By Cynthia Bates, Class of 2016
Personal Glimpses into the Lives and Fortunes of Some Owners
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Very near the end of the tour, the William Bartlett Estate coach house (1319 Forest) provokes the most surprise. The 1892 granite mansion by Joseph Lyman Silsbee was torn down and the coach house greatly expanded and remodeled in 1966 by James Allyn Stewart. The owner, Marvin Glass, was a successful toy designer. A developer of concepts and prototypes that were leased to toy companies, he had been extensively profiled in the Saturday Evening Post in 1960. His remodeled residence has the singular and dubious honor of being the only house in Evanston ever featured in Playboy, May, 1970, with the title “A Playboy Pad: Swinging in Suburbia.” The quite detailed article states: “an imaginative toy designer turns a staid old carriage house into a focal point for fun and games”; by then Mr. Glass was around 60 and recently single. An exterior shot shows couples in late 60s splendor: wide lapels, tattersall plaids, teased hair, pale lipstick. Beside them a Lotus, an exotic British sports car driven by Sean Connery in the early James Bond movies and by Diana Rigg as Emma Peel in The Avengers.
Inside, the décor is as one might expect: lots of dark marble, nudes on the walls, state of the art entertainment center, black leather bar. On the lower level, a Caesar-sized whirlpool Jacuzzi, accommodating up to eight, with tastefully blurred nude people frolicking as if in a scene from The Last Days of the Roman Empire. Unusually for Evanston, the house also had an outdoor swimming pool with tent-like cabanas, like those in the Beverly Hills Hotel, though these were removed in a recent remodeling. All of this, when Evanston was dry.
As in life, so in work? A few years later, Glass’s company was the subject of notoriety. His downtown office was known for extremely tight security, as the company dealt in ideas and concepts, but this didn’t prevent a disgruntled employee, disappointed about a promotion, from going on a shooting spree, killing the CEO (Glass had retired by then) and a designer. This was a shocking crime then, long before employee shootings and “going postal” became common headlines.
The tour concludes at the Dawes House, originally the Robert Sheppard Residence (225 Greenwood, 1894, Henry Edwards Flicken), a cautionary tale of hubris and pride. A Northwestern University professor of history and political economy, Sheppard was elected treasurer and business manager of N.U.in 1892. Confident that he was a shoo-in to be the next university president, he commissioned a grand residence appropriate for his soon-to-be elevated status. Described as “Chateauesque”, the 28-room mansion has Gothic and Romanesque elements—massive round towers with conical roofs and an arched entrance.
Alas, “pride goeth before a fall”, a sentiment that Sheppard, also a Methodist minister, should have been aware of. In 1903 he was relieved of his duties and thus his presidential aspirations. A few years later some “bookkeeping” problems caused him to sell the house to settle debts.
In 1909, it was purchased by Charles Dawes, probably best known as Vice President under Calvin Coolidge, although that position is among the least of his many achievements: Comptroller of the Currency under McKinley. WWI Brigadier General in charge of logistics for the American Expeditionary Forces. Director of the Budget under Harding. 1925 Nobel Peace Prize winner for the Dawes Plan that helped restore the German economy by restructuring the crippling reparations repayments demanded by the Treaty of Versailles and stabilizing the currency, leading to several years of prosperity before the Depression undid it all. Appointed Ambassador to Great Britain by Hoover and served at the Court of St. James from 1929-31. Composer of rousing campaign songs.
This is a fitting and inspiring conclusion to the Evanston tour. The Dawes House now houses the Evanston History Center. It is open for docent-led tours, furnished with the Dawes family furniture, art work, and Tiffany lamps on the lower levels. Above are galleries with rotating historical exhibits, including costumes from their extensive collection of clothing including the formal robes Dawes and his wife wore when presented as the Ambassador to the Court of St. James.
This is a lively tour, filled with personal stories that lend vigor to the legacy of Evanston’s grand residences. Come and walk with us!
Cynthia,
Thanks very much for these insights into some of the characters who owned homes that are now part of the Evanston Along the Lake tour!
To add a bit about Charles Dawes, though – he wasn’t quite as wonderful a person as he is sometimes portrayed. He controlled the Central Republic Bank and Trust Co. of Chicago, known as the “Dawes Bank,” which in 1932 received a $90 million bailout, equivalent to about $1.5 billion today, from Hoover’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation – less than two weeks after Dawes had resigned as President of the RFC. His former colleagues approved the unprecedented bailout. Dawes and his bank were deeply involved in the corrupt activities of Samuel Insull; Insull fled the country to avoid jail, while Dawes, with his political connections, escaped criminal charges. You can read about this in great detail in Raymond B. Vickers’s book, Panic in the Loop: Chicago’s Banking Crisis of 1932; Lexington Books, 2011.
Thanks for sharing these lively descriptions, splendid photos, and sparkling anecdotes!