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Geo. W. Maher Quarterly

Upper Michigan mine site nominated

for register

One of the most remarkable of George Maher's designs is the shaft houses for the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company in Ishpeming, Michigan. Now they have been nominated to the National Register of Historic Places. The design is remark- able because it's so unusual — actually exceptional among the 250 or so works of Maher -- and because of its purpose.

From American Archi- tect, 1920: Original design (from left); design of construction engineers; design restudied by Maher.

houses were built around older wood headframes. Condron had taken care of the engineering needs, and Maher, as The Ameri- can Architect noted, the “architectural viewpoint.” Said the magazine, “Mr. Maher rearranged the fenestration and designed a simple and effective scheme of omamentation, retaining the form of the structure as submitted to him." Condron and Maher actually produced. three similar plans.

Tve known about the Ishpeming shaft houses for several years. I haven't seen them. In December I found one of the two concrete structures in an Associated Press photo in the Milwaukee Sentinel. They were shown because the local economic development authority hopes to develop them as a tourist attraction. "We are currently working to raise the money to purchase the site and begin its preservation and development," project historian William H, Mulligan Jr. wrote me.

Maher's involvement came through The Condron Company, a Chicago engi- neering firm. He had previously worked with Condron in 1913 on a warehouse in Memphis, Temnessee, for The J.R. Watkins Medical Co. of Winona, Minne- sota. Though Maher oversaw the Mem- phis project, it's unclear whether he or the contractor, Haglin-Stahr Company of Minneapolis, initiated Condron's partici- pation. Anyway, Maher and Condron were acquainted several years before the Ishpeming project.

At the time, Maher's de- sign, dictated by function, was described as a “pyra- midal form." Mulligan more recently called the style exotic revival.

The shaft houses were built and poured in sec-

AP phote / WENDY HARRIS Charles Manto, executive director of the Marquette County

Economic Development Corp., stands in front of a shaft house at tons, m temperatures gun in i the long-defunct Cliffs Shaft mine site in Ishpeming, Mich. i r Be, July 1919 and completed sa . Manto, whose great-grandfather was killed in a mine accident, Uses from Uppe December 1919, the concrete shaft hopes the facility can be reopened as a tourist attraction. Michigan's warm summer

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly « January-March 1992 « 1

Ishpeming shaft house. From The American Architect, 1920.

to zero degrees during the last three weeks.

Note: Historian Mulligan promises an ar- ticle on the mine shafts for an upcoming issue of the Quarterly.

Sources: “Engineers and Architects in Artistic Collaboration," The American Architect, December 15, 1920, pages 783- 787, continued. "Building Reinforced- Concrete Shaft Houses,” J. Ellzey Hayden, Lucier. Eaton, Lake Superior Mining Institute Proceedings, reprinted from transactions of the American Insii- tute of Mining and Metallurgical Engi- neers, 1922. Letter, Economic Develop- ment Corporation of the County of Marquette, January 3, 1992. Photo, Mil- waukee Sentinel, December 17, 1991, page 4a. Blueprints, Watkins warehouse, Memphis, Tennessee, University of Minnesota Northwest Architectural Ar- chives, St. Paul.

Topeka house identified as Maher's

A much-remodeled house at 2700 South- east Virginia Avenue in Topeka, Kansas, has been recognized as Maher's design. It's also a close relative of a frequently pictured and occasionally praised house in suburban Chicago.

Last fall I found a reference to a Topeka commission in The Economist (Novem-

ber 20, 1897) magazine: "George W. Maher has made plans for a residence which F.O. Popenoe will build at To- peka, Kansas. It will cost $15,000 and con- struction will be commenced at once." Following up, I wrote to several historic preservation and archival sources in To- peka. What came back was written con- firmation that Frederick O. Popenoe did build a house at that time, a large one called "Pinehurst," and photographic confirmation that the Popenoe House was virtually identical to the Edgar Barratt House in Kenilworth. Maher used the same design twice. Why? I can't say exactly. But we can speculate that 1) Maher needed a design for quick re- sponse to the Popenoes, or 2) the Popenoes saw the Barratt House, liked it and asked for it.

As built for the Barratts, the house is de- scribed in The Prairie School by H. Allen Brooks:

More significant (than the Peters House of 195) is the Edgar G. Barrett (sic) house (1896) at 255 (should be 225) Melrose Avenue, Kenilworth, with its broad hip roof (and shelf-roof at the front), central tower, and long projecting porch, all characteristic of (architect H.-H.) Richardson's shingled Potter house in St. Louis. Maher's design, how- ever, is more solid and substantial, more plastic, and more emphatically horizontal,

Built in Topeka, with money from Mrs. Popenoe's inheritance, the house looked nearly the same as the Barratts’ when finished for the Popenoes in 1898.

‘Decorative differences were in window .design and exterior coverings. Another

difference was the site. The Barratt House is on a typical suburban lot; the Popenoe House was on 20 acres, with "a fine garden, cows, horses, chickens and other poultry," according to a reminis- cence by one of the Popenoe sons.

Barratt/Popenoe is wonderful design. Low, low, low to the ground. Rough large stones, then plaster and glass - creatures of stone cut, and finally wood in boards and shingles. Barratt/Popenoe seems to stretch naturally. It opens up. It's one of the first, if not the first, Maher houses with its own life, We can feel

Maher relaxing and finding his own way.

After completion, the Barratt House was pictured in print in The Inland Architect and News Record (February 1897) and The American Architect and Building News (July 1907). The Popenoe House was not in the professional journals. That may say something about Maher's per- sonal regard for the second version of his Barratt design.

The Barratt House continues to be a pri- vate home. The Popenoe House is now the rectory for St. Matthew's Catholic Church.

Sources: The Economist, November 20, 1897. Letters, Historic Topeka, January 2, 1992; Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, January 6, 1992; Topeka Public Library, January 3, 1992. "Popenoe Af- fairs Involved," Topeka Journal, March 27, 1901. The Prairie School, H. Allen Brooks, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1976. Joseph Sears & his Kenilworth, Colleen Browne Kilner, Kenilworth Historical Society, 2nd edi- tion, 1990.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * January-March 1992 «2

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Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * January-March 1992 « 3

Year by year Maher designs of 1892

‘Parents & friends; meeting Mr. Cochran

It's 1892. Maher's practice matures and prospers. His long engagement to Elizabeth Brooks continues. And Maher's parents move from their home in the south Chicago neighbor- hood of Woodlawn Park to the North Shore suburb Wilmeite -- into another house designed by their son.

Maher meets John L. Cochran, entre- preneur and real estate developer. Cochran would be the second of four powerful influences on Maher, pow- erful in terms of providing the archi- tect with the commissions he needed to innovate and to live. The others were Alex Shuman on the south side, the people of Kenilworth and the King family of Winona, Minnesota.

Eventually Maher would design more than 20 houses for Cochran, all in Edgewater and nearby Buena Park.

* Morton L. and Clara Gould House, 314 Abbotsford Road, Kenilworth, Illinois.

Kenilworth's development continued in 1892 with the completion of 14 build- ings, one of them being the Gould House started in 1891 and finished in the summer of 1892. Their frame house, The Economist announced in March 1892, would cost $6,500 and "be in the Colonial style of architecture, two stories high, 40x30 feet. The inte- rior will be finished in hardwood, and heated by a furnace." Redefined in today's architectural terms, the Gould House is shingle style, with shingles covering the second story and clap- board below. It’s one of the last of Maher's purely shingle style designs.

Gould House. Drawing by Gary Carle, after photo in Joseph Sears and His Kenilworth.

The Goulds began a typical Kenil- worth life. He went on business trips, as reported in The Kenilworth News, edited by a young nephew of village founder Joseph Sears. Morton and Clara hosted a "progressive party" in December 1893. But their residence there would not be long. In the spring of 1894, Clara Gould was pregnant; so were her friends Mrs. Howard Spaulding and George Maher's wife Elizabeth. Colleen Browne Kilner quite 'touchingly tells what happened next:

..as the days grew warmer, Clara Gould was less wont to join in walks; she sat in the shade of the elm be- fore her door. His bride's joyous exclamation on seeing it had de- cided Morton Gould's choice of the lot.

And close to nature, Clara Gould grew closer. If true, that the spread of the roots was equal to the spread of the branches, then how far-reach- ing those of the elm.

If true, that near the surface lay the soil's best food, enhanced by air and moisture, then how rewarding the search of the elm, even inactive roots pushed up above the soil. And gazing on the book unopened in her hand, for so often now she read beneath the elm, Clara Gould opined, "Books are like trees, their influence to the extent of their delv- ing. Good books are like the elm, searching afar. Would that to our vil- lage might come a traveling library."

Village children serenaded little Howard Spaulding and little Philip Maher when born in 1894, but Clara Gould died in childbirth.

Morton Gould and the surviving child moved elsewhere. The Neighbors, a club of Kenilworth women, started a traveling library in Clara's memory. The Gould House, variously called "The Little Gray House," “the Bride's House,” and "the Dovecot," was tented to Robert Von Schaak, a wholesale druggist, in April 1895,

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly « January-March 1992 « 4

“Tilfredshaden,” Norwegian for con- tentment, was the name given the house by its second owners Vibe and Anne Higginson Spicer. Married in 1893, the Spicers were living in Chi- cago before they moved to Kenil- worth in 1896. They were a creative pair, he an engineering graduate of MIT employed first by Westinghouse and then by the Union Switch & Sig- nal Company, he with an interest in hand-crafting various items and in house repairs, he an amateur violinist, too; she a published poet and essayist, she a crafter, too. A neighbor recalled their first response to Maher's Gould House: “Something was happening in the little gray house next door,--a gem of Dutch colonial architecture built by George Maher which Anne and Vibe took at first sight. They loved its ideal- ism, its beauty and its possibilities.” Af- ter they moved in, they refashioned the house a bit, planted gardens and put a workshop in the basement.

House Beautiful, one of the maga- zines Anne wrote for, commented at some length about the Gould/Spicer House in January 1899. “The cottage is an architect's experiment in mod- ermized, modified Colonial, and can- not be counted as wholly successful," said Oliver Coleman. One sentence into his article, he had already ex- plained why he thought so: "Nothing strikes the practiced eye more quickly than the unfortunate carved panel above the veranda, where there should have been a window. And there is sure to be something rather bleak and forbidden in the expanse of clapboarding, broken only by the high small windows, which are so at- tractive from inside.” Later, Coleman notes that the “interior...is as cheerful, bright and picturesque as can be imag- ined.” He offers other small criticisms and praises as well.

As the article continues, we learn much about Maher's use of color, space and materials. Neither painted nor stained, the shingles are a "silver gray.” The wood below is painted gray. "The rooms open into each

other with generously broad open- ings, and yet there are parts of each room sufficiently out of range of the front door to give the necessary feel- ing of privacy.” Near the steps to the second floor is a fireplace of "red unglazed brick." The dining room has a dark oak sideboard built in. Window panes are diamond-shaped. None of this is really unexpected in a house designed by a progressively inclined architect. One seeking simplicity.

In 1900 the Spicers commissioned their own house from Maher: A larger version of the Gould House.

Sources: Artists in Living, Anne and Vibe Spicer, Lucy Duncan Hall, Louise Kirkland Sanborn and Dor- othy Sears, editors, Ralph Fletcher Seymour Publisher, Chicago, 1941. The Economist, February 20, 1892, page 296; March 19, 1892, page 426. House Beautiful, “Successful Houses," Oliver Coleman, January 1899, pages 61-66. Kenilworth Histori- cal Society, files. Kenilworth News, 1892. Joseph Sears and His Kenilworth. Kenilworth, First Fifty Years, Village of Kenilworth, 1947,

page 5.

¢ Theophile and Sarah Maher House, 502 Washington Avenue, Wilmette, [linois.

Building for his parents a second time (second if an earlier house in Wood- lawn Park wads indeed for his parents), Maher produced a simple four square design.

Sources: Kenilworth Historical Soci- ety, files. Mrs. George W. Maher, comments to J. William Rudd, Kenilworth, Illinois, 1963.

¢ J.L. Cochran houses, Edgewater neighborhood of Chicago.

Cochran developed the neighbor- hood north of Chicago's central busi-

£DG

sett Theophile & Sarah Maher House. Editor's photo.

ness district which still retains its iden- tity as Edgewater. During 1892 Maher announced commissions in Edgewater:

The Economist: “George W. Maher is receiving bids for the construction of three houses for at Edgewater for J.L. Cochran. They will be erected on Winthrop and Kenmore avenues. The basements will be of stone while the superstructures will be partly of frame and stone, the interiors being finished in hardwood and heated by

WATER

furnaces. One will cost $8,000 and the others $6,000 each."

John Cochran had begun developing

Edgewater in 1886, and his planning

was substantial. Before houses were built, the area had sewers, macadam- ized streets, Edison lights, stone curbs, sidewalks. In 1888, The American Ar- chifect reported: "The idea of the pro-

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * January-March 1992 « 5

moters of this enterprise has been to make a thoroughly first-class suburb, and with this aim in view they have laid out large lots and refuse to sell to parties who do not guarantee to build houses equally as good as those al- ready erected." Maher's mentor J. Lyman Silsbee did some of the early buildings, among them a Guild Hall at Bryn Mawr and Winthrop. Cochran was an excellent connection for Maher, and they would work together for the next few years.

Sources: "Improvements at Edgewater," The American Architect and Building News, September 22, 1888. Chicago City of Neighborhoods, Dominic A. Pacyga and Ellen Skerrett, Loyola University Press, Chicago, 1986. The Economist, May 14, 1892, page 260. The Inland Architect and News Record, May 1892.

- Miller & White building, Evans Avenue between Forty-third and Fourth-fourth streets, Chicago. This was described in The Economist as a three-story flat building. 22 by 80 feet, which would cost $9,000. Having

To subscribe for

found The Economist reference only a short time ago, I have no other infor- mation aboutit.

Source: The Economist, April 2, 1891, page 520.

+ James and Sallie Gill House, 432 Warwick Road, Kenilworth.

The Gill House is one of Maher's least characteristic houses, at least for this period. That may be because Sallie Gill had a major influence on its ap- pearance. Or at least she said she did; she claimed that her comments to Maher were responsible for the way the house looked.

Mrs. Gill had some claim on Maher through his fiancee Elizabeth (Bess) Brooks. Sallie had been the young Bess's piano teacher when both lived on Chicago's south side.

The house is distinctly different from other Maher houses. It is Victorian -- Queen Anne with a touch of shingle. There are numerous planes, levels, varied windows, a big bay, an Oriel on

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Gill House; landing stained glass window. Editor's photos.

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the front, stained glass with garlands and wreaths. Originally there were decorative panels above the first-floor oriel; these better tied the oriel to the two small windows and Palladian dis- play above. Inside there are many

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly + January-March 1992 « 6

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Certainly the impact is unlike the terse announcements in the building maga- zines.

Said The Economist: “George W. Maher has let contracts for the con- struction of a two-story and attic resi- dence for Prof. James Gill, to be built at Kenilworth as soon as the weather will permit. It will be 30x40 feet, of frame construction with hardwood ex- terior and supplied with furnace. Jt will cost $6,000."

And, in The Inland Architect and News Record: “Architect George W. Maher: For Professor James Gill, at Kenilworth, a two-story suburban frame residence; to have stone base- ment, hardwood interior, electric bells, speaking tubes, furnace, etc."

—.When George and Bess Maher were

married on October 24, 1893, Sallie played the piano. That same day the Gills and Mahers became next-door

neighbors, at least legally because that was the day the water was turned on at the Mahers’ new house at 424 War- wick Road.

In the last few years, the house has been enlarged, and the exterior partly stuccoed.

Sources: Architectural notes, Colleen Kilner, 1969. The Economist, Febru- ary 13, 1892, page 296. The Inland Ar- chitect and News Record. February 1892. Kenilworth Historical Society, files. Joseph Sears and His Kenilworth..

« Rugby School, 328 Leicester Road, Kenilworth.

Rugby School for boys was Kenilworth's second school, and like the design for the first school, Mary

Keyes Babcock's Kenilworth Hall for

girls, the school was by George Maher. Begun in 1892 and completed in January 1893, once again the date when utility service (gas) was begun, Rugby School again shows a previ- ously uncharacteristic side of. Maher. Obviously 1892, 1893 and 1894 were years of great transition in his work. Rugby School is an elaborated four- square with a high hipped roof, dor- mers, and obvious division between first and second floors. As with his par-

Rugby School. From Joseph Sears...

ents’ house, we see Maher moving toward a pattern that he would repeat often in his design maturity: Centrally positioned entrance, symmetrical win- dows at either side, small windows di- rectly above the door, and symmetri- cal double-hung windows at either side of these small windows.

A college preparatory school, Rugby offered Greek, Latin, French, Ger- man, English, manual training, chemis- try, mathematics, physics and athletics. Classrooms and drawing and wood- working rooms were on the first floor; physics and chemistry laboratories, reading rooms and the library on the second.

The school closed in 1904. Its demise has been partly attributed to the deaths of almost an entire class of younger boys in the Iroquois Theater. fire in Chicago in 1903.

Rugby School is now a private home, considerably changed in appearance and bigger. ;

Sources: Kenilworth, First Fifty Years, Village of Kenilworth, pages 35-36. Jo- seph Sears and His Kenilworth.

Also in 1892: Silsbee designed a Kenilworth house for Alexander Offi- cer. It's at 158 Melrose Avenue.

New & recently uncovered

reading

Mixed up. Author Nancy Frazier -- or her careless editors -- in Louis Sullivan and the Chicago School names Maher as George Mahar (p.15) and then John Mahar (index). She in- cludes Maher with Frank Lioyd Wright, Walter Burley Griffin, Purcell and Elmslie as members of the Chicago School. Book: Crescent Books, New York, New York, 1991.

Arts & crafts. The fourth edition of

1 The Penguin Dictionary of Architec-

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * January-March 1992 + 7

Aare gives Maher two lines, enough / for his name, birth and death years, "and a reference to the "Arts and

azweeCratts” listing. Under the latter Maher and others are mentioned as American “exponents” of the arts and crafts ap- proach. The others, as seen by the dictionary's English editors, are Wright, Greene and Greene, McKim and White, and, maybe, Bernard Maybeck. Book: Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, other offices, 1991.

x Among the millwork. | recently

purchased a copy of Roberts’ Illus- trated Millwork Catalog, re-issued by Dover Publications, Inc. The catalog was first published by E.L. Roberts & Co. of Chicago in 1903. Roberts manu- factured doors, glazed sash, blinds, mouldings, art and window glass, par- quetry floors and more. Unidentified on page 207 under "stair design" is a photo of the hall in Maher's Brocklebank House. The house was built in 1895 at 3009 Kenmore Avenue in the Edgewater neighborhood of Chicago. It's no longer there. Book: Dover, New York, 1988. Source: Chi- cago Historical Society, archives. The Inland Architect and News Recard, June 1895.

More from 1891 trip. Maher's 1891 architectural travels of Europe, cov- ered in the last Quarterly, are further documented by the holdings of The Art Institute of Chicago. The collection includes drawings done by Maher in Granada, Lucerne, Rome and Co- logne. One of these is pictured (page 434) in the book Chicago Architecture 1872-1923. It's titled "street in Lucerne Switzerland.” Book: An exhibition catalog, edited by John Zukowsky, Prestel-Verlag, Munich, in association with the Art Institute, 1987.

Lowe's views. Two books on Chi- cago architecture by David Lowe in- clude bits of Maher. In Lost Chicago,a book frequently available at dis- counted prices, Lowe includes exte- rior photos of the Patten House (1901)

and Stable in Evanston, as well as a rather astonishing view of the monu- mentally detailed entrance hall. Lowe's

Chicago Interiors has a view of the

Farson House (1897) porch, complete

with a dozen-plus pieces of wicker. Books: Lost Chicago, Houghton Miflin Company, Boston, 1975. Chicago Inte-

riors, Contemporary Books, Inc., Chi-

cago, 1979.

Notes & noted

Textiles at the Art Institute. Among Maher items at the Art Institute of Chicago is a portiere from the Patten House. This was included in a November program at textile collect- ing. For the Patten House, Maher used athistiemotif.

New owner in Iowa. Pau] Brayton has purchased Maher's Arthur Churchill House (1916) in Burlington. Brayton, of Brayton International, an office furniture manufacturer in High Point, North Carolina, grew up in Burlington and “always admired" the large house overlooking the Missis- sippi River. He plans to rename it Villa Grande.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * January-March 1992 « 8

Holiday poppies: The owner of the Schultz House (1907) in Winnetka, Illinois, showed two of the living room windows, with their poppy flowers in art glass, on her

Christmas card. Editor's photo.

Catching up with Philip Maher. His Women's Athletic Club (1928), 626 North Michigan, Chicago, has been designated a Chicago landmark... And, a bit to the north, at 1260 North Astor Street, an apartment building by Philip has had considerable facade refur- bishing, with about one-third replace- ment of the limestone. Having recently located building plans and elevations, the owners are contemplating return- ing the lobby to original appearance. Philip Maher was, of course, George's son.

Other Mahers. We recently met, at a business exposition in Oshkosh, David Maher of Maher Architectural Sys- tems. It turned out that he is not re-

lated, as far as he knows, to George... |

That reminded us of architect J. Tho- mas Maher III in Milwaukee. He isn't related to George either... Both these

Maher families trace origins to Ireland, ncaa emneamnanemill

also original homeland for George Maher's family.

Andex released. The 1991 index is included with this issue. It was done by Carol Keim, curator for the Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest.

Stories: A young girl's diary

What was George Maher like -- at home? What was Maher family life like? Here are some glimpses from the diary of George and Bess Maher's niece Violet Wyld. She was the daugh- ter of Bess's sister Frances and her husband Arthur.

| Violet Wyld. Photo, private collection.

These entries aré from January, Feb- ruary, March and April of 1921. Violet

. was 15.

January 9 Went to church especially to see Arch & Phill's... They are en- gaged both. Madiline is a beaut. Wed- ding date not set.

Notes: Arch was the son of Maher's sister Mary. Philip was engaged to Madeleine Mueller, daughter of Uni- versity of Chicago professor Albert Michelson, a Nobel Prize winner.

January 13 Aunt Bess fixed me a tafita dress (dark purple) to wear tomorro, one she used to wear.

February 9 Sat up half the night mak- ing a poster for our Bakery sale, it has wheat climbing up each side lettering red white and blue, Uncle George outlined the lettering.

Continued on page I1.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * January-March 1992 «9

WORK OF © GEORGE W. MAHER

ARCHITECT CHICAGO

Note: Type on the nameplate for the portfolio approximates that of the original.

|

Portfolio pages

At left, the title from a Maher cli- ent portfolio. Be- low, a page

with Maher's house (1893) in Kenilworth, The Gill House (1892) can be seen at right rear.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * January-March 1992 « 10

om,

Progress

Note: This essay is from The Inland Architect and News Record, June 1900, pages 35-36.

Progress forms a basis for life's true development. Truth is the beginning, should be the fountain-head for all hu- man work that will endure. Progress in any direction that does not follow truth is contrary to the law and can be lik- ened to a meteor suddenly appearing amid the fixed heavens and as sud- denly disappearing from our sight. If it is contended that progress does not take precedence of the past then this is a useless contention, for evolution is ever dictating a supersedence to ac- tivity, and this is specially true where there is a vigorous life such as sur- rounds us at the present time.

The principle that underlies prece-

dent should be used consistently. It

becomes to the worker of invention or design a soil, giving life to the seeds of inspiration. A live and vigorous nation need have no fear of a lack of origi- nality, although true progress may be retarded by resorting to false meth- ods. .

The producer may not at all times in- terpret correctly the national life. This is especially true in the fine arts. A style of architecture that is brought in- tact from a foreign country and is slav- ishly copied, with no consideration whatever of its new environment, must be a false procedure.

The true American life is now distinct; so will her architecture be her own, and in time it will be beautiful. It is for the architect to seek the truth by actual research around about him, to fear- lessly interpret in his work the needs and ideals of his fellows and his gen- eration. His superior understanding

George Maher. Photo, private collection.

ought to assist him to clearly meet this condition.

(Words missing here) country. For- eign study of too long a duration must injure one's greater progressive life. It is the continual transplanting of for- eign ideas which retards national progress.

America has her own ideals; she stands for breadth, simplicity and free dom. Nature has endowed her with a wonderful variety of natural beauty. Her people have a common tongue and are enlightened and progressive. Therefore her art must follow progress before precedent.

Comments: What's reflected here is . Maher's continuing and growing in- ! terest in a unique American architec-

ture. Surely much of this came from

the writings of French architect Ei-

gene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc.

J. William Rudd, visiting Maher's ‘home in Kenilworth in 1963, only a

few months before Bess Maher died,

found an “extensive library." In-

cluded were books by Viollet-le-duc, Ruskin, Taine and Whitman.

Said Viollet-le-duc: "We who are in midcareer may not hope to become the originators of new architecture, but we ought according to our ability to prepare the ground, and with the knowledge of all the ancient methods and they can give us...seek new adap- tations in harmony with the materials and the means we have at command.”

Sources: The Architectural Theory of Viollet-le-duc, M.F. Hearn, editor, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massa- chusetts, 1990. J. William Rudd, inter- views with Elizabeth Maher, Violet Wyld, July 13 and 19, 1963.

Continued from page 9.

Violet's diary

February 15 65 today first such a warm day at this date since 1873. Uncle George is over the farm lucky dog.

Note: The farm was the Maher summer home and rather extensive agricultural operation at Douglas, Michigan, next to Lake Michigan.

March 25 Lam working on my pine needle basket some and reading a history book The Oregon Trail by Parkman. Aunt Bessies croqueses are inbloom.

April I April fools. I blew a lot of eggs and filled them with water fooled every one of them first Archie, then Aunt Bess... Philip... Uncle George said it was rotten and wouldn't crack it.

April 9 Saturday, Iam staying here (at the Mahers) this weekend.

April 16 It is snowing and hailing cats and dogs. Madiline showed me a fine design for my new dress...

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * January-March 1992 + 11

Sculptural: Up and down the University Building’s marble-clad Staircase.

The shape is one Maher produced in wood as well.

Editor's photos.

Calendar

Through March 11. Exhibition: “Halftime,” a celebration of 75 years . of Chicago architecture. Curated by architect Stanley Tigerman, the exhibition includes nothing by George Maher. It does include a photo of Philip Maher's Lake Forest bathing pavilion. Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. At the Arts Club of Chicago, 109 East Onatario Street. Tel 312/787-3997.

Tours, visits

Farson House, “Pleasant Home’”’ (1897), 217 Home Avenue, Oak Park, Illinois. Hours: 10 a.m.-2 p.m., Friday. 1-4 p.m., Saturday-Sunday. Closed Monday-Thursday. $3 for adults.

Kenilworth Historical Society, 415 Kenilworth Avenue, Kenilworth, Illinois. Hours: 9a.m.-4:30, Monday; 9-noon, Thursday. Maher memora- bilia, furniture, light fixture formerly in the nearby Maher House, Ken- ilworth community plan developed by George and Philip Maher. Housed

in building designed by Philip Maher.

Milwaukee Art Museum, 750 North Lincoln Memorial Drive. Silver flatware designed by Maher for the E.L. King House (1911) called "Rockledge" in Winona, Minnesota.

Nickerson House (1881-83), 40 East Erie Street, Chicago. Hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday-Saturday. In 1900 Maher remodeled the picture gallery into a trophy room. His changes include a hanging light fixture with Tiffany glass, large round table and a fireplace. Working with Maher were his assistant Robert Seyfarth and glass artist Orlando Giannini.

Hiram C. Stewart House (1906), 521 Grant Street, Wausau, Wiscon- sin. Available for private tours. Bed and breakfast, too. Tel 715/848- 2864.

Swift Hall (1907-09), Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. This is

a classroom building.

>

University Building (1907), 601 Davis Street, Evanston, Illinois. You can view lobby, second floor.

Wausau Public Library (1906), 400 First Street, Wausau, Wisconsin. Open daily. Much altered.

Watkins administration building (1911-13), 150 Liberty Street, Winona, Minnesota. Weekdays.

| Lobby and open office area.

Winona Historical Society mu- seum, 160 Johnson Street. Maher files in library, original drawing in director's office.

Winona Savings Bank and Winona National Bank (1913-16), Fourth and Main. Bank hours. Public areas, elaborate art glass windows by Tiffany. The bank, now called the Winona National and Savings Bank, has a brochure for visitors.

Cyrus and Alice Yawkey House (1908, Maher remodeling), 403 McIndoe Street, Wausau. Hours: 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Tuesday-Thursday. 1 p.m.-4:30 p.m., Saturday-Sunday. Closed Monday, Friday, holidays. Free. Maher added a sun porch and made interior changes. The house is now the Marathon County Historical Museum. Tel 715/848-6143.

Most Maher structures are private homes not open to the public.

Available: Joseph Sears and His Kenilworth, $20. Write the Ken- ilworth Historical Society.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly.

Volume 2, number 1. Four issues annually. Index to be provided January 1993. Donald M. Aucutt, editor. Tel 715/842-2482 after 5 p.m. weekdays, or weekends. Contribu- tions, media releases welcomed.

© 1992,

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * January-March 1992 « 12

—_—

—

im

fe

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly

Nai ee A house of his own

"Those who construct their own shelter replicate themselves, at their deepest and most significant level, in their houses.”

TS Mi lal

~

1 Mea ene:

ith roof decoration later removed. Inland A

Tonce felt that comment, from a 1988 book about Thomas Jefferson and his Monticello, was very pro- found. And that it applied to Ma- her's own house in Kenilworth, Ili- nois. I've changed my mind. For more about that, see the note at the end of this item. Regardless, the Maher House, 424 Warwick Road, is a wonderful creation if not an en-

‘tirely original one. Here's how it was described in The Architectural Re- view in 1907:

"This design certainly does not leave the beholder calm; it is dis- tinctly disturbing, so piquant is its character. It has a flavor of Chinese, Scandinavian and Gothic; and in its situation among great trees and

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * April-June 1992 « 1

shrubs, it makes a picture from every point of view. There is nothing of the strong and heavy horizontal lines which one usually associates with Mr. Maher's work; on the contrary, the peaks and valleys of the roof, the net- work of the shingles and diamond panes, the branchlike design of the pi- azza arches, all give a fanciful airy de- sign which reminds one somewhat of a Swiss chalet, and yet is unlike it."

Today with our changed sensibilities the house seems more picturesque than disturbing. The Architectural Re- view paired the house, then 13 years old, with Maher's Roe House of 1905. The editors saw the latter house, also in Kenilworth, as “a rational growth of

aN

Roe House. ArchitecturalReview, March 1907.

design from ideas advanced by the oc- cupants-elect of the house,” which is in keeping with Maher's ideas about a structure being the product of its site and purpose. We see the rectangular, stuccoed Roe House as a Prairie-style house with unusual details. The point of showing the houses together may have been to contrast the styles. They do have Tudor elements in common, notably the entrance porch on Maher's house and the entrance and

_ porch openings on the Roe House.

Maher built his Kenilworth house for himself and his new wife Elizabeth Brooks. They married October 24, 1893, after a long engagement. She was the artistically inclined daughter of intellectually inclined parents, Alden, a portrait artist of some note, and Ellen Brooks. The Brooks family lived on

the south side of Chicago, at 4357 St. Lawrence Avenue, as did the Mahers before moving to the newer North Shore suburbs in 1892.

Construction of the house can be traced in letters to George from his fa- ther Theophilus who was traveling in Pennsylvania. On June 20, he wrote: "Yesterday, you say, the frame of your house was to be raised, on the finished masonry, and you like the spot more and more." A month later July 20), Theophilus commented, apparently responding to a question from his son, "Chalet (not chatelet). ‘Chalet du Lac’ is the name you want for your home. How far advanced is it? Plastered?" And, in early August (the 7th), Theophilus wrote, "Your mother's eye will also aid you about your inside ar- rangements at Kenilworth. Bessie has great confidence in your mother’s tact and experience and good judgment.” Elizabeth's nickname was Bessie.

Maher's house was complete on the day of his marriage, or at least it was plumbed because the water was turned on. The house was Maher's fourth or fifth design in the new sub- urb of Kenilworth, which The Archi- tectural Review portrayed as "a spot of quiet and rest, doubly homelike after the tumult of the great city.”

The house appeared in print, without editorial comment, in The Inland Ar- chitect in October 1895. Almost new, the house glimmers in summer sun. This apparently is the house as con- ceived by Maher. Shingled roof with its multiple metal peaks above, then the

hi ltl FH rook pees ieee pratbrnge of thoi daaghit Ci Legge yes a eee ee tye Ke Hoe F an ae “te A retidea ye ¥rtallet diventy fin Li, mightier, VEST EN OTEE needy > eee: Ghaony s

Maher/Brooks wedding announcement. Collection, Kenilworth Historical Society.

overhanging eaves, the plastered first floor below, all based on the foundation's boulders. Windows are . both double-hung and casement. Through the use of a wood pediment, Maher places a Palladian window grouping on the second-floor. The pediment has federal-style garlands and a wreath, adding yet another ele- ment to the mix of many motifs. The primary motif, however, is the diamond used in window panes and as a first- floor window shape. The diamond echoes on Maher's Gill House (1892- 93) next door.

The landscaping included a boulder hauled from Lake Michigan four blocks or so to the east, or perhaps the quarry that provided the foundation rocks, or maybe Michigan state. Not clear yet. There are large trees on the site. One of these was the elm which attracted Maher to the lot in 1890 when he was developing the plans for the Kenilworth girls’ school called Kenilworth Hall (1891). A 1947 news- paper story recollects, "'Another George Washington elm!’ he (Maher) chuckled, and determined to build his own home near it.”

The floor plan appeared in the 1907 Architectural Review. Noted the edi- tors, "The first-floor plan shows great openness; the second story shows a unique owner's chamber." It is open with a flow of space from the reception room at front through the library to the dining room. Built-ins include window seats and shelves and cabinets, some with diamond-paned windows. The fireplace is tiled.

By 1907 Maher had already modified his 1893 design. The wood pediment was gone, and there was a new sun room on the southerly side. Later, Ma- her would attach a two-story addition at the back with a maid's room and sleep- ing porch.

The Mahers called their house La Chatelet, which seems to be a combi- nation of the French words chateau, or

€)

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly « April-June 1992 » 2

Maher House. Architectural Review, March 1907.

manor, and chalet, or country cottage. Which seems to suggest their interpre- tation of the house. In the collection of the Kenilworth Historical Society, there is an undated card, presumably to be sent by Elizabeth, announcing that she would be "At home Tuesdays during December" at La Chatelet.

So, George and Elizabeth were settled in Kenilworth, and I'm going to leave

them there as newlyweds. Their busy lives in the community will surface in later newsletters.

The house, now on the National Reg- ister of Historic Places, remained in the family until recently. After George's death in 1926, Elizabeth and her niece Violet Wyld lived there. The house continued to be Violet's home after Elizabeth died in 1963. To-

ward the end of his life, Philip Maher moved in with Violet. He died in 1981. Violet died in 1986, and the house was sold by her heirs.

The present owners have restored diamond-shaped cedar shingles to the roof.

Sources: The Architectural Review, March 1907, pages 52-53. The Inland

KITCHEN

wR

CHAMBER ward x tR-2

Plan of First Floor.

Pian of Second Floor.

Maher House floor plans. Architectural Review, March 1907.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * April-June 1992 « 3

Architect and News Record (IA), October 1895. Kenilworth Historical Society, files. Maher family corre- spondence. Joseph Sears and his Kenilworth, Colleen Browne Kilner, Kenilworth Historical Society, sec- ond edition, 1990. Merle and Eliza- beth Wyld, reminiscences.

Maher House lights. Above: Art glass-shaded brass sconces ordered for the house. Below: Newel post lamp designed by Maher for Elizabeth's third- floor studio. The shade shape is that of the roof. The sconces remain in the house; the post lamp is in the collection of the Kenilworth Historical Society.

eo We ee

Maher House 1893

Maher's house and Frank Lloyd Wright. It has generally been my ap- proach not to compare Maher and Wright, because all too often, in fact, nearly always, Maher is described as a "follower" or “disciple” of Wright. This happened again within the last few weeks in a Chicago Tribune ar- ticle about neighborhood architecture in that city. (More on page 10). I'm making an exception, however, with Maher's house in Kenilworth. Cer- tainly what Maher would do in future years and in his prime would have little impact on Wright. But it seems entirely possible that the Kenilworth house and Wright's 1894 Williams House in River Forest, Illinois, can be cross-referenced, with the influencing source being Maher. The key is the downswept shingled roof. But then it must be noted that Wright had used such roofs in Oak Park for his Parker

Wright: Williams House 1894

House and Thomas Gale House in 1892, and for the Walter Gale House in 1893. So perhaps the truth is cross- fertilization. And this is why I've changed my mind about Maher's house being the architect at his “deep- est and most significant level."

Note sources: The Early Work of Frank Lloyd Wright, The "Ausgef- ubrte Bauten" of 1911, Dover Publica- tions, Inc., New York, 1982. Frank Lloyd Wright to 1910, Grant Manson, Reinhold Publishing Corporation, New York, 1958.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly » April-June 1992 « 4

Wo pierre BAH eve

Also 1893

More for Cochran, in Nebraska & Michigan

At home and afield, Maher, now 28, moves closer to a style of his own. He adheres less tightly to the shingle style, groups or designs rooms more horizontally, and begins to repeat mo- tifs. The year is a good one for him: Marriage, his own house, and a pros- pering practice.

The basis of Maher's prosperity was his work for John Cochran, the devel- oper of the Edgewater neighborhood in Chicago. Says The Inland Architect of May 1893: "Architect George W. Maher...making plans for ten two- story, basement and attic residences, to be erected at Edgewater, for J.L. Cochran. Some will be of frame and others of brick veneer -- colored and

RE < ey ae re mA

—_—

Cochran House. Inland Architect, November 1893.

Roman brick; hardwood finish, the best of sanitary improvements, electric light, furnaces, etc.” Of the 10, render- ings for two were subsequently pub- lished.

The houses of 1893 are what was then called Colonial or Old Colonial.

« J.L. Cochran house, Edgewater neighborhood.

This fanciful design is listed first among the additional works of 1893 because of its relationship to Maher's own house in Kenilworth. I'm unsure about whether it is was builtin . Edgewater. If so, it no longer exists. I am sure of its ties to Maher's house, particularly in the roof design with its multiple peaks and top-floor bay with small windows at either side of the central casement windows. The dia- mond motif appears throughout.

Of course, there are other elements and motifs unrelated to Maher's

Sen WwW. her +

Kenilworth house. These are the Tu- dor-arched entrance, the half-timber- ing, the trefoil design and the twin rectangular chimneys.

Sources: IA, November 1893.

° Frederick H. Davis House, 620 (or 628*) South 20th Street, Omaha, Nebraska. Demolished.

Maher's signed rendering of the Davis House appeared in the Inland Architect in January 1893.

The Economist provided detail] in April 1892: "George W. Maher has plans in preparation for a three-story residence to be erected in Omaha by F.H. Davis, cashier of the First Na- tional Bank at that place, at a cost of $20,000. It will front 75 feet, with a depth of 48. The first story will be con- structed of stone and brick, and the upper part of clapboards and shingles. It will be finished in hardwood and

heated by hot water.”

How did Frederick Davis become Maher's client? Davis was the first, or one of the earliest, of many Maher cli- ents in banking. The connection may have come through Maher's family. In a letter of August 7, 1893, Maher's fa- ther Theophilus wrote, "Last Friday at Sophie's, at Riverton, we met two la- dies of her friends, two sisters, one of whom had just returned from a visit to Omaha, who knows well, it appears, your Mr. Davis, the banker, for whom you planned his house, which she pronounced as a beautiful one." Maher's parents were visiting rela- tives, including Maher's sister Sophia, in Pennsylvania. About a month later, on September 12, Theophilus, still in Pennsylvania, mentioned Davis again, "Does Mr. Davis’ friend or relative want you to build his house now?" This question points to Maher's tenac- ity in making one client lead to an- other.

Born in Fairfield, Iowa, Davis (1853- 1935) began his banking career as a messenger for the First National Bank

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly April-June 1992 «5

£

Sahil

in February 1872. He remained with the bank for more than 63 years, serv- ing as cashier, vice president, presi- dent and finally chairman of its board of directors. Obviously civic-minded, he nurtured the Clarkson Memorial Hospital. At his death, he was praised for having "done his share to minister to the sick and distressed.” It was noted too that he "had enjoyed the distinction of having lived longer in Nebraska than any other person." His wife (name not reported) survived him, as did at least one child, a son who was a director of the bank. Frederick Davis's house was Maher mixing bits of his architectural inherit- ance with newer elements which would persist. Among the latter were substantial chimneys, engaged win- dow columns, a diamond pattern, and the elaborated rectangular pattern which would become something of a -Maher trademark.

The rectangle appears in the wain- scoting and doors for the entrance hall and the dining room, or "dining hall" as Maher called it. These two rooms were illustrated in Inland Architect in January 1893, The drawings are the only extant Maher interior sketches -- the only ones I've found. Both rooms have beamed ceilings. He shows ori-

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly » April-June 1992 « 6

ental carpets on the floors. The en- trance hall has an inglenook.

A March 1896 notice in Inland Archi- téct notes more interior work for Davis. Listed are plans for "mantels, sideboards, consoles, hardwood cabi- net finish, etc.”

What remains on the site today is a carriage house designed by Omaha architect John Latenser in 1907.

Sources: The Economist, April 2, 1892. IA, January 1893, March 1896. Letter, Omaha Landmarks Heritage Preser- vation Commission, February 26, 1992. Maher family correspondence. Ne- braska: The Land and the People, Addison E, Sheldon, Lewis Publishing Co., Chicago, 1931. "Pioneer F.H. Davis Dies at 81," Omaha Chamber of Commerce Journal, April 1935. Omaha: The Gate City and Douglas County Nebraska, Arthur C. Wakeley, ed., S.J. Clarke Publishing Company, Chicago, 1917. "Bishop Praises Hospital Work of Late F.H. Davis," Omaha World Herald, 1935.

*The Omaha City Directory of 1909 lists the Davis family at 628 South 20th Street. Source: Correspondence with the Omaha Public Library, History, Biography & Travel Dept.

q)

Cochran House rendering, floor plan. Inland Architect, July 1893.

Fe ARH ae , rt P yy if

iy Hb ea

’ 4 ny t iy all lw. dy: wet . EL Na

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Woodworth House rendering, floor plan, Inland Architect, December 1893.

e J.L. Cochran house, Edgewater neighborhood.

More traditional, in terms of what had gone before for Maher, is his second Cochran design of the year. Shown in a Maher rendering in Inland Archi- tect, the house, which is a smaller ver- sion of the Davis House, has federal and other period flourishes: Garlands,

urns, a broken pediment, diamonds within circles on the fanlights. Here too in wood are diamonds and the elaborated rectangle. The floorplan flows, with a clear opening from the parlor to the entrance hall to the din- ing room. Just around the corners from the symetrically placed first-floor double-hung windows are modified oriel bay windows.

To subscribe for 1992... send a check

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Complete 1991

Please send

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Sources: JA, July 1893.

¢ Justin W. Woodworth House, 411 (later 1511) Grand Avenue, Kalamazoo, Michigan. Apparently de- molished, 1920s.

For businessman Woodworth and his family, Maher produced a house with very little ornament. The architect's rendering in Inland Architect shows a steep-roofed structure with porch on three sides.

A local history specialist for the Kalamazoo library says Woodworth, secretary-treasurer and then presi- dent of the Henderson-Ames regalia company, and family remained in the house until about 1903. The librarian notes that the house address does not appear in the 1924 Kalamazoo city di- rectory, and she speculates that it burned.

Sources: JA, December 1893. Letter, Kalamazoo Public Library, July 12, 1988.

e Oscar Bass flats, 46th Street near Greenwood Avenue, Kenwood neighborhood of Chicago.

All [know about the Bass flats is this

Inland Architect announcement: "For Oscar Bass, on Forty-sixth street near Greenwood avenue, a four-story flat

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly + April-June 1992 «7

building; 46 by 70 feet; to be of pressed brick and stone front; have hardwood finish, and cost $30,000.” I visited this site and found nothing re- sembling a Maher building.

Sources: Hyde Park Houses, Jean Block, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1978. JA, April 1893.

¢ Chicago & North Shore Street Railway, power house, office building, Edgewater neighborhood of Chicago.

References to this project appeared in the Inland Architect twice. First in March 1893: "Made plans for the power house and office building to be erected on Evanston avenue near Ardmore, Edgewater, for the Chicago and North Shore Street Railway com- pany. It will be a two-story building, 100 by 230 feet in size; to be con- structed of pressed brick and terra cotta.” In May, the project was de- scribed as an addition to the power house, and the size at 50 by 217 feet was somewhat smaller.

Sources: JA, March 1893, May 1893.

* Charles Horswell House, 514 Essex Road, Kenilworth. :

The only reference to this being a Ma- her design was a map prepared by Paul Sprague, now on the staff of the architecture school at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Horswell was minister for the Kenilworth Union Church.

Sources: Map, Paul Sprague, May 1972.

More about Gary Society receives

major contribution

Work on Maher's 1921 bathing pavil-

ion near Lake Michigan in Gary, Indi- ana, continues. International Mill Ser- vices contributed $75,000 earlier this

Bathhouse column. capital, distinctive Maher flowers. Drawing, Greg Jenkins.

year. To revive the pavilion as a mu- seum to early aviation, more funds are being raised by the lengthily named Society for the Restoration of The Gary Bathing Beach Aquatorium and Octave Chanute's Place in History.

The society's name pays homage to Maher's building and to the pioneer aviator Octave Chanute who directed experimental flights in Gary's Marquette Park dunes in the 1890s. The craft was a glider built by Chanute,

Architect for the Maher restoration is Gregory Jenkins, who lives in Gary and practices from a LaSalle Street of- fice in Chicago. Maher, coincidentally, opened his office at 218 LaSalle Street in 1889 and remained in that building for many years.

An article about the Gary work in the May 21 Chicago Tribune called Maher "a protege of Frank Lloyd Wright.” Maher was in his late 50s, hardly a pro- tege, when he designed the pavilion.

An active board of directors oversees the project. There is also an interna-

tional board of directors, consisting of a descendant of Octave Chanute, rep- resentatives of the National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Science and In- dustry, Chicago, and others, including the editor of this newsletter.

For more information or to contribute, write the Society at 607 South Lake Street, Suite A, Gary, Indiana 46403.

Sources: "Soar point," Chicago Tri- bune, May 21, 1992, section 2, page 1. Gary Post-Tribune, article, June 26, 1991. Gregory H. Jenkins Architects, Chicago, blueprints. Society/Gary ma- terials, 1992.

Wausau's library threatened

While politicians, civic leaders and even patrons debate, the remains of George Maher's library for Wausau are more visible than they've been in years. One marred wall of the library, built in 1905-06, stands free, and that's the one that can be seen from across

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly » April-June 1992 « 8

Wausau Library: Above photo from Inland Architect, January 1908. Below library

today with Maher building at center (windows blocked), Wausau Daily Herald.

the nearby Wisconsin River. It can be seen because an intervening ware- house has been demolished.

Demolition is also a possibility for the library, which today consists of Maher's building, plus two additions, one in 1929 by Wausau architects

' Oppenhamer and Obel, another in 1969 by Wausau architect George Fos- ter. The first addition mimicked Maher's neo-classical limestone-cov- ered building, leaving the front facade and side walls intact. The second, however, engulfed both Maher's li- brary and the 1929 addition. Two heavy, nearly windowless stone and concreie blocks eliminated Maher's entrance and muddled one of the sides. While Maher's design can hardly be called inspired, it displayed an elegant clarity, one seen in many libraries of the period.

Over the years, the building has be- come functionally difficult, say its li-

Poppy window. Winton House card.

brarians. This recently became a may- oral election issue. One candidate, the losing one, supported preserving "a well-built city landmark” and maintain- ing “Wausau's heritage.” The other favored building a new library. Since the election, no decision has been reached.

Because of the hodgepodge appear- ance of the library, local historic. pres- ervationists have not supported keep- ing the existing building.

Sources: JA, January 1908. Wausau Daily Herald, articles, advertisements, February 1, 1987, page 5c; February

14, 1992, page 11a; April 1, 1992, page Ta.

Notes

Poppy cards. From the owners of the Winton If House (1910) in Minne- apelis, we received cards faced with art glass designs with a poppy flower motif from the house at 1324 Mount Curve Avenue. One shows a panel from an entrance lantern, the other a full window. The house was the sec- ond designed by Maher for Helen and Charles Winton. The first was built in Wausau in 1905 (demolished 1976). It, too, had poppy motif windows, most of which are in public and private collec- tions in Chicago.

Museum correction. A window from the destroyed Winton House in Wausau hangs in the entrance display at the Chicago Historical Society. For several years it was labeled as from the "Foler (sic) P. Stone residence." Lumberman Fowler Stone and family were the second owners of the Winton House. Thanks to comments

. from Carol Kelm, director of The His-

torical Society of Oak Park and River Forest, and indexer for this newsletter, the label will credit Maher's first work for the Wintons.

Source: Chicago Historical Society memo to Carol Kelm, 1992.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly + April-June 1992 + 9

Inspiration? Above Maher's Smith House in Highland Park, Illinois, Western Architect, November 1909. Below new building in Lake Forest, Illinois, Milwaukee

Sentinel, April 30, 1992.

Clubhouse meeting. The board for the Landmarks Preservation Commis- sion of Ilinois met January 25 in Maher's Kenilworth Club (1907).

More attention. In an unpublished thesis, a University of Wisconsin-Mil- waukee student writes: "The impor- tance of Maher's work as a source of ideas and inspiration suggests that he should be given greater recognition as a leader of the Prairie School." The comment is from Andrew Hope's "The Prairie School Architecture of Tallmadge and Watson,” completed in May 1988. Hope positions Maher as having a "significant" influence on the practice of Thomas Tallmadge (1876- 1940) and Vernon Watson (1878-1950). They worked together from 1905 into the 1930s, An example of a Tallmadge and Watson design with Maher refer- ences is the Ashley Smith House, 630 North Euclid Avenue, Oak Park, Illi- nois. Most obviously Maheresque are the arched windows.

Maher influence? A Milwaukee architectural firm received an honor award from the Wisconsin Society of Architects for a 1991 building in Lake Forest, Iinois, that looks much like a 1906 house by Maher in Highland Park, Illinois. Hammel Green Abrahamson, Inc., won for a horizon- tally-oriented two-story commercial building at 920 South Waukegan Road. Maher's Smith House at 333 Maple Avenue could be at least part

of the inspiration for the Lake Forest building. The similarities are there, from hipped roof, to window position-

ing, to the large central first-floor arch.

The 1991 structure even has Maher's typical two high-rising chimneys. I've written the architects to find out.

| Chicago's neighborhood archi-

tecture. Maher was mentioned in a Chicago Tribune article (April 24, 1992). We quote: "Such Wright dis- ciples as George Maher and William Burley Griffin designed prairie-style homes in the Hyde Park, Beverly and

Morgan Park neighborhoods. One of the largest concentration of Maher- designed homes is in the Hutchinson Street District between Marine Drive and Hazel Street. Maher's designs were not strictly prairie style, how- ever. He also employed the eclecti- cism of the Queen Anne style.”

— —_

A couple of corrections and comments for the writer who was obviously working from a lot of information. Ma- her was Frank Lloyd Wright's contem- porary not his disciple. The myth of Maher as disciple perpetuates and perpetuates. Griffin's first name was Walter not William. And, the subtle arts and crafts style influenced Maher more than the floridity of Queen Anne.

Maher in Wisconsin. Several of Maher's Wisconsin houses are illus- trated and described in Kristin Visser's new book Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prairie School in Wisconsin, an Architectural Touring Guide. Visser, co-owner of the book's publishing house, Prairie Oak Press of Madison, includes the Elliott House (1910), Madison, and, all in Wausau, the Jones House (1906), Stewart House (1906), and the Woodson House (1913-14). An excellent guide. Many photos, historical and new. The 224- page book is $24.95 cloth, $16.95 pa- per, $2 for handling. To order: Prairie Oak Press, 2577 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53705. Tel 608/238-1685.

Older news. The owner of the Betsy Bridge House (1909) in Evanston, Hinois, reports that her house at 624 Central Street was fea- tured in the Chicago Tribune (April 28, 1991). The house had been “ex- tensively remodeled," she tells us, by the Chicago architect Christopher Rudolph, who is quite familiar with Maher's work. We've seen one Rudolph design echoing a Maher staircase used several times; the stair- case descends at right angles along characteristically wide, comfortable treads.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly « April-June 1992 10

”

Note: This article is contributed by William H. Mulligan Jr., architectural historian for restoration of Maher's 1919 mine shaft houses for the Cleve- land-Cliffs Iron Company in Ishpeming, Michigan. Mr. Mulligan also provided the enclosed brochure on the shafts.

The Cliffs shaft mine has an important place in the history of the Lake Supe- rior and national iron mining industry and survives as the best preserved example of an underground mine site on the Marquette Iron Range. It was the largest and longest-operating un- derground, direct-shipping, hard ore mine in the Lake Superior region and the United States, producing nearly 29 million tons of ore from 1848 to 1967. lis hard ore could be shipped directly for use because of its low moisture content. Other qualities were also highly desirable and for many years it was the benchmark against which ore prices were set.

The mine's A and B head frames are unusual and probably unique among such structures in the United States, both as the product of a collaboration between the engineers who usually designed them and a professional ar- chitect, and for their Egyptian revival design, which was the work of

George W. Maher. They were built in 1919 to replace earlier wooden frames and remained in use until 1955 when the first Koepe hoist built in the west- em hemisphere replaced them. They Temain, however, important landmarks not only for Ishpeming but for the United States iron industry.

The Cliffs shaft mine is just northwest of downtown Ishpeming and its head frames are visible from most of the downtown area and U.S. Highway 41. In 1919 it was necessary to replace the aging wooden head frames over

. TheCliffsshaftmi

4 “ae ; NE ESB en, a

Ishpeming, Michigan, with Cliffs mine shafts.

Photo, Marquette County Historical Society.

shafts A and B. The Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company was certain the mine would have a long productive life due to its ore reserves and wanted durable frames, For that reason, the danger of fire, and the need to close down the mine during construction, wood was rejected as a possible material for the new frames. Steel, the most common material at the time, also would have required the mine to suspend produc- tion. Further, in the postwar economy

it was costly and delivery was slow. Concrete, the third option, enjoyed a number of advantages, it would not require any disruption of mine opera- tions, unskilled labor could be used for construction, and there was a large bed of suitable gravel only 200 feet west of B frame.

When this was proposed to Cleve- land-Cliffs President William Gwinn Mather, he recommended that the de-

tA *

Shaft designs: From left, client's preliminary sketch, engineer's design, revised

at

f ele i Ar Nes oe werent atta af aes oe)

engineer's design, Maher's design. The Western Society of Engineers, January 1921.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly + April-June 1992 « 11

sign incorporate architectural beauty as much as possible because of the mine's proximity to the city of Ishpeming. The preliminary plans were submitted to the Condron Com- pany, Structural Engineers of Chicago, with George Maher as consulting ar- chitect. Maher submitted three plans adding important window detail and ornamentation. One of these designs was used for the two frames.

The two frames are not identical, al- though nearly so, being right and left- hand oriented in relation to their ore pockets and the trestle for moving ore to the crusher. Neither the trestle nor the crusher are extant. They are 33 feet square at the base with solid verti- cal walls for 31 feet, which then taper to 21 feet square at 88 feet, nine inches, with a pyramidal roof, bringing the total height to 96 feet, nine inches. There are 14 windows on each side and three doors except where there are external sheds.

Work began on July 21, 1919, and A frame was completed on December 6 and B frame on December 11. Hoist- ing was suspended for four hours to switch over the cables, which was the only time lost from mine operations. Construction is described in some de- tail in J. Ellzey Hayden and Lucien Eaton's "Building Reinforced-Con- crete Shaft Houses.” The collaboration between engineers and architect in the design of the head frames attracted attention in both professions and was discussed in articles in The American Architect and the Journal of the West- ern Society of Engineers.

In 1955 A and B shafts were retired from active mining by a Koepe hoist erected over a new C shaft, and in 1967 the Cliffs shaft mine hoisted its last ore. The depth of the old mine had made it less competitive with the open pit mines producing pelletized ore that had come to dominate the industry. The site has been used for storage by the Cleveland-Cliffs Company since then, and the mine buildings stand as silent witnesses to the labor of genera-

tions of miners. Today, the Economic Development Corporation of the County of Marquette is raising funds to implement a plan to preserve this im- portant landmark as a business park and museum complex. The exteriors of ali the structures will be restored following the secretary of the interior's standards for historic structures to pre- serve the site's historic appearance. In addition to the two Maher-designed head frames and the Koepe hoist, the boiler and engine houses and blacksmith's shop all built in 1880, the miners’ dry built in 1901-02, and sev- eral other mine buildings survive.

The site, located a short distance south of U.S. 41, has been on the Michigan State Register of Historic Sites for a number of years, and has been re- cently been nominated to the National Register of Historic Places.

More information: Cliffs Shaft Project, Marquette County EDC, 198 Airport Road, Main Terminal, Negaunee, Michigan 49866. Tel 906/475-4121.

Bibliography

T.L. Condron. "Shaft Houses of Imposing Archi- tecture at the Ishpeming (Michigan) Mine of the Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company,” Journal of the WesternSociety of Engineers 26 (1921), pages 22-32.

Harlan Hatcher. A Century of Ironand Men. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1950. A history of the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company.

J. Ellzey Hayden and Lucien Eaton. "Building Reinforced-Concrete Shaft Houses,” Lake Su- perior Mining Institute Proceedings22 (1922), pages 124-134.

Charles K. Hyde. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan: An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites. Washington, D.C.: Historic American Engineering Record, 1978, pages 34- 36.

John Mennie. "A New Changing House at the Cliffs Shaft Mine,” Lake Superior Mining Insti- tute Proceedings 9 (1903), pages 121-126.

William H. MulliganJr. National Registerof Historic Places nomination for Cliffs Shaft Mine Site, 1991.

Arthur T. North. "Engineers and Architectsin Artistic Collaboration," The American Archi- tect, December 15, 1920, pages 783-787, 791.

Above A shaft, below B shaft. Photos provided by William Mulligan.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly « April-June 1992 « 12

WORK OF GEORGE W. MAHER

ARCHITECT CHICAGO

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly « April-June 1992 « 13

Portfolio pages

At left, the title from a Maher client portfolio. Below, a page with the S.H. Velie House, Kansas City, Missouri, designed in 1904, de- molished in the 1950s.

Words...

The View-Point

Note: This essay appeared in the May 1901 edition of The Inland Architect and News Record (page 26). The essay seems important to me, particularly because of its references to nature. It is specifically about Chicago and generally about architec- ture in America,

Every community has its maxim or view-point. This vantage ground may neither be seen nor explained, and least of all assailed by debate. Argu- ment may stir up a principle, but seldom radically changes a conviction. Nevertheless this conviction may be enlarged and ennobled by the exchange of wholesome ideas, and by contact with progressive life.

A community's or creator's point of view originates in the remote past. Finally when located it is a part of the surrounding life and activity, appear- ing again and again in various forms and grades of development in the natural progress of endeavor.

Who knows from whence came this original inspiration? It may be from contact with a great life, expressing activity, breadth and simplicity, or perchance from the sea, storm, a mountain or the vast plain, with its wonderful perspective and tremen- dous distances.

Nature has always been the great teacher. But the mind of man is subtle, free, and will not be dominated by any single force known. Thus they will not receive all their inspiration through specializing, nor from the profound study of natural objects, nor yet from science, nor little from photographs and books. But oftentimes from the still, small voice away from all in the wilderness.

Sen WiaueD

We have in our country a folk language and a folk song. It is poor, humble, and frail, yet constant. And if I mistake not, we have all felt its influence and know its meaning. Its substance of persuasion leads to directness of expression and toward truth, for the murmuring reaches us direct from local coloring and environment. Never can we be nearer to the real than from such a view-point. The French, Italian, Roman, Greek and Egyptian inspira- tion recedes from us in gradation dependent upon the laws of distance and remoteness of time. We view these monuments of the centuries arrayed in glorious perspective; a symphony of the past.

In order to faintly understand these creations of a great past, artificial means must be resorted to, formulae invented and ultimately differences of opinion arise. Howbeit the universal opinion is that these monuments do not embody a tradition, nor do they express a life or environment foreign to their own. We bow to the spirit and principle there embodied, knowing full well that these will live forever. And great and enduring lessons can be profited by a broad and liberal acquaintance with the historic past.

But our view-point concerns us preeminently; our age, our environ- ment, and our civilization, of this are we, or should be, living exponents. Is this civilization which surrounds us worthy of an architectural expres- sion? Or is it contended that we have no national motive worthy to prompt us toward expressing a nobility in architectural form? Such a principle is not adjusted by a congress assembled, nor by dogma, but by the persuasion of the still, small voice, which is constant.

A unit in this complexity of environ- ment, our part is to express that motive which appears to us clearest and easiest of comprehension. Have not some of our architectural methods been the reverse of this method? Has not architecture been taught border- ing a great mystic power, practically unknown to the present world? And have not former precedent examples been duplicated exact for fear that we make the mistake of expressing our own individuality?

The motive power of our environment and our day is simplicity and strength. This may be contested, since its abuse is seen everywhere. Our facility to produce has had no parallel in the past. Today our own city is one vast workshop, fully equipped and powerful, equal to any endeavor. Yet with all, the character surrounding our daily life is one of simplicity and in striking contrast with that we call intuitively "foreign." Strength is dominant, and strength is ours.

History oft repeats in principle, and here is the parallel for us to consider. We find that Egypt in the age of simplicity and strength produced the pyramids. Greece and Athens in the age of simplicity and strength pro- duced the Parthenon. Europe in the age of simplicity and strength pro- duced the pier and the mighty romanesque arch. America? What will she do in her age of simplicity and strength? True we are in an age of opportunity where wealth wishes to dominate, but the vigor of a democ- racy is in its tenacity of purpose, and the vine-stalk will be more vigorous and the flower more pure and sweet for the constant struggle. Therefore are the beauty of simplicity and the beauty of strength alluring motives when recognized close at hand and akin to our own lives. For a familiar fragrance hath within its spell beaute-

X Geo. W. Maher Quarterly + April-June 1992 « 14

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ous recollections of a reality, of country, of youth, and of home.

And this is the environment which appeals to all alike, and when all kindred arts will assist in the ennobling of our own native motives, then shall our own respective schools of art be distinct and individual. And this supreme effort of vindication will produce architecture by our own architects, sculpture by our own sculptors, painting by our own artists, and music by our own composers. Sculpture, painting and music, the accessions to a great art. A harmonious creation where symmetry and balance predominate and the accidents of a rude or artificial expression forever eliminated. Such is the ideal. For a perfect art must be a scientific art, molded by some symphony true from nature, blended by the loving touches of a palpitating human being, and thus endowed with the breath of life, expressive and responsive; a thing of everlasting beauty, and forever a joy.

There will arise in our midst at no distant day and in close to our won- drous lake an effort architecturally, that will either be worthy or unworthy of our city and our generation. This small acreage of ground so close to the throbbing heart of a great metropolis seems to have been opportunely saved, in order that here might be expressed in appropriate and endur- ing materials a great energy and a great life. Florence of old responded to her maxim, her view-point, by creating the Strozzi Palace and the Vecchio. Venice responded by the creation of the Ducal Palace and the unrivaled San Marco. Shall Chicago produce buildings of a type expres- sive of her life, her times, and environ- ment? Or shall it be said, and with truth, that her architects were not capable of an effort, worthy of the deeds and life, so close, so vital, and so true? There- fore do we argue that, however so humble, so seemingly unimportant, a life should be expressed, and in art, and as greater opportunities arise, those who are efficient should meet

the occasion, awaken the dormant energy, and inspire it to action. For at heart every community must have a maxim, a view-point, and eagerly awaits the genius to properly interpret and idealize it.

Then here on our lake front is the opportunity and ripe. Needful only of the moving and guiding spirit to arouse the inert desires of the multitude, and then to clearly express in all simplicity and all strength that which positively appeals to ail.

So that our pure inland waters will reflect not an artificial result, born of a far clime, and of another life, but will reflect a reality born of a present life, made beauteous and harmonious to living artists; an inspiration for all time to come, a Monument to purity and to truth.

Editor's comments

Building. The essay, a blend of stately, somewhat stilted and more energetic ("palpitating” in paragraph 11 and "throbbing" in paragraph 12) writing, is Maher continuing to articulate his theory of building. Note the words "simplicity" and "strength" in paragraph nine; by 1901 he had begun stripping ornament from his buildings and shaping his designs more com- pactly.

Originating. Who first said Prairie School? H. Allen Brooks in his book The Prairie School (1976, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York) says it was Frank Lloyd Wright in 1936. Wright spoke of the prairie as early as February 1901 with his "A Home in a Prairie Town" in The Ladies’ Home Journal. In “The View- Point" Maher mentions (paragraph three) "the vast plain" as inspiration. Today plain and prairie are distinct words, with the former describing flat grasslands and the latter a rolling more fertile place. But in a dictionary compiled in 1890, plain and prairie are used synonomously, so perhaps Maher should also be recognized for

developing, if not inventing, the phrase. Maher notes, too (paragraph five) “local coloring” and "environ- ment" as sources. This sensibility was basic to the Prairie-related architects and designers.

Starting. When Maher wrote the essay, viewpoint was not one word as itis now. So says my unabridged 1890 Webster's. I believe his meaning was literally the prevailing view and the points to draw from it. Of course, he ties it, in paragraph one, to maxim, which in the 1890s was suggestive “of the greatest weight or authority."

Stories The Follow-Up

In the last issue, we mentioned an Irish, at least in part, lineage for Ma- her. That brought a note from Emily Stipes Watt, wife of a grandson of Maher's sister Mary (1862-1944). Wrote Mrs. Watts, who lives in Cham- paign, Hlinois:

"The Maher family came from France, not Ireland. George's grandfather, Edouard St. Hilaire Maher, was born and died at St. Martin's, Tle de Re, France, a fortified Huguenot city. His dates are 1793-1845. My husband Bob and I have visited St. Martin's, and there are many German and Swiss names in the town as street names and in the cemetery (which is both protes- tant and Catholic). We don't have fam- ily history beyond Edouard, but it is difficult to believe that an Irish Catho- lic fleeing persecution would take shelter in a militant French protestant community.”

She added, "Keep up the good work."

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly » April-June 1992 « 15

Sculptural: Up and down the University Building Ss marble-clad staircase.

The shape is one Maher produced in wood as well.

Editor's photos.

Tours, visits

Farson House, “Pleasant Home’”’ (1897), 217 Home Avenue, Oak Park, Illinois. Hours: 10 a.m.-2 p.m., Friday. 1-4 p.m., Saturday-Sunday. Closed Monday-Thursday. $3 for adults, $1.50 children.

Kenilworth Historical Society, 415 Kenilworth Avenue, Kenilworth, Iilinois. Hours: 9a.m.-4:30, Monday; 9-noon, Thursday. Maher memora- bilia, furniture, light fixture formerly in the nearby Maher House, Ken- ilworth community plan developed by George and Philip Maher. Housed in building designed by Philip Maher.

Milwaukee Art Museum, 750 North Lincoln Memorial Drive. Silver flatware designed by Maher for the E.L. King House (1911) called "Rockledge" in Winona, Minnesota.

Nickerson House (1881-83), 40 East Erie Street, Chicago. Hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday-Saturday. In 1900 Maher remodeled the picture gallery into a trophy room. His changes include a hanging light fixture with Tiffany glass, large round table and a

fireplace. Working with Maher were his assistant Robert Seyfarth and glass artist Orlando Giannini.

Swift Hall (1907-09), Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. This is a classroom building.

University Building (1907), 601 Davis Street, Evanston, Illinois. You can view lobby, second floor.

Wausau Public Library (1906), 400 First Street, Wausau, Wisconsin. Open daily. Much altered.

Watkins administration building (1911-13), 150 Liberty Street, Winona, Minnesota. Weekdays. Lobby and open office area.

Winona Historical Society mu- seum, 160 Johnson Street. Maher files in library, original drawing in director's office.

Winona Savings Bank and Winona National Bank (1913-16), Fourth and Main. Bank hours. Public areas, elaborate art glass windows by Tiffany. The bank, now called the Winona National and Savings Bank, has a brochure for visitors.

Cyrus and Alice Yawkey House (1908, Maher remodeling), 403

. McIndoe Street, Wausau. Hours: 9

a.m.-4:30 p.m., Tuesday-Thursday. 1 p.m.-4:30 p.m., Saturday-Sunday. Closed Monday, Friday, holidays. Free. Maher added a sun porch and made interior changes. The house is now the Marathon County Historical Museum. Tel 715/848-6143.

Change. The Stewart House in Wausau, previously listed in this column, has a new owner and is no longer open for tours or lodging.

Available. Joseph Sears and His Kenilworth, $20. Write the Ken- ilworth Historical Society.

My visits. In April I visited two Ma- her houses: The Towers House (1894), the last of Maher's shingle- style houses in the Chicago neighbor- hoods north of the business district, and the Weber House (1898) in Blue Island, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. Thank you to the owners for their hospitality.

Your visit. Subscribers, many of whom are Maher building or house owners, are always welcome to visit our house here in Wausan. My wife, son and I live in a Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian house completed in 1941. Wausau, being a river town, is a bit confusing for first-time visitors, so you might want to call for direc- tions. Tel 715/848-2482 at home eve- nings, weekends.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly.

Volume 2, number 2. Four issues annually. Index to be provided January 1993. Donald M. Aucutt, editor. Tel 715/842-2482 after 5 p.m. weekdays, or weekends. Contribu- tions, media releases welcomed.

© 1992.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly « April-June 1992 + 16

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Geo. W. Maher Quarterly

Summer travels: Finding Maher's boyhood home

For several years in his childhood, George Maher lived with his parents and brothers and sisters in New Al- bany, Indiana, on the Ohio River across from Louisville, Kentucky. I © visited New Albany this summer and found it a somewhat dilapidated river town but nevertheless an evocative place. I walked about in the neighbor-

hood where Maher lived. It’s one of those neighborhoods that hints and hints to eyes and feet about what it was. Unused railroad tracks surface here and there from asphalt. They lead to the site of the once prosperous glass works where Maher’s father and a brother were employed. A few blocks away are the homes of New Albany’s boom-day wealthy.

The Mahers apparently moved to New Albany in the late 1860s. I take this information from J. William Rudd’s pioneering research on Maher; he

must have been told this by George Maher’s widow Elizabeth during

their conversations in July 1963. The family would have been complete: Fa- ther Theophilus, mother Sarah, their daughter Sarah born in 1850; son Nathan, born 1858; daughter Sophia, born 1859 (?*); daughter Mary, 1863; George, 1864; and son Walter, 1868. We must guess that they moved from West Virginia, where Theophilus had been in “charge of some large coal oil works” and then a recruiter during the Civil War. Rudd says family economics forced the move to Indiana.

New Albany in 1893: Ohio River in foreground; Maher family live@in neighborhood of small houses at center.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly + July-September 1992 « 1

East Spring Street School: Where Maher studied as a boy.

What was the New Albany lure? It was the plate glass works there which promised employment for Theophilus who was a chemist. We’re unsure of how he became one. He could have been self-taught or educated through work with others. No mention of an academic degree or institutional

study has been made for him. John B. Ford started New Albany’s American Glass Company in the 1860s. The fac- tory, which used sand from the Ohio River and eventually employed sev-

eral thousand people, produced win- dow glass and later fruit jars. We don’t know how Theophilus found out about the glass works, but he did move around and must have heard from a colleague.

In 1877 the Mahers lived on the south side of Dewey Street just next to the glass works. A few years later they were three blocks away on the same street but still in easy walking distance for Theophilus who was then superin-

Dewey Street houses: Where the Mahers lived.

tendent of the glass works chemical department. The first house, with rail- road tracks across the street and glass works immediately to the west, prob- ably remains; 1314 and 1318 Dewey are still there. The Dewey Street houses are simple vernacular struc- tures with Greek revival details.

Though George must have lived in New Albany from age six to 12 or 13, I found nothing particular about him personally in the collection at the Floyd County Public Library. A librar- ian informed me that he would have attended the East Spring Street School. We'll assume he finished eighth grade at this school, and that was the end of his conventional, formal education.

Strolling around downtown New AlI- bany, now brightened a bit by the National Trust for Historic Preser- vation’s Main Street program. I found several buildings that I think must have appealed to George. At least they could have influenced his thinking about architecture. One of these is an 1837 limestone bank building, a fine little Greek temple of finance that was for sale the day I found it. Classicism usually slipped into Maher’s designs, and here could have been a begin- ning. Another favorite element for Ma- her was the arch, preferably the soft segmental arch. His school had these, as did the 1874 Odd Fellow Building.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * July-September 1992 » 2

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Maher influences: Greek revival bank above; Odd Fellows Building below.

For young George, childhood, boy- hood ended quite suddenly. If we’re to believe The Book of Chicagoans, and maybe we should because Maher presumably gave information to the publishers of this directory, Maher was just 13 years old when he began work- ing in the Chicago architectural offices of Augustus, or August, Bauer and

Henry Hill. The year was 1878. Two years later a George Maher is listed in a Chicago city directory as a laborer boarding at the southeast corner of Egan Avenze. It’s possible that this is our George.What about his parents and family? It seems they remained in New Albany for several more years. City directories show them in New Al- bany in 1880 and not in Chicago until

1883 when Theophilus, still proclaim- ing himself a chemist, and family were at 4326 Bellevue Avenue, most likely in rented quarters. The next year, 1884, George is listed as being em- ployed by Bauer and Hill and living with his parents. His brother Nathan may have stayed in New Albany at the glass works; in a letter from Sarah to Theophilus on December 28, 1884, she wrote, “Nathan sent us all a Christ- mas gift.”

In March 1881 George received a let- ter from a New Albany friend, W.D. Bowle. Wrote Bowle (or William Bowles?), “Well, how do you like Chi- cago by this time? I guess you think it is a funny place. I have been so lone- some since you have been gone.” He recalls their days together on the Ohio River: “I have no business around the river since my old pard’ has left. My skift is outside yet, and it has rained her full up to the seats; and when I look at those seats, I just think of how we use to set there, and knock it off in clock time. But those days are past, and I guess we will never see such times agin. No, never agin. There is not two boys in America that has passed as much time together in a skift as we have.” Here is one of our few personal glimpses of George. Bowles notes a bit of boyish risk-taking: “Muckle, I will never forget the day we crossed the river in that little red flat of mine when it was so windy.” Were introduced to a nickname for Maher apparently used only by his In- diana friends; it doesn't occur in the family correspondence I've read. Bowles notes a plan to commemorate George. "Well Muckle, I have got my little brass engine nearly to try it. I have got a brass plate cast, and will name her after you, Muckle, just for old acquaintance sake. It is made in this shape, and put on the cylinder head." Bowles lists his address as New Albany, “care of Charles Hegewald." Hegewald was proprietor of Chas. Hegewald & Co., Founders & Machin- ists. We can conjecture that young Bowles worked for Hegewald, and that the "little brass engine” and “brass

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * July-September 1992 + 3

“OPPICE & SHOPS—Water Berest,bet. Peal & Bank 7" - WAREROUSES—Bank Street, detw een Main & ‘Wate

plate" were cast in Hegewald's foundry.

I concluded my visit to New Albany with a look at the Ohio River which must be approached by climbing over a high flood control mound, which I was told dates back to a disastrous flood of 1937. Far different from the free-flowing Ohio seen by Maher and his chum.

Sources: Art Work of New Albany, W.H. Parish Publishing Company, 1893. The Book of Chicagoans, 1911. Chicago city directories. The Glass Industry of New Albany, Gerald O. Haffner, Indiana University Southeast Bookstore, New Albany, 1982. Maher family genealogy, correspondence, private collection. Theophilus and Sarah Maher inter- view, The Evanston Press, June 1, 1901. Theophilus Maher remin- scences, titled “Cannel coal oil days in West Virginia - Reminiscences of the War of Rebellion.” New Albany, Indi- ana, city directories. J. William Rudd, “George W. Maher — Architect,” dis- sertation, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, 1964.

*Note: The Maher genealogy is still being researched and contains incon- sistencies.

Ban

1894 mixes Queen Annes, shingle houses

With 16 commissions, 1894 would prove the busiest year of Maher's ca- reer. Among these were renovations of buildings related to the World's Columbian Exposition which had closed October 31, 1893. One house was an Edgewater design for devel- oper John Cochran. Another was the now well-known Scales House, culmi- nation of earlier ideas, model for later houses -- and a stylistic deadend. The busy Scaies design contrasts mark- edly, very markedly, with the year's simpler shingle-style designs, the Gil- bert, Smith, Towers and Wheeler houses. Throughout the year, Maher would fiddie with the two styles, alter- ing details, adding here and there, trimming with intent.

Though the Mahers now resided in Kenilworth, none of the year's de- signs were for Kenilworth. What the Mahers did give Kenilworth in 1894 was one of its first babies, their first and only child Philip Brooks Maher born October 21. Brooks was, of course, Elizabeth Maher's "maiden" name.

Notes: For the addresses following, OSN means "old street number," a ref- erence to Chicago's original number- ing system. Buildings are marked "de- molished" only if I've personally ob- served that they no longer exist.

i iti les, Pangan *

and ga gina 6 snd Dealers in Factory Mill Supplies. Sey pa!

NEW ALBANY, IND.

e H.L. Hooker buildings, Woodlawn neighborhood, Chicago.

Said The Economist: "Two two-story attic and basement buildings for H.L. Hooker to be erected in Woodlawn. They will be 40x66 feet and will be constructed of stone, the interiors be- ing finished in hardwood and heated by furnaces.”

Herbert Lloyd Hooker (1867-1902) was married to Maher's older sister Mary.

Source: The Economist, January 13, 1894, page 51.

« Park Gate Hotel, northwest cor- ner Sixty-third Street and Stony Island Avenue. Demolished.

The Economist (also January 13): "George W. Maher has designed for L.R. Williams a complete reconstruc- tion of the Park Gate Hotel at the northwest corner of Sixty-third street and Stony Island avenue. The interior will be converted into 90 apartments of from three to four rooms each. The entrance and interior finish will be made specially elaborate, mahogany being used in the former. The halls will be finished in marble, the intention of the owner being to make it one of the finest buildings of the kind in the city. No estimate of the cost.”

LR. Williams must have been Maher's first repeat client. In 1890 Maher had designed a house for him.

ga RP PR RS RRR FTE

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly + July-September 1992 « 4

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¢ Dennison Manufacturing Co. building, Wabash Avenue, Chicago.

The Economist magazine announced: "George W. Maher has designed for the Dennison Manufacturing Co. an entire reconstruction of the first story of the building on Wabash avenue, opposite Marshall Field's, into which that concern will move as soon as com- pleted. Changes will be made in the front, the interior completely altered, the improvements to cost about

$5,000."

Source: The Economist, February 10, 1894.

* C.R. Morse House, northeast cor- ner of High Street and Fourth Av- enue, Grinnell, Iowa.

From The Economist (May 26, 1894): "He...has designed for A. Morse a two-story, basement and attic house, to be built at Grinnell, Ia., at a cost of $15,000. It will cover an area of 35x60 feet and will be of frame construction." In June, a revised announcement in The Inland Architect: "For C.R. Morse, at Grinnell, Iowa, a two-story residence, 65 by 40 feet in size, to be of Kasota stone, first story, and frame above, have electric light, all sanitary specialities, hot-water heating, etc."

That led us two summers ago to Grinnell and the Queen Anne house at High Street and Fourth Avenue. Details here include beveled and stained glass and a decorated en- trance hall with tiled fireplace and gar- lands spreading above.

A word about Kasota stone: This is a Minnesota limestone, with, according to a Minneapolis newspaper article, “an exceptionally warm, yellowish-tan color. It is an exquisite material: at once inviting and dignified, it seems almost to emanate a soft glow." I agree. It's fine rock.

Charles R. Morse was a grain dealer and then a mortgage banker.

Sources: Grinnell city directories.

Kasota Stone

Rough, Sawed, Planed, Cut and Polished Stone; Crushed, Footing and Rubble Stone

Morse house: Exterior, entrance hall. Editor's photos.

¢ Gilbert House, 904 Franklin Street, Wausau.

The Gilbert House was the first of six houses Maher would design for Wau- sau Clients. This concentration of houses, all within a few blocks of each other, was for newly wealthy busi- nessmen and their families. As should be expected for a young city in the Pinery, these people were connected to lumber, to the millions and millions of board feet of ancient white pine be- ing cut for housing throughout the Midwest. Charles Gilbert invested in both lumber and real estate. He served as secretary for the Winton Timber and Lumber Company, Wau-

sau and Minneapolis.

QUARRY AND MILL, KASOTA, MINN.

BREEN STONE COMPANY

DEALERS IN ALL KINDS OF STONE 620 Germania Life Bldg. ST. PAUL, MINN.

The family story is that Charles and wife Helen found Maher while visiting Chicago in the fall of 1893. She was searching for an architect to repro- duce a house she had seen in a maga- zine. She decided Maher was the one. I question this. I believe the Gilbert connection with Maher resulted from lumber industry relationships, particu- larly Maher's acquaintance with James A. Culbertson, an early Kenilworth resident who had lumber interests in Menominee, Michigan. Culbertson moved to Chicago from Kentucky; he had relatives in New Albany, Maher's boyhood home. More about this later...

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * July-September 1992 « 5

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Gilbert House: Landing window. "A deep recess where the small leaded window was which wasn't good for much," family member. Editor's photo.

Gilbert House: Recent view. Editor's photo.

The beginnings of the Gilberts’ shingle style house were documented in the professional press. The earliest announcement was in The Economist (May 26): “He (Maher) has planned for C.A. Gilbert a frame house, to be built at Wausau, Wis., at a cost of $4,500." In June in The Inland Architect, the house was described in more detail: "A two-story and attic residence, 28 by 44 feet in size; to be of stone up to first story and frame above; to be in the old Colonial style of architecture.” And in July in The Inland Architect the house was mentioned again, this time resized to 30 by 40 feet "of frame construc- tion...stone basement, hardwood finish, electric light, furnace, etc."

Wausau newspapers added more. Construction actually began in early June, the Wausau Pilot reported (June 12). By autumn the house was finished, and the Gilberts moved in. "It is among the handsomest homes in Wausau,” said the Pilot (October 30).

A family member captured the essence of the house in a letter of 1988: "Seems to me he (Maher) went in for leaded windows, closets under stairs, window seats and landings in hall stairways." The windows, all intact, have arch, circle and diamond designs. "When I

was very small, all...woodwork was natural but darker and varnished -- than we would have it today. I remem- ber that the sliding doors were kept closed between the hall and Lr. & I.r. & dining room (probably because of gravity heat). The dining room fire-

ter

place was ‘dark green tile’.

Curiously, the Gilbert House was the only Wausau house mentioned in the professional press. Why? Maher usu- ally was entirely aware of publicizing his designs; that was one way to gain more clients. Two possible explana- tions. The Wausau clients, who tended to be secretive anyway, could have asked Maher not to publicize their homes; older people in Wausau still say the only times your name should be in the newspaper are at birth and death. Another reason could be that Maher knew his primary source of commissions was Chicago. And in Chicago the commissions offer- ing him the most latitude were usually from bankers, attorneys and such.

Maher would have his second Wau- sau client, Charles Gilbert's friend and business colleague Charles Winton, 10 years later.

Sources: Gilbert family correspon- dence. George W. Maher Architect in Wausau 1894-1920,D.M. Aucutt, Wau- sau, 1988. George W. Maher: A Prai- rie School Architect in Wausau, Wis- consin, Cathy Ann Torresani, honors thesis, Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin, 1982.

¢ Mrs. R.M. Watson House, Edgewater neighborhood, Chicago.

The exact location of this house awaits recovery. Announced three times, it was to be a two-story house of red sandstone boulder foundation, then frame and then shingles. Cost was set at $10,000.

Sources: The Economist, May 26, 1894. IA, June 1894, July 1894.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly » July-September 1992 « 6

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¢ Chinese theater reconstruction, Sixty-fourth Street near Stony Island Avenue, Chicago.

Our source here is The Economist magazine (June 16, 1894): "George W. Maher is reconstructing the build- ing that was to be used for a Chinese theater on Sixty-fourth street, near Stony Island avenue."

¢ Stevens apartment house, Fifty- fourth Street near Cottage Grove Ay- enue, Chicago.

About this structure, this from The Economist (July 16, 1894): "He has...designed for Miss Stevens a two- story and basement apartment house to be erected on Fifty-fourth Street, near Cottage Grove avenue. It will front 30 feet with a depth of 65, and will be constructed of pressed brick and stone. It will cost $10,000."

* Smith McPherson House, Red Oak, Iowa.

Again, from The Economist July 21, 1894, page 83): "G.W. Maher has

Smith McPherson House. Photo, Just a Glance at Red Oak, 1913.

planned for Smith McPherson a two- story, basement and attic house to be built at Red Oak, Ia. It will be con- structed of stone and pressed brick, the roof being of tile. The interior will be finished in hardwood and will be

heated by hot water. It will cost

$12,000."

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A photo provided by the Red Oak Public Library suggests that Maher indeed completed this house. Located at 802 Eighth Street, the house is char- acteristic of Maher's more typical ; work of this period, with a heavy stone porch and plastered second story. It shares with the Morse House in Grinnell a panel of triple windows. The style is Queen Anne.

Smith was an attorney, district attorney and two-term Iowa attorney general, U.S. congressman, and federal judge for the southem Iowa district.

Sources: A History of the County of Montgomery from the Earliest Days to 1906, W.W. Merritt, Sr., The Express Publishing Company, Red Oak, Iowa, 1906. Just a Glance at Red Oak, The Red Oak Commercial Club, 1913. Red Oak Public Library, letter of August 15,1992.

« Fresno water tower, O and Fresno streets, Fresno, California.

From The Economist (July 8, 1893): "George W. Maher has designed a combination water tower and public library to be built in Fresno, Califor- nia. It will be 44 feet in diameter and 70 feet high."

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly ¢ July-September 1992 + 7

The Fresno water tower is one of Maher's most unexpected designs. However, considering that he would later work on the Ishpeming mine shaft enclosures (1919), the tower should not be that surprising. His original plan called for a granite foundation, a plas- tered two-story section to house a li-

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brary, a balcony with plastered deco- ration, the iron water tank, and a galva- nized iron roof. He proposed elabo- rate decoration. As completed in No- vember 1894, the tower was a 250,000- gallon water tower only, not a library, and the decoration was considerably simpler.

Fresno water tower. Maher drawing, Inland Architect April 1894.

A researcher of the 1960s attributed the library/water tower combination to Maher being impressed by temporary use of a Chicago water tower as a li- brary. He added: "Fortunately...this part of the architect's plan was not adopted. The second floor of the wa- ter tower was never added. The sec- ond level, therefore, has a very high ceiling and could be used for storage of very tall objects, such as lengths of pipe, were it not that the only entrance to the second level is by a winding ° staircase. At any rate, the upper floor has never, to this writer's knowledge, been used for the storage of books."

The tower remained part of the city water system until 1963. It later served as a parking meter repair shop. In the 1980s, it was used in a TV mini-series called "Fresno."

The City of Fresno still has the origi- nal blueprints. Maher's address is shown as Room 925 at 215 La Salle Street in Chicago's Loop.

Source: "The Fresno Water Tower," Spencer Kendig, Fresno County His- torical Society, October 1964. Historic Resources Inventory, June 28, 1978. John Edward Powell, architectural his- torian, Fresno, letter of February 9, 1989,

Late notice

The Cliffs shaft mine site in Ishpeming, Michigan, was offi- cially listed on the National Regis- ter of Historic Places on July 27. This news comes from William Mulligan Jr., project manager

for restoration of the concrete shafts designed by Maher in 1919.

Mulligan will speak about the sites at the annual dinner of the Milwau- kee Cornish Society.

. Geo. W. Maher Quarterly + July-September 1992 » 8

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Towers House. Maher drawing, Inland Architect, November 1894.

¢ Albert B. Towers House, 551 Stratford Place, Chicago.

The arrival of the Towers House, a boulder-based, shingle-topped design, was announced three times. First, in The Economist (June 2), as "a two- story, attic and basement residence for Mr. Powers to be built on Newport av- enue.” It would be frame with “fine in- terior furnace” and a furnace. The cost: $12,000. Second, in The Inland Architect (August), as a frame and Darlington sandstone house “in the Colonial style of architecture." Third, again in The Inland Architect (Octo- ber), as a two-story residence “of bowlders (sic) and frame.”

The house obtained even more picto- rial attention. Maher's rendering,

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Towers House: Floor plan, IA, November 1894. Window detail, “bowlders,” FA.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly « July-September 1992 + 9

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Scales House. Maher drawing, Inland Architect, June 1894.

Comments: Bowlder was the pre- ferred spelling of the day, followed by today's preferred boulder. Darlington sandstone was quarried in southern Indiana. "Colonial" in 1894 was what we now call, thanks to architectural historian Vincent Scully and others, the shingle style.

Sources: The Architectural Heritage of Newport, Rhode Island, Antoinette F, Downing, Vincent J. Scully Jr., American Legacy Press, New York, 1967. House Beautiful, February 1908.

¢ E.M. Higgins House, Edgewater neighborhood, Chicago.

Announced in The Inland Architect (October 1894): "For E.M. Higgins, a two-story, basement and attic resi- dence, 36 by 55 feet in size; to be erected at Edgewater; it will be of pressed brick first story, and tile sec- ond.” That's all about this house.

« John C. Scales House, 840 Hutchinson Street (originally 36 Kenesaw Terrace), Chicago.

‘the Scales House is one of Maher's most famous. During its 97 years, this house has appeared in drawings, pho- tos, ads, the National Register of His- toric Places, guide books, and tourist snapshots. It certainly stands out among the several Maher houses nearby on Hutchinson Street in the old Buena Park neighborhood. And why shouldn't it? It has boulders bot- tom to top, quatrefoils, bits of half-tim- bering, cut-out arches, conical roofs. It is, aS an architectural historian pointed out, a "flamboyant and exotic Queen Anne.”

The Scales House was announced in the October 1894 Inland Architect: "For J.C. Scales, at Buena Park, a handsome two-story, attic and base- ment residence, 45 by 64 feet in size; to be constructed of bowlders (sic) up to the roof, have hardwood interior finish, electric light, steam heating, etc.” Technologically up to date.

First owner John Scales was a devel- oper. His company was J.C. and CR. Scales.

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Sources: Chicago city directories. Chi- cago City of Neighborhoods, Dominic A. Pacyga and Ellen Skerrett, Loyola University Press, Chicago, 1986.

« E. Smith House, Chicago.

About this house, we have a photo and floor plan published in the April 1895 edition of The Inland Architect. It's shingle style, relatively narrow, with a clear-flowing from living room through library to dining room. The entrance hall and a stairway window seat open the first floor even more.

* Joseph W. Sullivan House, 1214 Kenmore Avenue (OSN). Chicago. Demolished.

This house first appeared in The In- land Architect in November 1894 as a design for Edgewater developer John Cochran. The house, a cousin to the Scales House and others, was shown in Maher's own rendering.

The next month in the same publica- tion, the house reappeared, with floor plan, as the residence of businessman

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly - July-September 1992 + 10

C),

Joseph Sullivan, president of J.B. Source: Chicago city directories. decoration than the other shingle

Sullivan & Bro. style houses of 1894, the house had * A.D. Wheeler House, three evenly spaced second-floor

Its third appearance in print came in Edgewater neighborhood, Chi- windows and a roof rising to a high the December 1899 issue of The In- cago. peak.

a. -land Architect. Trees, bushes and other vegetation are naturally more If not the best of Maher's shingle A view of the hall, the only interior substantial, and there is a carriage designs, the house for Mrs. A.D. photo of a Maher house to appear in house at the back. The 1899 photo is Wheeler was a very good one. 1894, shows a rather simply fur- credited to H.E. Torgersen & Co., : Subtler, at least to our eyes, be- Chicago. iY cause it was leaner in terms of

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Geo. W. Maher Quarterly » July-September 1992 « 11

below. IA, December 1894.

nished space. Oriental carpets of varied sizes partly cover wood floors.

Newlyweds join the exhibition

Married for only a few months, George and Elizabeth Maher both submitted entries for the Chicago Architectural Club’s 7th exhibition in 1894. His entries were pen-and- ink drawings titled, in the catalogue,“‘Resi- dence at Omaha,” “City Residence” and “Country Homestead.” Hers was a water color called “House by the Sea.”

The Chicago Architectural Club exhibitions were installed in the Art Institute of Chicago each spring. The club of 100-plus member archi- tects and draftsmen organized in 1881 as the Chicago Architectural Sketch Club. The members were considered progressive and inier- ested in an original American archi- tecture. Most of those associated with the Prairie School belonged,

including Robert Spencer, Hugh Garden, Dwight Perkins and others. Maher joined in 1885. The group’s name was changed to Chicago Ar- chitectural Club in 1894.

Interestingly, two of the others men- tioned in 1894 on the same catalog page as the Mahers are men George would work with later. The first is Lawrence Buck, a Chicago architect who served Maher as artist for presentation drawings of many buildings. In the 1894 exhibition, Buck was delineator for the architect DeWitt Taylor Kennard. The second is the glass artist Frank L. Linden whose Linden Glass Company would execute Maher’s designs for windows in the

Magerstadt House in 1908.

Sources: Art Institute of Chicago, collection. Chicago Ceramics & Glass, Sharon S. Darling, Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, 1979. The Inland Architect, Robert Prestiano, UMI Research Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1985. The Prairie School, H. Allen Brooks, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 1976.

More searches & discoveries

More on Pleasant Home. Another selection of vintage photos of Maher’s Farson House, which its first owners christened "Pleasant Home,” has turned up. This time in the personal home collection of a first cousin of Betty Wyld, wife of George Maher’s nephew Merle. “The book is a series of printed pictures successively labeled ‘Pleasant Home,’ reports the cousin.

Here are the views: Southwest, southwest closer up, front, porch looking south, southeast, porch looking north, reception hall, drawing room, reception room,

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * July-September 1992 + 12

dining room with breakfast room, another dining room, library, second floor hall, “green” chamber, “red” chamber (John Farson Jr.’s room), “robin’s egg blue” chamber (William Farson’sroom), palm mound-—out of sequence and tucked into the volume, “pink” guest chamber, bath room, billiard room and swimming pool, maid’s sitting room, kitchen, northwest view of south garden, stable, stable interior, carriage room, coachman’s room, “Major” the horse, four more horses, cut stone and steel fence, center terrace, south garden again, Agamooshie Club House, canna bed, fountain, south terrace.

We're eager to take a look at these, and will the next time we visit the Wylds. Built in 1897 in Oak Park, Pleasant Home was a tuming point house for Maher, a turning from tradition to his own way

Who’s wondering what?

Chicago asks. The Chicago Historical Society recently wrote me for information about the demolished Winton House in Wausau. Many of the Maher-designed windows for the Winton House, built in 1905-06 and demolished in 1976, are in the collec- tion of the Chicago Historical Society. Curatorial Assistant Casey Riley was after documentation about the house and the poppy motif art glass windows. After receiving our information on the Winton windows, Riley wrote back, “The few copies of stained glass looked marvelous.” Along with the note, Riley sent photos of eight different poppy windows the society owns. These include six different shapes within a variety of framing bands,

Illinois Preservation Agency asks. We heard, too, from David Newton, a national register assistant for the Hlinois Historic Preservation Agency in Springfield. He had information about a Tiskilwa, Hlinois, house that seems to have been

remodeled by Maher. Seems to. That’s

all we can say for now. As Newton noted, the Stevens House in Tiskilwa and Pleasant Home in Oak Park share some characteristics: “Includ- ing the circular dormer decorated by lions, ‘arrowhead’ fretwork, use of the ‘tray,’ and the massing of the house using the hip roof, porch, and two-story window bay.” He won- dered what I could or could not confirm. All I could tell him was that I agreed, after looking at the pictures he sent, about the similarities.

And that Maher announced an apartment house for a Miss Stevens in Chicago in 1894 (more on page 7). Could she have been a relative and a connection? We don’t know yet. The Stevens House was built in 1842 and remodeled in 1900.

American Craft Museum asks. A

researcher for the New York museum’

called looking for the original photos of Rockledge that appeared in Architectural Record in April 1917. Her specific interests were the dining room and an exterior view of the Minnesota house. I suggested she check the publication’s archives. Builtin 1911-12 for the King family of Watkins patent medicine and spice renown, the house was destroyed in 1987. Maher’s furniture and decorative items for Rockledge were sold to varied collectors and museums.

Some of these pieces appear in the book The Art that is Life. The photos are fine; the text is flawed.

Source: The Art that is Life: The Arts & Crafts Movement in America, 1875-

| 1920, Wendy Kaplan, Museum of Fine | Arts, Boston; Little, Brown and

Company. Boston, 1987.

Trust comes to Gary. The National Trust for Historic Preservation brought tourism experts to view and consider Maher’s Marquette Park Aquatorium in July. Arranged

through the Trust’s heritage tourism program for Indiana, the visit brought

Jim Richards, a landscape architect from Dallas; Amos Loveday, chief curator for the Ohio Historical Society; and Harry Nisonger, a restaurant planner from Cincinnati. They were to meet with Greg Jenkins, the architect for the Aquatorium restoration.

Built in 1921, the Aquatorium is a classical design in concrete block.

Notes

Kenilworth approves. “What a great issue,” we heard from Grace McLucas, acting president of the Kenilworth (Illinois) Historical Society, after the April-June issue of this newsletter was published. She also noted that Kenilworth is completing a brochure on Maher and that archi- tectural historian Bill Hinchcliff will speak on Kenilworth architect at the- society’s biennial dinner October 15. Kenilworth is home to many Maher

houses.

Indexer writes. Carol Kelm, who prepares the annual index for this newsletter, contributed an article to the June 1992 issue of the Bulletin, the newsletter of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. Her subject was “How to Research the History of Your Building.” Kelm is the executive director of the Historical Society of Oak: Park and River Forest. Both suburban Chicago communities are home for many Prairie style houses.

Gone. Architect L. Morgan Yost, formerly of Kenilworth, died May 6 in Salem, Arkansas. He was 83. Yost claimed that Maher and his work were

"part of his inspiration. “It was my

interest in the modernness of George Maher that led me to want to study architecture when I was graduated from New Trier High School,”

he said.

Source: Joseph Sears and his Kenilworth, Colleen Browne Kilner, Kenilworth Historical Society, 2nd edition, 1990.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * July-September 1992 » 13

Holland architecture

Originally presented to the Kenilworth Travel Club, which George and Elizabeth Maher both belonged to, this essay was in the June 1905 edition of The Inland Architect and News Record (pages 55-56). We can guess that Maher had been to The Nether- lands; he had traveled to Europe in 1891 and again in 1900.

The architecture of Holland is interesting principally on account of its freedom from conventionality. Except in the domain of originality in painting, for which she is justly famous, Holland has never manifested preeminent creative artistic endowments. Its architecture is cosmopolitan in character. While borrowing features from various countries, its work nevertheless bears a stamp of original- ity, reflective of a strong national character.

One must take into consideration the underlying qualities belonging to the Holland people and their civilization. A people who have so persistently striven against great odds, who have succeeded in conquering the sea and making a drear environment of morass and swamp blossom into a fruitful land, surely must evolve ideas of incalcu- lable worth. Individuality and indepen- dence are its heritage and its democ- racy has influenced the world at large.

Their general type of architecture, unlike that found in Greece and Italy, is inharmonious and untrammelled in its freedom. Academic mule and following tenaciously an established precedent, fine little encouragement in

Holland. The employment of the sister arts, Sculpture and painting, in the embellishment of their buildings, is seldom attempted in a large way. The majesty, proportion and grandeur of conception seen in the architecture of other European countries is here wanting.

To recognize the influence of style in any country, one must know some- thing of architecture in general, as well as certain distinct features in particular. Therefore before considering our subject further, and in order that it may be more intelligible, let us review briefly those great styles in other countries, which were borrowed by Holland and have had much to do in fashioning her architecture.

The Gothic and The Renaissance

styles must therefore be considered, for it was from them that Holland drew much of her inspiration. We are acquainted with the Gothic from its association and use in ecclesiastical architecture. This style evolved in northem Europe, and as fully devel- oped in church and cathedral, represents a most exalted conception of nature and mysticism, where emotion and not intellect is the moving imcontive.

The distinct features of the Gothic are the perpendicular line, the pointed arch, the groined nave and lofty spires. In strong contrast to the Gothic Style is the Greek architecture, which is the foundation of the classic and the Renaissance. Here the intellect comes fully into play and art is reduced to a scientific basis.

It is in this style that all the arts, painting, sculpture and finish of workmanship, combine in harmonious unison, to lend grace and beauty to column, entablature and pediment. Here is used the horizontal line, which

Maher in middle age. Photo, private collection.

finds its counterpart in nature, in the horizon, a God-given visible line, ever equal to our vision and broaden- ing as we evolute higher. The classical architecture is therefore of the mind and is in tune with the universe.

The Gothic, as we know, is a medieval architecture developed in the dark ages of Europe. While the Renais- sance represents the revival of the classic, through the study of Roman architecture, which was a direct inspiration from the Greek. Each country of Europe has had its own interpretation of the classic, resulting in the Italian, the French and the German Renaissance, and so on.

Holland made use of the Gothic and Renaissance, deriving her Gothic from France and Germany, her near neighbors, employing it principally in her ecclesiastical buildings, and ' adopting these foreign models and in all probability calling upon foreign architects to lend their assistance in erecting them.

\. Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * July-September 1992 « 14

The interior of these churches were originally rich in works of art, but at the present time are pronounced cold and bare, due to the misdirected zeal of the religious fanaticism of the reformation, which utterly destroyed every symbolism of Roman Catholic origin. However, we may admire the struggle for liberty and religious

- freedom on the part of Protestants of Europe, there was never a just cause for destroying one single work of art, whether architecture, sculpture or painting. Is it not to the credit of the Roman Catholic church in the dark ages of illiteracy, that through her fostering care and protection, ancient usages, art and literature were preserved to be perpetuated and to enrich the civilization of the modem world. But Holland, goaded on by the atrocities of Phillip II, evinced no desire to perpetuate anything Catholic or akin to Spain and therefore we are unable to elaborate upon the church interiors. I wish to quote you a description of one of the present church interiors of Rotterdam, by an Ttalian writer.

"Near the market square stands the cathedral which was founded toward the end of the fifteenth century, at the time of the decadence of Gothic architecture. It was then a Catholic church consecrated to St. Lawrence; now it is the first Protestant church in the city. Protestantism with religious vandalism entered the ancient church with a pickaxe and a white wash brush, and with bigoted fanaticism broke, scraped, rasped, plastered, and destroyed all that was beautiful and splendid, and reduced it to a bare white cold edifice, such as ought to have been devoted to the goddess of Ennui in the time of the "false and lying gods." This was the first Protes- tant church I had entered and I must confess I felt a disagreeable sensation, partly of sadness and partly of scandal. I compared the dismantled appearance of this church with the magnificent cathedrals of Italy and Spain where a soft and mysterious light shines from the walls, and where one meets the

loving looks of angels and saints through the clouds of incense direct- ing one's gaze toward heaven; where one sees so many pictures of inno- cence that clam one, so many images of pain that help one to suffer, that inspires one with resignation, peace, © and the sweetness of pardon; where the poor without food or shelter, spurned from the rich man's gate, may pray amid marble and gold as if ina palace; where surrounded by pomp and splendor they do not humiliate but rather honor and comfort their misery; they are not despised."

Naturally enough an Italian can scarcely appreciate a Protestant's point of view, since his idea of a place of worship is that it should contain all that is beautiful and of assistance to his devotional worship. And should not his view-point be respected, for it embodies much that is noble and to certain natures, satisfying?

I well remember my first impressions of that wonderful cathedral of San Marco at Venice. As one enters the spacious portals and views for the first time the richness of the interior, where there seems to reflect in harmonious colors, a spiritual light from the golden domed vaults overhead; portraying on all sides and above, enduring pictures in beautiful mosaics, illustrative of

great events in Biblical history. Here the most ignorant, as well as the most enlightened may come and be inspired to worship, according to their own faith and convictions. I have little sympathy for inartistic, inharmonious or incon- gruous places of worship. Art and religion should ever be associated together. Art is but a feeble attempt on the part of man to bring him into harmony with the Unseen with the unfathomable spiritual mystery that pervades all life. Art is to the senses what religion is to the soul. But it must be a universal art. Symbolism is employed by the past church, fills only a part of art's true mission, for art is free and when animated by the religion of truth, towards which we are aspiring, will fill our future places of

worship with a natural, rational art as perfect as the sunlight of day and as mystically beautiful as the moonlit heavens of the night.

But to return to Holland, we find that the Renaissance style is more often used in preference to the Gothic, as direct lines and plain surfaces seem more in keeping with the simple character of the people. They have individualized this style and have given it a spirit peculiar to themselves. To be sure the Gothic influence is felt in many of these Renaissance facades and lends a peculiar interest to the architecture of the cities.

The picturesque variety of masses and skyline inherited from medieval times, appears in high roofs, stepped gables and lofty dormers. The roofs often comprise several stories and are lighted by lofty gables at either end, and by dormers carried up from the side walls through two or three stories. Gables and dormers alike are built in diminishing stages. Each step adomed with console or scroll and the whole treated oftentimes with pilasters or collonnettes and entablatures breaking over each support. These roofs, dormers and gables contribute the most noticeable element to the general effect of the Holland Renaissance and are commonly the best designed features in them. The orders are scantily used and usually tested with utter disregard of classic proportions.

It will thus be seen as I have stated that the freedom from conventionality is the Holland characteristic and that the Gothic and Renaissance influences were tured aside and partially neutralized by the stronger feeling of domesticity. Perhaps the most charac- teristic feature of their architecture are the long rows of private dwellings, with high gables facing the street.

The public buildings in many instances are designed on precisely the same lines as the private dwellings. The Material used in the construction is principally brick, inasmuch as stone is

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * July-September 1992 + 15

a scarcity in Holland.

These brick are laid in various bonds, the principal one being the well known Flemish bond. There are many lessons here to be learned by the student, principally that of suiting the architecture to the needs of the people, irrespective of classic canon.

The Dutch temperament could hardly originate an architectural movement such as produced by the Greeks, nor had it enthusiasm. sufficient to participate in developing the great medieval style. Therefore the Dutch borrowed from the Greek and the Gothic after these styles had been perfected.

It is in the realm of democracy of art that Holland teaches the student the greatest lesson. Individuality of action is the keynote and, while the fruition of this principle as applied to architecture is not exemplified in Holland, there is nevertheless at present a strong movement that indicates her interest in the new art upheaval now prevalent -- commonly called the “Art Nouveau.”

Indeed this independence of idea, or liberty, seems to be at the root of our own architectural progress. So, even though we may at present erect bank buildings that resemble improvised Greek temples, build churches and universities in imitation of medieval- ism, and residences like Italian villas and French chateaux, in time a style will evolve from all this chaos, that will blend into a universality of effect, appealing to both the scientific and the mystic natures alike.

Toward this great movement, Holland has unmistakably contrib- uted her portion of influence, and this spirit of natural living and thinking will direct the architecture of succeeding generations.

a4 Geo. W.

Notes

Kenilworth's Travel Club: Organized in 1895, the Travel Club was an offshoot of another Kenilworth organization, a women's group called The Neighbors. Each meeting was an “imaginary journey" to another country, complete with costumes, food and so forth. Meetings continued until 1917: "With the approach of the United States’ entrance into World War I, even though club officers were chosen for 1917, there were no minutes that year or afterward."

Source: Joseph Sears and his Kenilworth, Colleen Browne Kilner, Kenilworth Historical

Society, 2nd edition, 1990.

In general: This essay finds Maher once again in ponderous style. Sentences are long, some- what difficult, somewhat overblown. Witness paragraph 2, sentence 2. His point is an impoitazt one, however: A contemporary style is emerging.

Paragraph 7: Here is a Prairie comment relating the horizontal

-line to human change. He validates,

too, his own constant use of classical references.

Paragraph 15: Two examples of the type of buildings described.

erect

a

Subscribers, many of whom are Ma- her building or house owners, are always welcome to visit our house here in Wausau. My wife, son and I live in a Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian house completed in 1941. Wausau, being a river town, is a bit confusing for first-time visitors, so you might want to call for directions. Tel 715/848-2482 at home evenings, weekends.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly. Volume 2, number 3. Four issues annually. Index to be provided January 1993. Donald M. Aucutt, editor. Tel 715/842-2482 after 5 p.m. weekdays, or weekends. Contribu- tions, media releases welcomed. ©1992.

1992 + 16

C)

HY

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly

Lilies on martele. Coffee server from Maher's tea and coffee ~ service for Ernest and Grace King, Gorham Manufacturing Com-

pany, 1912. See pages 13, 14, 15, 16, for more on Maher in Winona, Minnesota. Photo, The Historical Design Collection, New York.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * October-December 1992 » 1

Two buildings to model from

In 1895 George Maher, 30 years old, in his eighth year of practice, several dozen buildings behind him, produced two houses that would serve as pat- terns for him for 25 years.

One is the James McAfee House, 336 Essex Road in Kenilworth, Illinois, and the other is the Charles V.L. Pe- ters House formerly in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood. McAfee was the simplest of Maher’s designs so far. Peters was more complex. McAfee is plastered outside, Peters masonry. McAfee rectangular, Peters about square. It’s characteristically Maher, isn’t it, to move creatively in two directions? He was never the fo- cused, confident architect that some of his contemporaries were. One of those, of course, being Frank Lloyd Wright who figures into the McAfee and Peters houses.

McAfee House

Of the two, the McAfee House was more Maher’s own creation. In time it would be his archetypal design, its el- ements refined, its basic parts inte- grated into his most famous houses,

James McAfee, an interior decorator, occupied his house in June 1895. That was when the gas was hooked up. He lived in the house briefly and then moved from Kenilworth. McAfee, however, left behind what the Kenilworth Historical Society de- scribes as a locally “treasured saying” about his house. Here it is: “Asa solitaire on a woman’s hand, is a George Maher doorway to a house.” What’s the point? The single gem- stone draws one’s attention but there are other attractions as well: The shape of the hand, the fabric of a sleeve, the whole person herself. McAfee’s comment is apt. In Maher’s matured style, the main entrance door does catch the eye, if not immediately then very soon. What keeps the eye from the door at first glance is the en- tire smooth surface of the street-fac- ing facade.

— é —— Sen as a iinie H pay e9 eee 7 iz | 7 coat n/N OH 9 Pabeniul i ext + # rn tied cginen Mee” Ee : /; ee: <— a a : = t z al n if wari) : i | 4 3 ‘! m4 sae Se LA PS | a va PASC, PUTT Tanah | Yast ee eit a eee ———— ¥ ee aes ne \ een Wiehe ae +e: == ee McAfee House above; Peters House below. t

Sources: McAfee from photos, Inland Architect, January 1897. Peters Inland Architect, June 1895.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly » October-December 1992 «2

ts

Wright's Winslow House, floor plan, front.

ie

eel nnn

Floor plan © 1942 The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

Maher’s McAfee House faced Essex Road with a wall of undecorated plas- ter. The horizontal line is the empha- sis, from the seen shape of the house, rectangular, to the width of the en- trance stairs, to the solid lines at foun- dation and roof levels, window width and sash choice, double hung rather than casement (if a horizontal look is the aim, aren’t double-hung windows more appropriate; is that what Maher was thinking?), low hipped roof with overhanging caves. The exception is the door admired by McAfee, here arched and set between two small side

windows. There is a side porch. At the back the house is irregularly shaped.

No interior photos of the McAfee House were published. Neither was a floor plan. Maher seemed to pick and choose which of his interiors he. wanted shown. Those displayed pub- licly typically suggest his care to inte- grate inside with outside. Perhaps McAfee, a decorator whose skill or lack of I am unaware now, overly af- fected the interior in his own house, or even did it.

What were the influences here? Frank Lloyd Wright is one. In 1894 his Winslow House in River Forest, Hli- nois, was completed. Liked or not, the Winslow must have been a startling revelation to Maher and the other Chicago architects of the period, The house would have been amazing be- cause the fashion was still a mix of late Queen Anne, Richardsonian Ro- manesque and the increasingly fa- vored “colonial” or “old colonial” style, that being the shingle style pro- moted by the architect J. L. Silsbee, for whom both Maher and Wright had worked, and a variety of stylized in- terpretations. Wright’s Winslow House was all horizontal lines at the front, and it’s obviously Maher’s model for the McAfee House, though McAfee is far simpler.

Wright was more than an influence. He was also a player and competitor here because he, too, had designed a Kenilworth house for McAfee. In January 1894 Wright was drawing a house for A.C. McAfee, and he was working on the Winslow House. Wright later redrew the plan for James McAfee. We don’t know why the McAfees decided not to build Wright’s house. None of their corre- spondence, if there ever was any, re- mains in the Frank Lloyd Wright ar- chives. What is there are exterior drawings for the house. In the later drawing, presumably for James McAfee, Wright had changed window panes from diamonds to straight-lined ones, and he has both simplified and elaborated vegetative ornament in the style of Louis Sullivan. Floor plans from earlier, labeled as done in Wright’s Rookery office, to later show that a hexagonal billiard room has become a library; the little room is like the library in Wright’s Home and Studio in Oak Park. I have not published these drawings because I do not have permission to do so. Wright's McAfee House(s) is altogether unlike Maher’s.

Digression: There is an interesting confusion of initials here, both with the Wright and Maher McAfees, which still needs a full resolution. When he exhibited the A.C. McAfee plan at the Chicago Architectural Club exhibition in 1900, Wright la- beled the house C.A. McAfee in

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * October-December 1992 «3

Kenilworth. Grant Manson, in Frank Lloyd Wright to 1910, wrote C.H. McAfee (twice). In Joseph Sears and his Kenilworth, Colleen Browne Kilner says the 336 Essex Road house belonged to J.E. McAfee. The Inland Architect reported in 1895 that the Essex Road house was J. L. McAfee’s. J.L. is presumably the same James L. whom Henry-Russell Hitchcock said was the client for “a slightly variant plan” of Wright’s A.C. McAfee House.

Resuming: Other influences came from Europe. The arts and crafts people in England; a quick review of buildings by C.F.A. Voysey and M.H. Baillie Scott in England shows debt. Architects and designers in Central Europe. It’s as if Maher had been waiting for the opportunity to put to- gether a house from all he had been absorbing.

In the years to come, the McAfee House was source for many other houses by Maher and by others. No- table among the Maher versions are these: Mallory House, 515 Essex Road, Kenilworth, built 1897. Barrett House, 304 Melrose Avenue, Ken- ilworth. Mosser House, 750 Hutchinson Street, Buena Park neigh- borhood, Chicago, built 1902-03. The Delineator magazine competition de- sign of June 1908 with its echoes of Winslow House landscaping.

Curiously, the McA fee House, al- ready slightly remodeled, was being offered for sale the day before Maher killed himself at his Douglas, Michi- gan, home on Lake Michigan. The ad, with a photo showing two arched roof windows not originally there, read, in part: “Living room, 20x30, two tiled baths, four master bedrooms...Bath and two airy rooms on third floor...$52,500.” Did this sale have something to do with Maher shooting himself on September 12, 1926? Probably not. But surely the Mahers were aware of the sale; their own house was just a few blocks away. Most likely he did not see the ad.

The McAfee House was remodeled

again in 1951. Today Maher’s design is distorted by window shutters, small panes of glass, elimination of his sec-

this i1-r00

PRR star ond, iKenilworth, leaving city, of ra esidence in| best location of village.: Tt

from. ptati and school, Grbunds, 100x175. ‘Living-roo 20x30, two! tile baths, four master bedrooms and heated roti

ing-porch-on setond floor. Bath and two airy rooms on third ‘floor, | Oil oi

and jnodern equipment aetel: $52, 500. Tnspectign.by appointment only, ° I | ‘ \] °, (PEL. KENILWORTH 1845, 2425]

McAfee for sale. Chicago Evening Post, September 11, 1926.

McAfee Hoare today. Editor: S phate:

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly « October-December 1992 « 4

ts

ond floor diamonds, protruding en- trance columns, wrought iron railings aside new entrance steps, a pair of urns, a hedge obscuring the joining of house and earth. The arched door, the one McAfee appreciated, has been re- placed. Maher’s ideas here are hid- den.

Peters House

The Peters House in Edgewater was a more predictable step in Maher’s de- velopment. Probably located on War- ren Avenue, the house first appeared in Inland Architect in June 1895 as a rendering for Edgewater’s developer J.L. Cochran. The finished house, now belonging to Peters, was in the same magazine just about a year later. The brick house sits solidly. It has square, or nearly so, windows, arched windows, brackets on the porch, a

Negative by R. Capes, Chicago. INLAND AxCIUTES

fos Sa abe

Peters complete. Exterior, hail.

Inland Architect photos, May 1896.

balustrade on the dormer. In other As seen in a photo of the entrance words, lots of decoration that Maher hall, the interior is not appreciably would abandon in the next few years. | simpler than in other Maher houses of What marks this house as essential for | the early 1890s. Lots of highly pol- Kenia orth Deine seonscompcttion Maher is its shape: Square, more or ished wood.

house, Isom House. less. The roof is not purely hipped,

Sources: Editor, Delineator, June 1908: 2nd the back of the house is smaller Here are some descendants of the Pe- Inland Architect, October 1900. * than the front. ters House: Farson House, 217 Home

From top : Parmalee House (1907,

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly » October-December 1992 «5

MacNeil, Maher

& Wright...

The sculptures of Hermon MacNeil, especially the early ones, held some fascination for Frank Lloyd Wright. MacNeil's "Dancing Hopi" was positioned prominently in the entrance hall of the Winslow House. It appears in Hitchcock's book on Wright buildings, and it can be seen in photos of the Winslow children and of William Winslow himself practicing his violin.

Wright had another MacNeil sculpture in his office in down- town Chicago.

MacNeil (1866-1947) was George Maher's brother-in-law. He and Carol (Carrie) Brooks (1871- 1944), a younger sister of Maher's wife Elizabeth, married on Christ- mas Day 1895. Carrie MacNeil was a sculptor whose work was shown in Gustav Stickley's Crafts- man magazine.

Avenue, Oak Park, built 1897. Dau House, 4807 Greenwood Avenue, Chicago, built 1897; this house has an entrance hall much like that in the Pe- ters House. Warren Furbeck House, 200 Home Avenue, Oak Park, built 1900, demolished 1959.

An early hybrid McAfee-Peters house was the William Isom House at 337 Essex Road in Kenilworth, just across the street from the McAfee House. Isom combines the basic Peters shape with the McAfee plastered wall and window positioning.

Sources: The Brickbuilder, September 1903 (Dau, Mosser). Frank Lloyd Wright to 1910, The First Golden Age, Grant Manson, Reinhold Pub- lishing Corporation, New York, 1958. TA, June 1895 and May 1896 (Peters), January 1897 (Mallory, McAfee), Oc- tober 1900 (Isom). In the Nature of Materials, Henry-Russell Hitchcock,

ix

"Dancing Hopi" in Winslow House.

Hawthorn Books, New York, 1942, reprinted by Da Capo Press. Joseph Sears and his Kenilworth, Colleen Browne Kilner, Kenilworth Historical Society, second edition, 1990. Ken- ilworth Historical Society collection. “Kenilworth Home for Sale,” adver- tisement in The Chicago Evening Post, September 11, 1926. Letter, The Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, Santa Monica, California, November 9, 1992. Winslow House floor plan used with permission of The Frank Lloyd

Wright Foundation, October 16, 1992.

Note: The Wright Foundation does not have Wright’s original Winslow House floor plan. It was not returned by Henry-Russell Hitchcock after he published “In the Nature of Materi- als.” Hitchcock lent this plan, or per- mitted a copy to be printed, for Leonard Eaton’s Two Chicago Archi- tects and Their Clients, Frank Lloyd

Wright and Howard Van Doren Shaw (The MIT Press, 1969). It’s on page 69, “courtesy of Henry-Russell Hitchcock.”

Note: I’ve seen three different copies of the January 1897 issue of Inland Architect with the McAfee House. The issue must have printed dark. The copies in the Northwestern University and Chicago public libraries were too black to reveal detail. The third one I viewed, at the Milwaukee public li- brary, was light enough to show more.

More in 1895 Maher adapts

Gothic arches,

builds for Cochran

¢ Jobn C. and Anna Brocklebank House, north Edgewater neighbor- hood of Chicago, demolished.

For the Brocklebanks, Maher pro- duced a masonry and plaster house detailed in arts and crafts fashion. If there are motifs here for continuity, and I’m not sure there are, they are the quatrefoil and trefoil, which ap- pear both outside and inside. The _ house has the same sweeping entrance rails as several other Maher houses of the period.

John Charles Fremont Brocklebank and Anna Woodward Durell married

Brocklebank House. Inland Architect, June 1895.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * October-December 1992 * 6

pe

Brocklebank House, entrance hall looking into living room.

Inland Architect, April 1896.

in 1890. He was a vice president for the Manufacturers’ Paper Co. of New York and an attorney. He and Maher had similar credentials. Brockle- bank’s: Episcopalian, Republican, Chicago Athletic Club, golfing.

Sources: The Book of Chicagoans, John W. Leonard, editor, A.N. Mar- quis & Co., Chicago, 1905. IA, June 1895, May 1896.

¢ Frederick S. Gardner House, 2969 Kenmore Avenue (OSN), Edgewater/ Chicago, demolished.

Announced in The Inland Architect, August 1895: “...a pretty two-story residence, to be erected at Edgewater, for F.S. Gardner; it will be of frame and plaster, of very neat design, have hardwood interior finish, the modern sanitary specialties, electric light, heating, etc.” Of the finished house, no exterior photos were published; an interior photo of the hall, with re- peated Gothic arches and motifs, is in a Maher client portfolio in Kenilworth. Gardner was a business executive, president of the People’s Lumber Co. and the Gardner Mill Co.

Sources: Chicago city directories, 1899, 1903. IA, August 1895, page 9.

Py,

es

Maher client portfolio, collection of the Kenilworth Historical Society.

« J. MacMeans House, address un- . known, Edgewater/Chicago, demol- ished.

Announcement in The Economist, September 1894: “George W. Maher has designed for J. MacMeans a two- story, attic and basement house to be built in North Edgewater. It will cover an area of 40x80 feet and will be con-

J. MacMeans House. Inland Architect, October 1895.

structed of stone. The interior will be finished in hardwood and will be heated by hot water. It will cost $12,000.” The next month Inland Ar- chitect added that the house would be “of frame and bowlders (sic). Boul- ders there were, big ones, small ones, as an Inland Architect photo of the exterior shows. Boulders, plus a squat tower, Gothic arches, half-timbering, and the downswept front entrance stair railing favored for the Brocklebank House.

Sources: The Economist, September 8, 1894. IA, October 1894, February 1896.

¢ Robert J. Morrow House, 1076 Winthrop Avenue, Edgewater/Chi- cago, demolished.

About the Morrow House, little. No announcements in the trade maga-

~ zines. A photo in The Inland Archi-

tect, June 1895, clearly links this house to the others of this period. Frame below, plaster above, trefoils, downswept stair railing, the increas- ingly cleanly defined rectangular chimney, the latter later standard for Maher houses. The trimmed stone porch is virtually the same as that on the Smith McPherson House of a year earlier in Red Oak, Iowa. City direc- tories list Morrow as a “commercial merchant.”

Sources: City directories, 1896, 1899. IA, June 1895.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * October-December 1992 «7

More in 1895...

¢ With Cochran again. Maher re- mained much involved in 1895 with ed J.L. Cochran, the developer of Edgewater, a suburb just north of Chi- cago. Announcements were made in professional and builders’ publica- tions for six houses, all of them appar- ently for Cochran to sell.

Here is the announcement for one of them: “‘A two-story and attic resi- dence, 34 by 59 feet in size; to be built at Edgewater; it will be of frame construction, with stone basement and stone porch, have interior finished in hard woods, mantels, sideboards, con- soles, the best of plumbing, heating, electric bells, speaking tubes.”

Of greater interest, of more exotic in- terest, is the announcement for Cochran’s own townhouse at 1521 North State Street: “A handsome three-story residence, to cost about $25,000...it will have a stone front, hardwood interior finish, the best of modern plumbing, mantels, heating, etc.”

Oriental room, Cochran Townhouse. Exterior. Both Inland Architect, March 1897.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * October-December 1992 «8

More in 1895...

The house is still there. I havent been inside, but I doubt that the most curi- ous thing about it is there. That’s the “oriental room.” Such rooms, with moorish arches, intricately detailed wall coverings, inlaid furniture and, of course, oriental carpets, were not uncommon in the late 19th century. They were yesterday’s equivalent of today’s novelty or “theme” room. Cochran’s oriental room provided ac- cess to the floor above and looked di- rectly into the dining room. The latter was more conventional — marble

_ fireplace, quatrefoil-patterned glass, heavy bulky rather medieval furni- ture.

The house is “handsome,” as prom-

ised by Maher. Some of his character- istics are here: The arched door, shields, flowers, roses apparently not related to other motifs inside, and a circular window at the top.

Sources: IA, August 1895, March 1897.

* Maher’s? At 1340 Chestnut in Wilmette is a house attributed to Ma- her by Paul Sprague of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee architecture department. Sprague included this house on an architectural touring map in 1972. This house also appears in H.V. von Holst’s Modern American Homes; he describes it as a “plaster and shingle house.” Von Holst does

_ hot mention Maher.

Source: Sprague map, May 14, 1972. My copy of this map came from the late Richard Twiss of Chicago, who explained in a letter of June 9, 1988, that the map “was originally drawn for use on a tour in conjunction with Sprague’s class at the University of Chicago. I did not take his class — Paul opened the vacant seats of his tour bus to friends and I got to see many of these buildings, as well as interiors, with him that way.” Von Holst, published by American Techni- cal Society, Chicago, 1913, reprinted in 1982 as Country and Suburban Homes of the Prairie School Period, Dover Publications, Inc., New York.

° Maher’s? Finally, the Kenilworth Historical Society picture files, with notes by Colleen Browne Kilner in 1964, mention the Isaac F. Stone House, 415 Essex Road, as a Maher house. It looks like one. There is no other written evidence.

Maher shows Chicago houses

In the 1895 exhibition of the Chicago Architectural Club, George Maher had three entries, all of them listed as “residence in Chicago.”

Board denies ‘dandmark’” status for Pleasant Home

The National Park System Advisory Board has recommended against na- tional historic landmark status for “Pleasant Home,” the John Farson House in Oak Park, Ilinois. Designed by George Maher in 1897, the Farson House, 217 Home Avenue, is fre- quently called an architectural depar- ture into the Prairie School and re- lated arts and crafts modes for Maher.

The national historic landmark desig-

+ nation had been requested by the

Pleasant Home Foundation, the non-

| profit organization planning to restore

Pleasant Home as a house museum.

A senior historian for the National Park Service told an Oak Park news- paper: “The tenor (of the ruling) was that while (Pleasant Home) is a fine house that it was not outstanding, in the sense that it was not better than any of the other houses in the area.”

Pleasant Home is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Source: Oak Park Wednesday Journal, September 2, 1992.

In print

* Secrest’s Wright. In her new biog- raphy Frank Lloyd Wright, Meryle

| Secrest mentions Maher almost inci-

dentally on pages 88, 90-91, 144-145, 232.

Here’s what she says:

88. About Chicago architect Joseph Lyman Silsbee hiring the very young Wright, “He (Silsbee) would have been in his early forties when he hired Wright, and had perfected a gift for spotting young talent. Two of his other draftsmen, George Washington Maher and George Grant Elmslie, would also have distinguished ca- reers...” Secrest is caught in triple- name architect naming. Maher, of course, always wrote George W. Ma- her.

90-91. Here is the story, from Wright’s Autobiography, of Wright expecting to be paid $18 because.Ma- her was paid that amount when the latter joined Silsbee.

144-145. Secrest says Maher planned to move to Steinway Hall offices. Not true, as far as I know.

232. She mentions Maher as being among those who “were designing in

| ways that, to the casual eye, looked

Wright-inspired and influenced.”

_ A best-seller, Secrest’s Frank Lloyd

Wright is from Alfred A. Knopf, New York.

« They Built Chicago. Miles Berger’s new book They Built Chicago, Entre- preneurs who Shaped a Great City’s Architecture remarks on Maher’s buildings in the Edgewater and Buena Park neighborhoods of Chicago. The comments about Maher are cursory. Little more than the observation that he was one of several talented archi- tects used by late 19th century devel- opers. It’s interesting, though, and in- structive to find Maher in larger con- text with John Lewis Cochran in Edgewater and James Waller in Buena Park. We can realize again what Maher did to further and sustain his career. Quite simply, he connected with the right people and designed buildings for them. _

They Built Chicago is published by Bonus Books Inc., Chicago. It’s avail- able in the Chicago Architecture Foundation bookstore.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly « October-December 1992 » 9

¢ SIA Newsletter, summer 1992. Wil- liam H. Mulligan Jr., architectural historian for the Cliffs shaft mine site in Upper Michigan, has contributed an article about the proposed restora- tion of the site. The concrete shafts by Maher were constructed in 1919.

« Antiques — catching up. Antiques magazine showed Maher items in 1985 and 1987.

In October 1985, a glass mosaic and gold enamel fireplace surround from the Patrick J. King House, 3234 West Washington Boulevard, Chicago, built 1901. Also, a silk and velvet portiere from the Patten House, for- merly at 1426 Ridge Avenue, Evanston, Illinois, built 1901, demol- ished in 1939.

The Maher items illustrate an article about an exhibition called “High Styles: Twentieth-Century American Design” at the Whitney Museum of

- American Art in New York. The

writer Deborah Nevins uses the Ma- her designs to show Americans devel- oping “aesthetically unified interiors” in the arts and crafts spirit. “George Maher’s fireplace surround and por- tiere are magnificent examples of the designer’s desire to realize such inte- riors. Both designs are based on plant forms which, with their linearity and compositional clarity, identify them as the work of one hand,” she says.

Parts of the King House are scattered about. Of four fireplaces with mosaic surrounds once in the house, two are (or were, as of June 1991) in the col- lection of the The Wolfsonian Foun- dation, Miami Beach; another at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a fourth in a private collection in New York.

Parts of the Patten House are all about, too. The portiere in Antiques belongs to the Art Institute of Chi- cago. The Patten House, owned by Northwestern University at the time of its destruction, is a startling build- ing even in photos. Here’s a contem- porary reaction from The Architec- tural Review of July 1904: “Brutal in construction, delicate in ornamenta- tion, equivocal in character, tentative in composition.”

In April 1987, a brass and glass table lamp from “Rockledge,” the Emest and Grace King House near Winona, Minnesota, designed and built 1911- 12, demolished late 1987 or early 1988. ,

The Rockledge lamp appeared in An- tiques soon after roomsful of Maher furniture, glass and light fixtures made for the house were sold by Emest L. King Jr. The Maher items went into a kind of storage in a barn when Rockledge was remodeled by Chicago architect John Wentworth in 1931. More than 40 years later, Maher’s work emerged to be pur- chased by eager collectors.

Sources: Archives, Winona Historical Society. “High Styles: American De- sign in the Twentieth Century,” Deb- orah Nevins, Antiques, October 1985, pp. 770-778. Letter, The Wolfsonian Foundation, Miami Beach, Florida. June 25, 1991. “Stained Glass for the Home,” Catherine Zusy, Antiques, April 1987, pp. 848-857.

Notes

¢ On tour. George Maher’s work was on display for Chicago Architecture Foundation Tours on Hutchinson Street, in Kenilworth, and by bike, Highland Park. Here’s the description of the Hutchinson Street tour: “Trace the career of Prairie School architect George W. Maher and the evolution of modern residential design as found in this landmark district in the heart of Buena Park, originally one of Chi- cago’s most architecturally cohesive neighborhoods.” And, Philip Maher’s Woman’s Athletic Club was the place for lunch on an “Art Deco in Chi- cago” tour in later October. Philip de- signed the club at 620 North Michi- gan Avenue in 1928.

¢ Weese on exhibit. Through January 8, the Chicago Architecture Founda- tion is exhibiting “Sketches & Schemes: The Designs of Harry Weese.” To see, walk through the

‘foundation’s bookstore at 224 South

Michigan Avenue, into the atrium. Born in Evanston in 1915, Weese’s family moved to Kenilworth when he was a small boy. In her book on

Kenilworth, Colleen Kilner quoted Weese on his appreciation of George Maher:

“My interest in the Auditorium (of Sullivan and Adler) and the Chicago School of Architects in general dates from my early days in Kenilworth, where I learned to admire George Mahert’s architecture, as evidenced in the Kenilworth Club and the arrange- ments in the park, and I am thankful that Kenilworth sees fit to preserve these landmarks.”

¢ Gates House. The Frederick T. Gates House (1902), 66 South Moun- tain Avenue in Montclair, New Jer- sey, has new owners. They called me recently for information and to say the three-story stone house is being re- stored.

¢ In Kenilworth. The program for the 70th anniversary dinner of the Kenilworth Historical Society in Oc- tober was “Cottages to Castles: The Houses of Kenilworth.” Speaker Wil- liam Hinchliff has been researching Maher’s buildings in Kenilworth, the architect’s home from 1892 until his death in 1926... The invitation enve- lope displayed Maher’s poppy motif for the Winton House (1910) in Min- neapolis... The dinner was at the Kenilworth Club, 410 Kenilworth Av- enue, called the Kenilworth Assembly Hall when designed by Maher in 1907.

¢ Lectern restored. A lectern de- signed by Maher for the Kenilworth Assembly Hall is now at the Kenilworth Historical Society. Re- ported the society in its September newsletter: “Thanks to the expertise

and patience of Jean-Jacques Bernard, — cabinet maker and furniture restorer

in Evanston, the lectern has been re- stored to its natural beauty...Bemard told us that the burled pine from which the lectern is fashioned is a rare wood and must have come from a very old, very large tree to have pro- duced the unusual markings in the wood.”

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly « October-December 1992 * 10

\

q)

Words........

Maher in 1908

We depart this month from Maher’s published essays into the world of early 20th century biography, or pseudo-biography. The text is A.N. Waterman’s Historical Review of Chicago and Cook County and Selected Biography (The Lewis Publishing Company of Chicago 1908). And its entry on George W. Maher. Pages 874-877. I say pseudo- biography because Maher’s entry may well be autobiography.

Part of the story is a long quote from a paper called “The Western Spirit” that Maher presented to the Chicago Architectural Club in March 1906. The next month this talk was pub- lished in The Inland Architect. Then it was revised by Maher and printed in The Western Architect magazine in November and December of that year.

The rest of the entry sounds like Maher too.

With the entry is a photo of the architect. He’s middle-aged, 43 or 44. Middle-age may account for some biographical exaggeration here. He looks heavier than in other photos. His hair is greying. His moustache protrudes rather unneatly. Below isa large autograph.

George Washington Maher is the acknowledged originator of a distinc- tive style of architecture. While pursuing his studies abroad, he became convinced that in this country there should rightly be an art expres- sion akin to the national ideals, founded upon the spirit of past architectural achievement; but that it should, in no wise, be an exact copy of the productions of a foreign people. With this general idea in mind, Mr. Maher has developed a style which is distinctively his own, and so original

ss Waites

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * October-December 1992 + 11

that it may almost be claimed to be indigenous to the United States. He has introduced a new theory of design into all his work, which he calls the motif rhythm. This theory takes its inspiration from surrounding life and environment, at the same time following closely ethical laws which govern good architectural design. Thus, in James A. Patten’s house at Evanston the thistle is combined with certain pronounced geometrical figures, forming the motif of the design. Throughout the exterior and interior of Harry Rubens's unique country residence at Glencoe the motif flower is the hollyhock, combined with certain structural themes, while the American honey- suckle, With | strong horizontal lines, furfiishes Mr. Maher with his flower and thythm motif in the construction and embellishment of John Farson’s beautiful a and original place at Oak Park. His suggestive and original style is also aptly illustrated by the resi- dences of A.B. Leach, at South Orange, and F.T. Gates, at Montclair, New Jersey; the Edgewater Presbyte- rian Church; the Assembly Hall at Kenilworth, and the Swift Engineer- ing Hall, on the Northwestern University campus grounds, at Evanston. At the present time he is engaged in formulating a comprehen- sive plan of bringing the grounds and buildings of the university into harmony with the characteristic landscape of the locality, as well as providing for the expansion of the future, both in new buildings to be erected and additions of ground. Mr. Maher has already made a pro- nounced departure in shaping such suburbs as North Edgewater and Kenilworth, especially in the innova- tion of beautifying the grounds around railroad stations and village entrances. ’ The entrance which he designed to the village of Kenilworth is particu- larly attractive and unique, his interest in that place being especially per- sonal, as it is his place of residence.

As Mr. Maher is still in the prime of early middle life, his originality and enthusiasm in his chosen profession will bring him greater eminence than he now enjoys. Although a southerner by birth, in education, training and spirit he is truly of the west, as witness the following extract from

one of his papers, read before the Chicago Architectural Club: “Our democracy exalts the individual, and, if I understand the spirit of the West, it proposes that the individual shall express his ideals and will encourage him so to do, irrespective of his

dictum, irrespective of any fault or

failure on his part, so long as it is an honest effort. I repeat that here in the west the tide of false conservatism will be turned; that here will originate a new school of architecture which

’ will grow stronger each succeeding

generation until all the life assimi- lated in this new country will find full expression in marble and stone. Already the men who are fostering this new architecture and this new movement are gaining recruits, and broader range in their influence is being felt daily. It can no longer be said that the architect who follows the new does so as the peril of losing patronage. The young architect in our city who will grow in favor is he who embraces this new art. Recognition comes to him alike from the people, from the press and in publication. If an exhibition were held in these rooms tonight of the work done by these young men and placed against the work executed by the so-called conservative men, you would find that most interest and enthusiasm would be centered in the work favoring the most progress. We do not stop to consider how virile is this new art and to what extent it is attracting atten- tion, not only in your country, but in Europe. Viewing the situation from abroad, they understand full well that anew expression of art must come from this country — an expression born of a democracy where the effort

- is not hindered to any extent by

precedent or tradition. Here ought to be unfettered opportunity for an expression of the new. Further, you — will find that the opinion abroad is pronounced that this new art will evolve and gather headway in the Central West, end (sic — should be and?) even at the present time they are publishing such examples of this art from the West.

“Much could be said in this connec- tion, explaining theories of design, that would be of interest to the student. Some are working on the motif and rhythm theme, understand-

ing that nature and music are phases © of inspiration to be formed into the concrete; and with the real living

} motive, that of surrounding life, the

production of great works of art should be forthcoming. It is no longer necessary for any school or student to rely only on precedent for the teaching of architecture, since all around us is motive power, nature, music, life. It is unfortunate that there is no text book as yet compiled that would give the technical schools foundation for the instruction of this new theory. However, certain buildings are already in evidence, and more of them will soon be erected; and eventually will come the profes- sor and the book.”

The main facts in the life of George W. Maher, this typical western architect, are that he was born in Mill Creek, West Virginia, on the 25th of December, 1864, and is the son of Theophilus Daniel and Sarah (Landis) Maher. His father is of French.and Irish extraction, and his mother of German ancestry, the American branch of the maternal family being Pennsylvania Dutch, members of which settled in the Keystone state in ante-Revolutionary times. In his early boyhood days his parents removed to New Albany, Indiana, and he received his primary education in its public schools. He began the study of architecture in Chicago and com- pleted it while abroad, thus laying the basis of his present architectural style and standing. Mr. Maher is a member of the American Institute of Archi- tects, and is also identified with the Union League, Chicago Athletic Association and the Indiana Society (of Chicago).

Mr, Maher was married, October 24, 1893, to Miss Elizabeth Brooks, an artist, the daughter of the well known portrait painter, Alden F. Brooks. They have one child, Philip Brooks Maher. The family is prominent in the social affairs of Kenilworth. Mr. Maher himself has taken a leading part in shaping and developing the municipal growth of the village, having served both as trustee and park

commissioner.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly » October-December 1992 « 12

}

Notes

Paragraph 1. Buildings, houses:

¢ Patten House, 1426 Ridge Avenue, Evanston, Illinois, built 1901, demolished 1939.

¢ Rubens House, Sheridan Road, Glencoe, Illinois, built 1902, demol- ished.

¢ Farson House, 217 Home Avenue, Oak Park, Illinois, built 1897.

¢ A.B. Leach House, South Orange, New Jersey, built 1900.

¢ F.T. Gates House, 66 Mountain Avenue, Montclair, New Jersey, built 1902.

¢ Edgewater Presbyterian Church, southwest corner of Kenmore and Bryn Mawr, built 1903-04, demol- ished.

* Kenilworth Assembly Hall, 410 Kenilworth Avenue, Kenilworth, built 1907.

¢ Swift Engineering Hall, Northwest- em University, Evanston, built 1908.

Paragraph 1, Northwestern campus plan: He drew a plan for the campus, and then served on a committee that voted for an open competition. Northwestern ultimately rejected his plan for another by Palmer and Hombostle, New York, in 1911. Maher was deeply disappointed by the decision to hold the competition. Source: Northwestern University archives,

Paragraph 1. Edgewater, Kenilworth planning: Maher’s part in designing houses for Edgewater developer J.L. Cochran has been noted. In Kenilworth, Maher designed entrance gates on Sheridan Road, and benches, ums and a fountain near the intersec- tion of Kenilworth Avenue and Green Bay Road. In 1920 he exhibited his Kenilworth Community Development Plan at the Chicago Architectural Club; the Kenilworth Historical Society has a copy in their museum.

Paragraph 4. Considering that Maher’s education abroad consisted of several trips to Europe and wander- ing about sketching, this biographical fact must be interpreted loosely. He went to Europe for the first time in 1891.

At right: Maher's Rockledge presentation drawing.

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Maher in Winona.

Here are the first of several pages on George Maher and his clients in Winona, Minnesota, the Watkins- King family. More will appear in 1993 issues of the Geo. W. Maher Quarterly.

For Maher there were only two other architectural relationships at all com- parable to that with the Watkins-King family. Those were the meshed Patten family-Northwestern University buildings and plans in Evanston, Illi- nois, and with the Lord family of Evanston, the latter producing little of distinction.

Maher’s experience with the Watkins- King family parallels Frank Lloyd Wright’s work with the Martin broth- ers of Chicago and Buffalo, New York, and to a lesser extent his rela- tionship with the Coonley brothers of Chicago. This includes not only men but several strong-willed women, no- tably Grace Watkins King and Queene Ferry Coonley.

Maher’s buildings for the Watkins- King family are these:

¢ J.R. Watkins Medical Company ad- ministration building, 150 Liberty Street, Winona. Built 1911-12.

¢ Ernest L. and Grace Watkins King House, “Rockledge,” Homer, Minne- sota. Built 1911-12, demolished late 1987 or early 1988. Homer is just south of Winona.

¢ King House servant quarters and barn. Designed 1913.

¢ J.R. Watkins Medical Company warehouse building, Chattanooga. Tennessee. Not built.

¢ J.R. Watkins Medical Company warehouse building, 150 Liberty Street, Winona. Built 1913-14. This 10-story building is attached to the administration building.

¢ J.R. Watkins Medical Company warehouse, 62-70 West E.H. Crump Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee. Built 1913-14.

ay \December 1992 « 13

+ Ernest L. and Grace Watkins King winter home, “Seabreeze,” Daytona Beach, Florida. Built 1914, burned in the 1950s.

¢ The Winona Savings Bank and The Winona National Bank, 204 Main Street, Winona, Minnesota. Designed and built 1913-1916.

High life. High style

That’s what the King family of Winona pursued.

For Winona, and even not for Winona, the King family lived well. They collected: Chinese rugs, netsukes, Duesenberg cars, jade, Na- vajo rugs. They traveled: Egypt, the Far East. They hunted: Big game in Africa, lesser game in India, tigers in Vietnam. They raised pets and ani- mals: Lions, cheetahs. They had houses in Florida, Hawaii, California and Lake Tahoe.

All this was built on the millions made from the simple products of the J.R. Watkins Medical Company. Bet- ter known today as just Watkins. The products were, reported the Winona newspaper in 1912, “liquid medicines, salves, tablets, pills, ointments, pow- _ ders, perfumes, soaps, toilet waters, veterinary remedies and Stock and Poultry Tonic packages and stock dip and disinfectant,” plus spices and fla- voring extracts. Certainly an interest- ing mix. These products were dis- pensed about the Midwest, and even- tually through much of the United States, by the “Watkins Man.” He traveled from farm to farm and small town to small town selling his wares to humble folk for their ills, aches, ap- petites, their bodies in public and pri- vate moments, their animals. Their whole lives.

Here is the cast of Watkins and Kings who grew rich from what the Watkins Man peddled. And who hired George

W. Maher as their architect.

« Joseph R. Watkins. The founder. Born to Rev. B.U. and Sophronia Keeler Watkins in Cincinnati, Ohio,

Joseph R. Watkins Photos: Winona Historical Society.

in 1840; was 22 when he moved with his “father’s family” to Minnesota; was 28 when he purchased the “‘rem- edies” of Richard Ward of Cincinnati, which he then mixed in the kitchen of

his home in Plainview, Minnesota. In |

1868 he also married Mary Ellen Heberling. A son George died as a baby. A daughter Grace Eleanor was born in Plainview in 1875 or 1877. The family moved 30 miles or so to

Photo: Hunting Big Game in Africa.

Grace Watkins King and son E.L. (Bud) King Jr., on safari in Kenya, 1924-25.

Emest L. King

Winona in 1885. There the business grew fast.

* Mary Ellen Heberling Watkins. She, too, was a native of Ohio. She died in Winona in April 1904.

« Grace Eleanor Watkins King. The heiress. Grace was a sturdy woman of 27 or 29 when she married Ernest L.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * October-December 1992 + 14

King. They were married in Novem- ber 1904, seven months after her mother’s death. Grace became known for sharpshooting. In 1922 she won the North American Women’s Clay Target championship in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and in 1923 she was champion again in Chicago. Grace and Emest traveled to Africa during the winter of 1924-25 to hunt in Kenya. In 1926 she privately pub- lished Hunting Big Game in Africa, her book about the trip.

¢ Ernest L. King. The heir. By mar- riage. Ernest was 27 when he and Grace married. Another Ohioan, E.L., as he was known, was born in Gallipolis in March 1877. He was a typewriter salesman, apparently an enterprising and personable one, when he met Joseph Watkins. After their marriage, E.L. and Grace moved in with Joseph at his home near down- town Winona. By 1908 E.L. was a manager for the J.R. Watkins Medical Company.

¢ Martha Saltzman King Watkins. The heir’s mother. Born in Wheel- ing, West Virginia, she had three sons, E.L., C. Leroy and C. Curtis, and a daughter Maude. On September 26, 1911, Martha married the wid- owed, 71-year-old Joseph Watkins. Martha, thus, became her son’s step-

Sources: Conversations with Denis Gallion, Daniel Morris, Historical Design Collection, Inc., New York, 1991, 1992. History of Winona County, Franklyn Curtiss- Wedge, H.C. Cooper Jr. & Co., Chicago, 1913. Portrait and Biographical Record of Winona County, Minnesota, Chapman Publishing Company, Chicago, 1895. “Scene of Splendor Marks Opening of Administration Building of the J.R. Watkins Medical Company,” The Winona Daily Republican, November 1912. “Watkins Medical Company: Demise of an Empire,” William D. Gernes, 1983. “Whatever Happened to the Watkins Man?” Terry Bormann, Corporate Report, Minneapolis, April 1981. Winona Historical Society collection.

mother, too. Or did she become his mother/mother-in-law? In December of that year newlyweds Martha and Joseph traveled to Jamaica with E.L. and Grace. Joseph died unexpectedly in Kingston, Jamaica, on December 22, 1911. The Winona newspaper noted, ““When he (Joseph) left Winona he was in his accustomed health.” Martha lived on until 1924.

¢ Paul Watkins. The second presi- dent. When J.R. died, his nephew Paul became the leader of the Watkins company. E.L. became vice president. Paul Watkins was an Ohioan born in Lebanon in November 1864.

* Maude King Alexander. The heir’s sister. While traveling in the Orient with E.L. and Grace, she met Durand C. Alexander. They married, and he became a Watkins senior vice presi- dent.

* Mary Eleanor King. The daughter. Born in Winona in 1907, Mary Eleanor, or Mariel, as she was called, was the daughter of E.L. and Grace. Jumping ahead: She attended the Spence School, New York, and the University of Minnesota. When Mariel and Ralph Boalt married, E.L. and Grace built the house called Kingswere for them next to their own Maher house. Mariel and Ralph soon divorced. Mariel married several more times. One of her spouses com- mitted suicide. She built a 37-room house called Kingsbluff on the bluff above Rockledge.

¢ Emest L. Xing Jr. The son. Jumping ahead again: Born in New Yorkin | 1914, Ernest Jr., or Bud, as he was called, was the son of E.L., who then became E.L. Sr., and Grace. He at- tended Choate School in Connecticut. At age 30, Bud became the fourth president of Watkins, succeeding E.L. Sr., who had been president since Paul Watkins died in 1931.

Elizabeth Callendar King. The son’s third wife. Elizabeth, called Betty, married Bud in 1978. His first two wives had died, Neill in 1947 and Alice in 1976.

I expect that I’ve emphasized some of the Watkins-King eccentricities here.

We can read about the personal lives of the Watkins-Kings because the lo- cal community seems to have been fascinated by these bigger-than- Winona people. All this material fills files at the Winona Historical Society. It should be noted that the Watkins- Kings were exceptional managers of their business, at least the founding and second generations were. A busi- ness magazine researcher has com- mented, “From 1915 to 1940, Watkins was the number-one direct- sales company in America.” As for their personal interests, their hunting and trophy mounting, they were after all a country rather than urban family. It surely would have been difficult for any of them to funnel money into cul- tural institutions in Winona. There seems to have been no persuasive in- dividual to guide them into music, the fine arts, museums.

Enough Watkins-King family history for now. More later.

Enter George Maher. Maher came to the increasingly prosperous Watkins and Kings in 1910 with his motif- rhythm method full-blown and need- ing resolution. He was 46, in his prime. Behind Maher were a series of successes in domestic design.

One of his achievements for Ernest and Grace King was Rockledge and all it held...

Bringing "Martele" to the bluffs of the Mississippi

On a dramatic site overlooking the Mississippi River was Rockledge, and inside Rockledge were treasures in wood, glass and silver. To this site, a sloping bench of land with trees be- hind clinging to natural stone cliffs, George Maher grafted pastered walls on a brick base, his gentle segmented arches, and porches pulling the two- story, 28-room house back to the earth. The effect impressed. That must have been what the architect and his clients, Ernest and Grace King, then in their 30s, wanted. They wanted to look good. Better than good. They wanted the best.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly « October-December 1992 « 15

Maher's Rockledge tea and coffee service. Photo: The Historical Design Collection, New York.

In June 1911, when Rockledge was being drawn or already being built (we don’t know exactly when con- struction started), Maher wrote about his motifs and their rhythms in Arts and Decoration.

“The evolutionary process through which a design...proceeds in order to make it expressive of the purpose in- tended is varied. There must be evolved certain leading forms that will influence the detail of the design; these forms crystallize during the

progress of the planning and become the motifs that bind the design to- gether. These motifs are susceptible to repetition, varying in proportion and omateness as the various situations require. Each effect, whether it be the mantel, stair railing or decoration of the house, becomes related as a result of this method of design. There is no limit to the use of this motif treat- ment, excepting that of fitness for the place intended, and that restraining necessary on the part of the designer in order to obtain sobriety and charac- ter in the composition.”

With Rockledge, Maher had a great opportunity, perhaps the greatest of his career. Virtually everything of, in and around the house was his design: Furniture, lighting, clocks, upholstery fabric, rugs, wall hangings, wall cov- erings, silver, landscaping. Whether the Kings asked for this comprehen- sive program, or whether Maher sug- gested it, is unclear. The latter seems more likely. He was ready. He linked all here to his motif-rhythm theory, the natural floral motif being a lily and the geometric motif being the

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * October-December 1992 « 16

C,

—

segmental arch, sometimes called a tripartite arch. The lily, an orange one, is apparently native to the area, in keeping with the architect’s desire to use local plants; this lily is not used elsewhere by Maher. The arch is a fa- miliar Maher device. I believe we can say safely that Maher made this arch part of midwestern architecture. There are other motifs: The gutta from the Doric order, and canted, slanted lines imported from the work of English arts and crafts architects.

The object here is Maher’s silver hol- loware and how it fits into Maher’s matured style. He designed a seven- piece tea and coffee service, which was standard for the time, and a salt and pepper, vegetable serving dish, and a 20-inch meat dish.

Maher ordered the pieces from the Gorham Manufacturing Company, sil- versmiths in Providence, Rhode Is- land, which since 1896 had been handmaking a line of fine silver called “Martele.” Martele is French for “hammered.” In French the word is not capitalized. Gorham uppercased the initial “m,” probably for a bit of all-important marketing panache. Gorham’s chief designer, William Christmas Codman (1839-1921), then in his late 50s, and with Gorham since 1891 after a distinguished career as church decorator and restorer in En- gland, Canada and India, brought arts and crafts thinking to martele. Charles Carpenter in Gorham Silver 1831- 1981 explains: “Codman... insisted that the designer become closely in- volved in the making process, while at the same time the silver smith was to become involved in the design pro- cess.” The fine silver, originally .925 fine, which is sterling level, in 1897, and .9584, the English Britannia stan- dard in 1912, permitted greater shap- ing of the metal. It also demanded hand-hammering. This suited the handwork, anti-machine tenets of the arts and crafts movement.

How could Maher have become aware of Gorham’s martele? How could he have not is a better question? He seems to have consumed architec- ture publications. The December 1899 House Beautiful, a magazine begun to encourage arts and crafts, mentioned

_Iartele. Harper’s Magazine carried a

| | YEA SET 6 WAITER MARTEL. ZBU! Cor. za4eTs HEIGHT eS2IN,

V| tka 2-epre,

W | SUGAR HEIGHT <4 BIN

X | Cream ver,

Y | stop ROUND,

¥ . z 5

2 zcoc

Sac) ;

martele ad in April 1900. And many pieces were exhibited at the 1900 Paris exposition which Maher visited.

Maher’s main connection to martele must have been local. Gorham’s Chi- cago partner was Spaulding and Co. jewelers founded in 1888 by H.A. Spaulding and L.J. Leiter. Gorham later gained control of Spaulding and called the business Spaulding- Gorham. Maher ordered the Rockledge silver through Spaulding and Co. Note: In 1891 Maher had de- signed a house in Kenilworth for H.H. Spaulding. I have yet to establish the link between-H.A. and H.H. Spaulding. But I expect there is one.

The tea and coffee service pieces were, in Gorham’s terse description: A coffee server, 2 3/4 pints, 9 1/2 inches in height; a tea server, 2.1/4 ~ pints; sugar container with cover, 4 5/ 8 inches in height; a one-pint cream pitcher; a kettle, 2 1/2 pints; and a 26- inch “waiter,” a tray for serving. The final piece was a round “slop.” A slop, which sounds crude these days because of evolving word meaning, was used for the “slops,” the “rinsing of tea or coffee cups at the table” (from an 1890 dictionary). All these pieces were in the .9584 fine standard. Gorham has records showing the making, chasing, finishing and so forth of the Rockledge silver. Some of the records are Spaulding and Co. in- voices dated July 20, 1912. These

Documentary photo, Gorham Manufacturing Company.

show net prices: Waiter at $350, kettle $300, coffee server $180, tea $160, cream $105, sugar $120, slop $85. For other pieces, the net prices were: Meat dish $150, vegetable dish $86.25, pepper $36, salt $27.

The tea and coffee service is Maher working at his most refined. The lily is almost literally drawn. On the pots, kettle and other round vessels, this lily is the focus. Around the rims of these containers are guttae in two sizes. The kettle handle is a segmental arch. Through bottom-to-top raised bands, the canting is here, too. Handles are both arched and squared. This is architecture in precious metal.

The one distracting element on the silver, at least distracting for me, is the repetition of EKG for Ernest and Grace King. The letter E is inter- twined with the K; the G is alone just to the right of the K. Is there meaning here? Emest claiming King for his own? Grace being independent? The initials are everywhere. Maher’s mo- tif-rhythm was posited for motifs natural and mathematical and not for initials. That may be why E and K and G over and over again become tiresome.

During the 40 or so years when Maher’s Rockledge furniture and other fixtures were stored in a barn on the King estate, the silver was in the house called Kingswere. The current

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * October-December 1992 * 17

owners report that the holloware is “not worn” and must have had only “a few polishings.” With its high silver content, martele is susceptible to wearing away of its hand-hammered details. Notes Carpenter: “Repeated polishing can cause a loss of detail and the use of a buffing wheel could be disastrous.” The lack of wear prob- ably resulted from Ernest and Grace being out and about much of the time. One writer suggests that Ernest was

_ away from Winona half of each year. He was gone, it’s said, because he and Watkins President Paul Watkins had a low tolerance for each other. While Emest was shooting lions, etc., or traveling with Grace to expand their collection of oriental art, etc., Paul Watkins would run the business.

Most of the holloware is owned by the Historical Design Collection in New York. A few pieces belong to The Wolfsonian Foundation, Miami Beach.

Sources: “An Architecture of Ideas,” George Maher, Arts and Decoration, . New York, June 1911; his subject was the Harry Rubens House (1902) at Glencoe, Itlinois, another of his mas- terworks which would be demolished. Conversation with Gallion, Morris. Gorham Company records, Provi- dence, Rhode Island. Gorham Silver 1831-1981, Charles H. Carpenter, Jr., Dodd, Mead & Company, New York, 1982. “Rockledge: A Summer House Designed by George W. Maher,” Gary Hollander, Tiller, July-August 1983. Webster’s dictionary of 1890, with architectural and fine arts defini- tions by Russell Sturgis, writer and architectural critic. :

Two exhibitions to show Rockledge silver

Exhibitions in Minneapolis and New York in 1993 will include Maher’s holloware for Rockledge. The Minneapolis exhibition will be called “Minnesota 1900” and will run from August 8, 1993, to January 2, 1994, at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2400 Third Avenue South. The New York exhibition will be at the American Craft Museum.

Minnesota 1900 will be, according to the museum, “a statement of regional contribution to national and international turn-of-the-century modernism.” There will be five sections with the one on “architecture and design” including Maher’s work for the Ernest and Grace King House. Alan Lathrop of the University of Minnesota is the curator. The other sections will be on turn-of-the-century paintings, the Minneapolis Handicraft Guild, architects William Purcell and George Elmslie, and Minneapolis interior designer John Bradstreet.

T have no details about the New York exhibition.

Source: Letter, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, October 22, 1992,

Minneapolis museum seexs Rockledge drawings

For its exhibition called “Minnesota 1900,” the Minneapolis Institute of Arts is looking for Maher’s presenta- tion drawings for Rockledge. Anyone with information should contact Tran Turner, a curatorial assistant in the institute’s department of decorative arts and sculpture. Her address: 2400 Third Avenue South, Minneapolis, Minnesota 5304. Telephone 612/870- 3000. Fax 612/870-3004.

My guess is that the drawings will not turn up. Maher first publicly showed the drawing of the front of the house, that side facing east and the Missis- sippi River below, at the Chicago Ar- chitectural Club exhibition in 1911. He showed the same drawing again in 1912 at the Pittsburgh Architectural Club. After that we must assume the drawing went into Maher’s office files at 1100 910 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Maher’s architect son Philip kept these files after George’s death in 1926 until about 1962 when he destroyed them. This happened, so the story goes, because no library would accept the papers.

It’s hard to know exactly how much of Maher’s work, office furnishings, etc., disappeared in the 1960s. A Ma- her drafting table was in the Maher House until sometime in the 1960s or

even early 1970s. In 1972 Violet Wyld, the niece of George and Eliza- beth Maher, lent this table for an ex- hibition at the University of Chicago. Other items appear from time to time in widely scattered collections. I know of people in Kenilworth with books from Maher’s library.

Another exception here could be King family possession of the drawings. I’m not sure what they still have.

Source: The Prairie School, Frank Lloyd Wright and His Midwest Con- temporaries, H. Allen Brooks, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 1976. Prairie School furniture exhibi- tion, catalog, University of Chicago, April 25-May 27, 1972.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly.

Volume 2, number 4. Four issues an- nually. Index to be provided January 1993. Donald M. Aucutt, editor. Tel 715/848-2482 (corrected phone num- ber) after 5 p.m. weekdays, or week- ends. Contributions, media releases welcomed. Annual subscriptions $20. © 1992. Write to 1224 Highland Park Boulevard, Wausau, Wisconsin 54401.

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * October-December 1992 « 18

/

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly 1992 Index

Citations consist of volume, issue and page number separated by periods, e.g. 2.3.1-4 means volume 2, issue 3 (July/Sept. 1992), pages 1 through 4.

Alexander, Durand C. 2.4.15 Alexander, Maude King, 2.4.15 American Glass Co., 2.3.2

Antiques magazine, 2.4.10

Barratt, Edgar G., 2.1.2 Barratt House, Kenilworth, Iil., 1896 based on McAfee House, 2.4.4 history, 2.1.2 photographs (exterior), 2.1.3 Bass, Oscar, 2.2.7 Bass Flats, Chicago, Hl., 1893 history, 2.2.7-8 Bauer & Hiill, 2.3.3 Berger, Miles, 2.4.9 Bernard, Jean-Jacques, 2.4.10 Boalt, Mary Eleanor King, 2.4.15 Boalt, Ralph, 2.4.15 Bowles, W.D., 2.3.3 Brayton, Paul, 2.1.8 Bride’s House see Gould House, Kenilworth, DL. 1892 Bridge, Betsy, 2.2.10 Bridge House, Evanston, [ll., 1909 remodeling, 2.2.10 Brocklebank, Anna Woodward Durell, 2.4.6 Brocklebank, John Charles Fremont, 2.4.6-7 Brocklebank House, Chicago, Ili. 1895-? history, 2.1.8; 2.4.6-7 photographs (exterior), 2.4.6 photographs (interior), 2.4.7 Brooks, Alden F. father-in-law of George Maher, 2.2.2; 2.4.12 Brooks, Elizabeth see Maher, Elizabeth Brooks Brooks, Ellen, 2.2.2 Brooks, H. Allen, 2.2.15 Buck, Lawrence renderer for George Maher, 2.3.12 “Building Reinforced-Concrete Shaft Houses,” 2.2.12

Callendar, Elizabeth see King, Elizabeth Callendar Carpenter, Charles H., 2.4.17-18 Chanute, Octave, 2.2.8 La Chatelet see Maher Houses. Kenilworth (Il.) home, 1893 Chicago & North Shore Street Railroad Power House/Office, Chicago, Ill, 1893

history, 2.2.8 Chicago Architectural Club

catalogue illustrations, 2.3.9

exhibitions, 2.3.12; 2.4.3; 2.4.9, 2.4.18 history, 2.3.12 Chicago Architectural Sketch Club see Chicago Architectural Club Chicago Architecture, 1872-1922 2.1.8 Chicago Historical Society Maher items in collection, 2.2.9; 2.3.13 Chicago Interiors, 2.1.8 Chinese Theater, Chicago, Iil., 1894 remodeling history, 2.3.7 Churchill House, Burlington, Iowa, 1916 new owner, 2.1.8 photographs (exterior), 2.1.8 Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Co. Shaft Houses, Ishpeming, Mich., 1919 history, 2.1.1; 2.2.11-12; 2.4.10 National Register of Historic Places listing, 2.3.8 photographs (exterior), 2.1.1-2; 2.2.11-12 renderings, 2.1.1; 2.2.11 Cochran, John Lewis, 2.1.5; 2.2.5; 2.2.7; 2.4.8-9: 2.4.13 influence on Maher, 2.1.4 Cochran Houses, Chicago, Iil., 1892 history, 2.1.5-6 Cochran Houses, Chicago, Hl., 1893 floor plans, 2.2.6 history, 2.2.5; 2.2.6-7 renderings, 2.2.5-6 Cochran Houses, Chicago, Ill., 1895 history, 2.4.8 Cochran Townhouse, Chicago, Ill, 1895 history, 2.4.8-9 photographs (exterior), 2.4.8 photographs (interior), 2.4.8 Codman, William Christmas, 2.4.17 Coleman, Oliver, 2.1.5 Colonial style definition by Scully, 2.3.10 Maher use of, 2.1.4-5; 2.3.6; 2.3.9 Condron Co., Chicago, 2.1.1; 2.2.12 Coonley, Queene Ferry, 2.4.13 Culbertson, James A., 2.3.5

Darlington sandstone, 2.3.9-10 Dau House, Chicago, Ill., 1897 based on Peters House, 2.4.6 Davis, Frederick H. biography, 2.2.5-6 Davis House, Omaha, Neb., 1893-2 floor plans, 2.2.6 history, 2.2.5-6 renderings, 2.2.6 Delineator magazine competition, 1908, 2.4.4-5

Dennison Manufacturing Co. Building, Chicago, Ill, 1894 remodeling

history, 2.3.5 Dexter Brothers’ English Shingle Stains, 2.3.9

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly * 1992 Index ° 1

Diamond motif, 2.2.2 Dovecot see Gould House, Kenilworth, Ill., 1892

Eaton, Leonard, 2.4.6 Eaton, Lucien, 2.2.12 Edgewater Presbyterian Church, Chicago, Ill., 1903-04, 2.4.13 motif rhythm theory, 2.4.12 Egyptian revival design, 2.2.11 Elliott House, Madison, Wisc., 1910, 2.2.10 English Britannia silver standard, 2.4.17 Exotic revival style, 2.1.1

Farson House, Oak Park, Ill, 1897

based on Peters House, 2.4.5

history, 2.1.8; 2.4.13

honeysuckle motif, 2.4.12

National Historic Landmark status denied, 2.4.9

portfolio, 2.3.12-13

tour hours, 2.1.12; 2.2.16 Flemish bond, 2.3.16 Ford, John B., 2.3.2 Foster, George, 2.2.9

d Wri

Frazier, Nancy, 2.1.7 Fresno Water Tower, Fresno, Calif, 1894

history, 2.3.7-8

renderings, 2.3.8 Furbeck House, Oak Park, Ill, 1901-59

based on Peters House, 2.4.6

irie School in Wisconsin 2.2.10

Garden, Hugh, 2.3.12

Gardner, Frederick S., 2.4.7

Gardner House, Chicago, Ill, 1895-2 history, 2.4.7

Gary Bathing Beach Aquatorium see Gary Bathing Pavilion,

Gary, Ind., 1921

Gary Bathing Pavilion, Gary, Ind., 192} column capital sketch, 2.2.8 restoration, 2.2.8; 2.3.13

Gates House, Montclair, N.J., 1902-04 history, 2.4.13 motif rhythm theory, 2.4.12 restoration, 2.4.10

Giannini, Orlando Nickerson House remodeling, 2.1.12; 2.2.16

Gilbert, Charles A. biography, 2.3.5

Gilbert, Helen, 2.3.5

Gilbert House, Wausau, Wisc., 1894 history, 2.3.5-6 photographs (exterior), 2.3.6 windows

photographs, 2.3.6

Gill, James biography, 2.1.6-7

Gill, Sallie

biography, 2.1.6-7

Gill House, Kenilworth, Ill., 1892 history, 2.1.6-7; 2.2.2 photographs (exterior), 2.1.6; 2.1.10 photographs (interior), 2.1.6-7 windows, 2.1.6-7

Gorham Manufacturing Co., 2.4.1; 2.4.17

Gould, Clara, 2.1.4

Gould, Morton L., 2.1.4

Gould House, Kenilworth, Iil., 1892 history, 2.1.4-5 sketches, 2.1.4

Griffin, Walter Burley, 2.2.10

Gutta motif, 2.4.17

Haglin-Stahr Co., Minneapolis, 2.1.1

Hammel Green Abrahamson, Inc. Maher-like design wins award, 2.2.10

Hayden, J. Ellzey, 2.2.12

Hegewald & Co., 2.3.3-4

Higgins, E.M., 2.3.10

Higgins House, Chicago, Ill., 1894 history, 2.3.10

Hinchliff, William, 2.4.10

Historical Design Collection, 2.4.18

Historical Review of Chicago and Cook County and Selected Biography, 2.4.11

Hitchcock, Henry-Russell, 2.4.4; 2.4.6

Hollyhock flower motif, 2.4.12

Honeysuckle motif, 2.4.12

Hooker, Herbert Lloyd, 2.3.4

Hooker, Mary Maher, 2.2.9; 2.2.15; 2.3.1

Hooker buildings, Chicago, Ill., 1894 history, 2.3.4

Hope, Andrew, 2.2.10

Horswell, Charles, 2.2.8

Horswell House, Kenilworth, IIL, 1893 history, 2.2.8

lroquois Theater fire, 1903, 2.1.7

Isom House, Kenilworth, Ill, 1900 based McA fee/Peters Houses, 2.4.6 photograph (exterior), 2.4.5

Jenkins, Gregory H., 2.2.8; 2.3.13 Jones House, Wausau, Wisc., 1906 history, 2.2.10

Joseph Sears and His Kenilworth 2.1.12; 2.2.16

Kasota stone, 2.3.5 Kenilworth Assembly Hall, Kenilworth, Ill, 1907, 2.2.10; 2.4.10; 2.4.13

lectern, 2.4.10

motif rhythm theory, 2.4.12 Kenilworth Club see Kenilworth Assembly Hall, Kenilworth, Til., 1907 Kenilworth Community Development Plan, Kenilworth, IL,

Geo. W. Maher Quarterly « 1992 Index « 2

2.4.12-13 in Maher collection at Kenilworth Historical Society, 2.4.13 Kenilworth Hall, Kenilworth, Il., 1891 history, 2.2.2 Kenilworth Historical Society Maher collection, 2.4.10 tour hours, 2.1.12; 2.2.16 Kenilworth Travel Club, 2.3.14; 2.3.16 Kennard, DeWitt Taylor, 2.3.12 Kilner, Colleen Browne, 2.1.4 King, Alice, 2.4.15 King, C. Curtis, 2.4.15 King, C. Leroy, 2.4.15 King, Elizabeth Callendar, 2.4.15 King, Ernest L., 2.1.4; 2.4.15 King (Ernest L.) House, Daytona Beach, Fla., 1914-50s history, 2.4.14 King (Emest L.) House, Winona, Minn., 1911-88 furniture, 2.4.17 history, 2.4.13; 2.4.15-18 lamps, 2.4.10 photographs (exterior), 2.3.13 photographs (interior), 2.3.13 renderings, 2.4.13; 2.4.18 servants quarters and barn, 2.4.13 silver flatware, 2.1.12; 2.2.16 silver holloware, 2.4.1; 2.4.17-18 exhibitions of, 2.4.18 monograms, 2.4.17 photographs, 2.4.1; 2.4.16-17 King, Emest L., Jr. biography, 2.4.15 portraits, 2.4.14 King, George, 2.4.14 King, Grace Watkins, 2.4.13-15 portraits, 2.4.14 King, Mariel see Boalt, Mary Eleanor King King, Mary Eleanor see Boalt, Mary Eleanor King King, Maude see Alexander, Maude King King, Neill, 2.4.15 King (Patrick J.) House, Chicago, Ill., 1901 fireplaces, 2.4.10 Kingsbluff, 2.4.15 Kingswere, 2.4.15 silver stored in, 2.4.17

Latenser, John, 2.2.6 Leach House, South Orange, N.J., 1900 history, 2.4.13 motif rhythm theory, 2.4.12 Leiter, L.J. 2.4.17 Lily motif, 2.4.16-17 Linden, Frank L., 2.3.12 Linden Glass Co., 2.3.12 Little Gray House see Gould House, Kenilworth, IIL, 1892 Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2.4.10

Lost Chicago, 2.1.8

Louis Sullivan and the Chicago School 2.1.7 Lowe, David, 2.1.8

MacMeans, J., 2.4.7 MacMeans House, Chicago, IIL, 1895-? history, 2.4.7 photographs (exterior), 2.4.7 MacNeil, Carol Brooks, 2.4.6 MacNeil, Hermon, 2.4.6 Magerstadt House, Chicago, Ill., 1908 windows, 2.3.12 Maher, Bessie see Maher, Elizabeth Brooks Maher, David, 2.1.9 Maher, Elizabeth Brooks engagement, 2.1.4 Chicago Architectural Club exhibition entries, 2.3.12 marriage, 2.1.7; 2.2.2; 2.4.12 piano teacher of, 2.1.6 Maher, George W. apartment houses designed by Maher see Bass Flats, Chicago, Ill., 1893 Miller & White Building, Chicago, Ill., 1892 Stevens Apartment House, Chicago, Ill., 1894 arch motif see Segmental arch motif Barratt House see Barratt House, Kenilworth, Il., 1896 Bass Flats see Bass Flats, Chicago, Ill., 1893 biography, 2.1.4; 2.3.1-4; 2.4.11-13 Bridge House see Bridge House, Evanston, Ill., 1909 Brocklebank House see Brocklebank House, Chicago, Ill., 1895-? buildings designed by Mahersee name of building, e.g. Barratt House ... buildings designed by Maher in California Fresno see Fresno Water Tower, 1894 Florida Daytona Beach see King (Emest L.) House, 1914-50s Illinois Blue Island see Weber House, 1898 Chicago see Bass Flats, 1893 Brocklebank House, 1895-7? Chicago & North Shore Street Railroad Power House/ Office, 1893 Chinese Theater, 1894 remodeling Cochran Houses, 1292 Cochran Houses, 1893 Cochran Houses, 1895 Cochran Townhouse, 1895 Dau House, 1897 Dennison Manufacturing Co. Building, 1894 remodeling Edgewater Presbyterian Church, 1903-04-? Gardner House, 1895-? Higgins House, 1894 Hooker buildings, 1894 King (Patrick J.) House,