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Glessner House

CHICAGO

THE FIRST THING KERRY*, THE YOUNG DOCENT at Glessner House told me as we stood in the courtyard behind the building, was that I could not use his real name in my story. According to the folks at the Prairie Avenue House Museums, the nonprofit organization that operates and maintains Glessner House and two other historic homes in the Prairie Avenue Historic District—and the same folks who sign Kerry’s paycheck—the 1887 mansion is absolutely not haunted.

That’s not what Kerry says.

While my wife, Mary, rested on a bench before Glessner House, waiting for the official tour to begin, I walked through the mansion’s porte-cochere and wandered around to the courtyard. Glessner House sits at the corner of Prairie Avenue and Eighteenth Street. Its exterior is made of rugged, rough-hewn stone with Romanesque elements and the steeply pitched gable roof is made of red tile. The mansion looks like a fortress and, indeed, that is what the Glessner family’s snobby neighbors called it after the house had been completed.

The rear of the mansion, however, sports a much different style. The famed architect Henry Hobson Richardson designed the house and it was his intent to design the courtyard and rear of the house as a comfortable refuge from the busy street. Here, the walls are faced with pinkish brick trimmed at the lintels and sills with cream-colored limestone. Unlike the severe planes of the mansion’s street-side façade, three turrets projecting into the courtyard punctuate the rear of the building. All the rooms inside the four-story mansion are oriented toward the landscaped courtyard and large windows open out to it.

It was a beautiful sunny day, and I was the only person admiring the courtyard until Kerry showed up. He was congenial and well versed on the history of the house and the Glessner family and wasted no time in relating it to me.

“Any ghosts?” I asked, experience having taught me it was best to get to the point in paranormal matters.

Kerry gave me a sidelong glance and took a step away, as if I had given him a shove. “No ghosts,” he said, shaking his head.

I still had a few minutes before the house tour was scheduled to commence, so I continued to stroll through the courtyard. Kerry stuck by me, pointing out interesting architectural details. We stopped at the rear of the courtyard. I was looking up at the servants’ quarters above the kitchen in the west wing of the house.

“But some weird things have happened here,” Kerry said, almost in a whisper.

Bingo.

“Really? Like what?”

Kerry looked around to make sure we were still alone. “Both Glessners died in the house. Mrs. Glessner in 1932 and her husband in 1936.”

“That’s not weird,” I said, “just unfortunate.”

“But they’re still here,” Kerry said, “at least Mr. Glessner.”

We started slowly walking out to the front of the mansion. Kerry told me about the day he was in the mansion’s kitchen, located at one end of the west wing. He said that he suddenly detected the scent of Mr. Glessner’s favorite soap, a sample of which is on display in his dressing room. Glessner’s dressing room, located off the master bedroom, is at the opposite end of the mansion, a great distance from the kitchen. Unless Glessner’s favorite soap was Eau d’Skunk, it was unlikely its fragrance could be detected that far away under normal circumstances.

“It was intense,” Kerry said. “It was like someone held the soap right up under my nose.”

As strange as Kerry’s story sounded, olfactory sensations are frequently linked to ghostly manifestations. It is not unusual for people to detect a female ghost through the fragrances of a favorite perfume or flower. Male ghosts, at least those who smoked in life, may be recognized by the scent of a favorite cigar or pipe tobacco. I had never heard of soap fragrance as an indicator of a ghostly presence, but I supposed it was as plausible as the other scents.

Besides, John Jacob Glessner was the kind of man who would continue to make his presence known long after death. Glessner was born in Zanesville, Ohio, in 1834. As a young man he was employed by Warder, Bushnell and Glessner, manufacturers of farm machinery. The ambitious Glessner worked his way up through the corporate ranks and in 1870 was sent to Chicago to oversee the company’s operations there. That same year, Glessner married Frances Macbeth of Springfield, Ohio.

The Glessners occupied two different houses before constructing the Prairie Avenue mansion. Their son George was born in one in 1871 and their daughter Frances, called Fanny, was born in the second house in 1875.

It was in the fashionable lakeshore Prairie Avenue District that Glessner built his mansion, a home much different in style from those of his rich neighbors. This was a neighborhood of tree-lined streets and fabulous mansions that displayed the architectural genius of men such as Solon Spencer Beman, Daniel Burnham, Richard Morris Hunt, and John Wellborn Root. The Glessner house was neighbor to other lavish homes owned by men whose names defined commercial success in late-nineteenth-century Chicago. George Pullman, the railroad car magnate, had a fine Victorian home on the corner diagonally across from the Glessner house. The Kimball family, made wealthy by the Kimball organs installed in thousands of churches across America, lived directly across the street from the Glessners. Marshall Field’s department stores were located mostly in downtown Chicago, but his house was just down the street from the Glessners’, as was that of the Armour family, the famous meatpackers.

The lifestyle in these opulent mansions, filled with fine furniture, antiques, and art treasures from all around the world, was grand and it took an army of people to keep them functioning. There were servants, butlers, doormen, cooks, housecleaners, mechanics, and tutors continually engaged in some task or another. Many of these domestic servants lived in the mansions, receiving food and board as part of their compensation.

Strong competition in Glessner’s industry in the early 1900s threatened to destroy some companies, but Glessner was one of the men who successfully helped to merge the corporation with some of the leading firms of the day, including McCormick Reaper and Deering. The new corporation took the name International Harvester and was an instant financial success. John Glessner was rewarded for his services by being named a vice-president in the new organization; he went from being a merely wealthy man to a fabulously wealthy one.

The Glessners were prominent members of Chicago society. John Glessner served as trustee of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Orchestral Association, was director of the Chicago Relief and Aid Society, and was president of the board of Rush Medical College. Frances Glessner, John’s wife, was a member of the Chicago Society of Decorative Art and founded the Monday Morning Reading Class for women; the group met weekly in the Glessner house for more than thirty years.

The Glessners loved their Prairie Avenue home and lived there for fifty years, even as many of the other grand old houses surrounding them were closing up because of the enormous costs in operating them. The neighborhood was changing and, one by one, the wonderful old mansions were either being pulled down or were subdivided into boarding houses.

Today, only five of these elegant Prairie Avenue homes remain, although the neighborhood is enjoying a revitalization of sorts as affluent Chicagoans are rediscovering it. The Glessner House is the best preserved of the old houses. Mary and I were about to see how well preserved the old mansion was; the house tour was about to start.

We joined the dozen or so people milling about on the sidewalk before the massive wooden front door of the house. Kerry stood off to the side since he was not leading this group. Our tour guide soon joined us. She was a thin, grim-faced woman with a sharp profile who set off around the house on a double-time quickstep that soon left the elderly and portly among the group panting somewhere far behind us. She was every bit as well informed about the house as Kerry, and I supposed she liked her job, but she never smiled so I was not at all certain.

We entered the house, the first stop being the basement, which was like no basement I had ever been in before. No leaking water heater. No smelly, smoky furnace. No insulation drooping down from exposed rafters overhead. No, the Glessner basement, at least the portion we saw on the tour, was carpeted, paneled in maple and furnished with beautiful bookcases, tables and chairs. Yellow pine beams supported the ceiling. This room was the schoolroom, built for George Glessner, who suffered severe allergies and was schooled at home. Architect Henry Richardson designed an effective cross-ventilation system especially for the schoolroom to help alleviate young George’s sufferings.

The upper levels of the mansion were designed in imitation of an English country manor. Red-oak paneling lined the halls, the parlor, the library, and dining room, and was also used in the wainscoting in the spiral staircase and upstairs passages. Huge oak beams held up the ceiling in the main entry hall, library, and dining room. So much wood would have made any house dark as a medieval castle, but Richardson solved this problem by having all the rooms face out to the courtyard in the rear and including large windows on that side of the house to let in ample light.

Much of the furniture and decorations in the house were not actually owned by the Glessners, but were authentic to the time and similar to the possessions the Glessners might have owned. The library, however, was an exception in that almost all of the books and furnishings in the room were original to the Glessners.

The tour guide led us into the library, trying to squeeze us all into the narrow aisle defined by the velvet cord separating us from the interior of the room. We had rapidly outpaced the stragglers. As she began to tell us about the library, more of them arrived, plowing into the group, rapidly squeezing the oxygen out of the room. I saw Mary disappear in a corner and thought I would probably never see her again.

From what I could see over the shoulders of those in front of me, bookcases lined the room, filled with leather-bound books on a wide variety of topics. Framed prints and paintings lined the walls above the bookcases and valuable ceramic pieces stood on the top shelves. One of the ten fireplaces in the house was located in the library, this one faced with glazed tile.

A huge desk stood in the center of the room, covered with pieces of art, framed photos, and the usual desk clutter. A rare life mask of Abraham Lincoln, along with casts of his hands, rested upon the desk. It looked as though he were trapped inside the desk and struggling to climb out.

Somehow, we all filed out of the library—Mary had survived the crush after all—and followed our guide to the Glessner’s master bedroom. In one little alcove was John Glessner’s dressing room. A black suit coat of 1920s style hung from the back of a chair. A beaver top hat rested upon the seat. Upon a narrow shelf on one wall was arranged some of Glessner’s toiletries, including a bottle of bay rum and three bars of soap. This was the same soap that Kerry had smelled in the kitchen, although I could not detect its scent only a few feet away.

As the group left the master bedroom, I saw Kerry following behind us. I dropped back to talk with him.

We spoke in low tones, both of us fearful of being shushed by our school-marm tour guide.

“I didn’t smell it,” I said.

“No?” said Kerry.

I shook my head. “Of course, I have hay fever right now and can’t smell much of anything, so maybe what I think doesn’t matter.”

“There’s other stuff, too,” Kerry said, casting a glance at the tour guide up front. She was deep into her lecture and paid us no mind.

“I’ve heard my name called,” Kerry said. “There was no one else around and I heard it very distinctly, clear as a bell. ‘Kerry.’ Not once, but twice.”

“You’re sure there was no one else with you?”

“Positive,” Kerry said, “and, I know this sounds strange, but somehow I was sure the voice was that of John Glessner.”

Strange? Not at all.

We had followed the group to the kitchen at the rear of the west wing, the very room in which Kerry had smelled the aroma of Glessner’s soap.

“And I’m not the only one who has felt things here,” Kerry said.

He told me about a maintenance man who was working alone in the shop when he suddenly felt a strong hand grasp his shoulder. The invisible hand squeezed the man’s shoulder but, according to Kerry, the man said the squeeze was not painful or frightening, but was more encouraging.

“The guy said that it was as though Glessner were there supervising his work and giving him a gentle squeeze to show that he was pleased,” Kerry said.

John Glessner lived in the house he loved for fifty years and eventually died there. Maybe he has found it difficult to move on and leave the place he treasured all those years, or perhaps he just wants to hang around to see what happen to his old neighborhood. In any case, he remains, master of the house.