graceland Cemetery in a beautiful lot along Lake Willowmere, beside his wife and infant son.

The final words of this paper are, of course, not his own. They are excerpts of two tributes written shortly after his passing. The first was printed in the program for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on January 23, 1936:

“To no one man has The Orchestral Association been more beholden. He was one of the

small group of men who in the Association’s first years of struggle were loyal in their

support and generous in their gifts. . . Modest to the point of self-effacement, he was

clean of thought and, when occasion required, vigorous in expression, and always with

the Association’s welfare vividly in mind.

“He and his devoted wife while she lived were always in their box to delight in the music

their generosity made possible, and in their hospitable home men of the Orchestra and

their musical friends found frequent and charming entertainment. The loss to the

Association of his wise counsel and the loss to his fellow Trustees of his fine

companionship find their only comfort in the reflection that he has been discharged from

the pains and penalties of extreme old age.”

The second tribute is taken from a beautifully bound and illuminated manuscript containing a resolution adopted by the Board of Directors of International Harvester:

“The death of Mr. Glessner deprives this Board of a member whose ripened wisdom

and long experience had been of value and importance in its deliberations and decisions

ever since the Company was organized. Until a few days before his brief last illness he

took an active personal interest in all matters within the province of the Board of

Directors.

“This tribute, however, would fail of its purpose, if it did not express our affectionate

admiration for the character and personality of Mr. Glessner as well as our regard for

his rare qualities as a business associate. Innately kind, gentle and genial, he had

developed for himself a calm and tolerant philosophy of life that endeared him to all who

knew him, and especially to those who were privileged to participate with him in the

affairs of the International Harvester Company and of the Board of Directors.”

John Jacob Glessner led an incredibly rich life and witnessed extraordinary changes during his 92 years. We are fortunate that he wrote extensively, so that the events and people that shaped that life were carefully recorded. Although he felt much of what he wrote would have little interest to future generations, exactly the opposite is true. Seventy-four years after his death, we can look back on these manuscripts and books with a deep admiration for the man who wrote them and an equally deep appreciation for their contents. These writings transcend time – they chronicle the struggles and successes of one individual who contributed to the growth and prosperity of our city. I am humbled to present this brief look at his life and writings as I stand before a group that he cherished for more than half a century.