Category Archives: Museums

The Ellwood House Museum

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Every junior high student in Texas takes, or used to take, a class in Texas history. My teacher 45 years ago was the no-nonsense Mrs. Carrico, whose first name I do not remember. She told some Texas history stories that I do remember, including one I thought of not long ago when we visited the Ellwood House Museum in DeKalb, Illinois.

The story was about the popularization of barbed wire in Texas, specifically a demonstration of wire in 1876 in San Antonio organized by salesmen from up north. As the Texas State Historical Association puts it:

“In 1876 salesman Pete McManus with his partner John Warne (Bet-a-Million) Gates conducted a famous demonstration on Alamo Plaza [other sources say Military Plaza, including the TSHA] in San Antonio in which a fence of… wire restrained a herd of longhorn cattle. Gates reportedly touted the product as ‘light as air, stronger than whiskey, and cheap as dirt.’ Sales grew quickly thereafter, and barbed wire permanently changed land uses and land values in Texas.”

I’d heard of steel and oil magnate John Bet-a-Million Gates before, but until I visited the Ellwood I hadn’t connected him with this incident. It was early in his career and before he was renowned as a gambler.

At the time, Gates was working for Isaac Ellwood, barbed wire manufacturer of DeKalb. Later Ellwood owned a major ranch in Texas, and built a “Pompeiian Villa” in Port Arthur, but it’s his Illinois manse that concerns me here.It’s a handsome Victorian house, originally dating from 1879, and designed by a Chicago architect named George O. Garnsey, with later modifications by others.

The museum web site says: “The museum campus consists of seven historic structures (including the 1879 Ellwood Mansion and 1899 Ellwood-Nehring House), four gardens, and 6,000 square feet of exhibit space in the Patience Ellwood Towle Visitor Center, a converted and expanded 1912 multi-car garage.

“Originally built for barbed wire entrepreneur Isaac Ellwood, the Mansion was home to three generations of the Ellwood family from 1879 to 1965. In 1965, the Ellwood Mansion was given to the DeKalb Park District by Mrs. May Ellwood and her three children.”

No pics allowed inside, but be assured that it’s lavishly decorated and includes a lot of the furniture that the Ellwoods owned. No barbed wire, though: that’s on exhibit at the visitors center.

More Riverside

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Hanging in the metra station in Riverside, Illinois, is a reproduction of the plan of the town as originally envisioned in the late 1860s, except the spot that says “land not belonging to the company” (that is, the Riverside Improvement Co.) is part of the town in our time.

The streets and the green spaces are still pretty much still the way they were originally laid out. Note the bend in the Des Plaines River that forms a tongue of land, marked by me by a red circle. Also, the red star is roughly where the train station, tower, library, etc. are located.

With a Riverside Museum walking tour pamphlet in hand, we decided to take a walk in the tongue of land after seeing the sights near the train station. The air was a little steamy, but with the sun hiding behind clouds, we put up with it.

One of the streets along the river is Bloomingbank Road. The river, hidden by foliage, is to the right in this image.

The road is populated mostly by large vintage houses. Such as the Clarence Cross Cottage, 1887 Shingle & Queen Anne.

The Thomas W. Blayney Residence, 1869 Italianate.

The John C. Smith House, 1907 American Four Square. That’s a nice porch.

Most people probably come this way for the Frank Lloyd Wright works, which are a cluster of residences on 10 acres near the tip of the tongue. Originally they were built as a single residence for the Coonley family.

Per Wiki: “Avery Coonley, a Chicago industrialist and his wife, Queene Ferry of the Detroit-based Ferry Seed Company, were both heirs to industrial fortunes and had an unlimited budget to commission a new residence.” Just the kind of clients FLW liked, no doubt.

Formerly the stables and coach house.

Formerly the gardener’s residence.

Formerly the main house.

Not the best view of the house. That would be the other side, but there’s no access to ordinary gawkers since the house is privately owned. That source says the house is up for sale, listed this spring for $1.6 million. Might be a reasonable price for a FLW work, if you remember it’s an artwork more than a residence, and don’t mind the invisible hole somewhere in the place where your money seems to go.

Graue Mill & Fullersburg Woods Forest Preserve

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Not long ago I was passing through the western suburbs, not too far from where I lived — and it feels a little strange to put it this way — around the turn of the century. Since I had a little extra time, I decided on a whim to visit the Graue Mill and Museum.

Re-visit it. The last time I was there, I remember pushing one of my daughters in a stroller. I don’t remember which one. In either case, that was a while ago. Around the turn of the century.

Graue Mill is a water-powered grist mill on Salt Creek in DuPage County, dating from the 1850s. The machinery inside is elaborate, restored to operation, and still grinding small quantities of grain that the museum sells. I didn’t go inside this time, but pondered the handsome exterior of the mill.

As well as its large water wheel.
“Frederick Graue was born in Germany, came to the United States and settled in Fullersburg, Illinois, in 1842,” the museum’s web site says. In 1849, he purchased the site of a sawmill that had burned down, along with his partner William Asche, and constructed a gristmill there. Asche later sold his share to Graue.

“Limestone for the basement walls was quarried near Lemont; bricks for the rest of the walls were made from clay from the Graue farm and fired in kilns near the mill site; flooring, beams, and posts were from white oak timbers cut along the I&M canal. The four one-ton buhrstones used for grinding were imported from France. After the gristmill opened in April 1852, it ground wheat, corn and other grains produced by local farmers.

“The mill was a major center of economic life during the 19th century and was also used by Fred Graue to hide runaway slaves on their journey to freedom in Canada.”

In the 20th century, the now-obsolete mill fell into ruin, but it was restored in the 1930s by none other than the CCC. Specifically, Troop V-1668, made up of veterans. These days, the mill is part of the Fullersburg Woods Forest Preserve, which is a unit of the DuPage County Forest Preserve District. The village of Fullersburg, for its part, was never incorporated and doesn’t exist as a modern entity.

This is Salt Creek next to the mill, which gives it its power.
Salt Creek, despite its name, is really more of a river in this part of DuPage County, but never mind. It joins the Des Plaines River in Cook County, which later joins the Illinois and then of course the Mississippi.

I had time enough to take a stroll on one of the paths through Fullersburg Woods Forest Preserve, not too far from the mill.

Along the way, the path takes you past other views of Salt Creek, slightly upstream from the mill.
Past summer fields. The years do go by like so many summer fields.
And a handful of well-maintained CCC structures.
Though I didn’t capture any of the activity with my camera, the paths of Fullersburg Woods are very popular with dog walkers and their dogs.

Bong!

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On the morning of July 31, as the girls slept a little late, I drove from Duluth to Superior, Wis., via the Richard I. Bong Memorial Bridge. It’s a long, not particularly wide bridge over St. Louis Bay, in service since 1985.

Richard Ira Bong, who grew up on a farm near Superior, is credited with shooting down 40 Japanese aircraft as a fighter pilot with the U. S. Army Air Corps, and likely got other kills that weren’t credited. Driving through Superior a few days earlier, I’d noticed the Richard I. Bong Veterans Historical Center on the lake, so after crossing his namesake bridge, I made my way to the Bong Center to take a look.

It’s a small military museum with a strong Bong component, but not entirely devoted to him. Walking in, it’s hard to miss the centerpiece P-38 Lightning fighter plane, the very sort that Maj. Bong flew to such lethal effect on the enemy.

This aircraft isn’t the one Bong flew. While he was stateside, it crashed while another pilot was flying it. The Army took delivery of the one on display in July 1945, after Bong had been ordered to quit flying combat missions. The Richard I. Bong American Legion Post of Poplar, Wis., acquired the plane from the Air Force in 1949, and it was on display in that town for some decades.

In the 1990s, the plane was restored to resemble Bong’s P-38J “Marge,” complete with his fiance Marge’s portrait on it.

Bong’s Medal of Honor is on display. His citation says: “For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action above and beyond the call of duty in the Southwest Pacific area from 10 October to 15 November 1944.

“Though assigned to duty as gunnery instructor and neither required nor expected to perform combat duty, Maj. Bong voluntarily and at his own urgent request engaged in repeated combat missions, including unusually hazardous sorties over Balikpapan, Borneo, and in the Leyte area of the Philippines. His aggressiveness and daring resulted in his shooting down 8 enemy airplanes during this period.”

As mentioned, the museum isn’t all about Bong. There’s an assortment of artifacts, such as this magnetic mine.

Some home-front ephemera.

A piece of a Messerschmitt 109.

Bong came home for good in 1945, before the war was over, and did some test piloting of jet aircraft for the Army in California. Being a test pilot turned out to be more dangerous for Bong than facing the Japanese in the Pacific.

His plane crashed in an accident on an otherwise famed date: August 6, 1945. He and Marge had only been married a short while (she died in 2003, after playing an important part in establishing the museum).

Duluth & Environs ’18

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When I was very young, I had a U.S. map puzzle that I put together who knows how many times, fascinated by the individual shapes of the states. Some states more than others, including Minnesota, with its rough northern border, more-or-less straight-back western border, concave eastern border and pointy southeast and especially northeast corners.

The northeast corner still holds some fascination, and for more than just the shape. There’s the lure of the North Woods, and Lake Superior is always calling. Enough to inspire a short trip. On July 27, after I finished my Friday work, we hit the road for a five-night trip to Duluth and environs.

Since reaching Duluth means crossing northwest all the way through Wisconsin, a few points in that state were part of the trip as well, especially Eau Claire, where we spent the first night at a spartan but tolerable chain motel.

From Saturday afternoon until the morning of Wednesday, August 1, we stayed at the non-chain Allyndale Motel, a notch up from spartan. It’s in west Duluth, almost at the edge of town, but actually Duluth isn’t that large, so the location wasn’t bad.

I guessed that the Allyndate dated from the golden age of independent motel development, namely the 1950s. The details were right, except no bottle opener attached to a surface somewhere in the room. Just before we left, in a talk with the owner, I was able to confirm that vintage. The first rooms dated from 1952, he said, with later additions.

Before checking into the motel that first day, we spent a short while in downtown Duluth, walking along E. Superior St., which features shops and entertainment venues, including a legitimate theater, art house cinema and a casino. Rain, which had been holding back on the way into town, started to come down hard, so we ducked into the Duluth Coffee Company Cafe long enough to wait it out over various beverages.

That evening, we took in a show at the Marshall W. Alworth Planetarium, which is part of the University of Minnesota Duluth. The recorded show, narrated by Liam Neeson, was about black holes, and then an astrophysics grad student (I think) talked about the night sky. Many planetariums don’t bother with live narration anymore, so that was refreshing.

On Sunday we drove along much of the winding and often scenic Skyline Parkway in Duluth, stopping along the route to take in the sweeping view of the city, as well its twin city of Superior, Wis., and a large stretch of Lake Superior, from the Enger Tower in the aptly named Enger Park.

There happened to be a coffee and ice cream truck in the park, so Lilly had iced coffee and Ann had ice cream. The truck showed its regional pride in the form of a Minnesota flag.

The design needs work, like many Midwest state flags. Here’s an alternative.

Late that morning we saw Duluth’s Aerial Lift Bridge up close, along with other parts of Canal Park and lakeside spots. The lofty bridge — crossing the entrance to Lake Superior from St. Louis Bay — is the Eiffel Tower of Duluth, a stand-in for the city that appears in a lot of places, including a refrigerator magnet that we brought home. (But I refuse to use the i-word.)

In the afternoon, we headed northeast from town along U.S. 61, which follows the shore of Lake Superior. That region, I discovered, is known locally as the North Shore. We made it as far as Gooseberry Falls State Park.

On Monday, July 30, we headed north, mostly via U.S. 53, to Voyageurs National Park, which is hard by the Canadian border. The trip up and back from Duluth is a little far for a single day, but ultimately seemed worth the effort. Besides, something about the symmetry of visiting Voyageurs NP and Big Bend NP during the same year appealed to me.

As the girls slept late on the last day of July, I made my way to Superior, Wis., and visited the Richard I. Bong Veterans Historical Center, a small military museum. WWII is increasingly distant, and except in Wisconsin, the memory of air ace Bong’s deeds has faded. But he had his moment.

The main event of July 31, our last day in town, was the Great Lakes Aquarium, which is in downtown Duluth, on St. Louis Bay not far from the Aerial Lift Bridge and Canal Park. The aquarium’s distinction is that it focuses on freshwater creatures.

Late that afternoon, I struck out again on my own to see one more place: Forest Hill Cemetery, which is in the hills northeast of the University of Minnesota Duluth. My kind of site, not the girls’.

On August 1, we got up early and drove home, stopping only to eat lunch in Madison. I wanted to take Lilly to Ella’s Deli, since she wasn’t with us last year when we went. But it’s closed.

Too bad. Wonder what happened to all the oddball stuff Ella’s had. Instead we found Monty’s Blue Plate Diner. Not as much whimsy on the walls as Ella’s, but the food was good.

The San Antonio Museum of Art

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Besides the Briscoe, last Tuesday I visited the San Antonio Museum of Art, which is just north of downtown and also happens to be no charge in the late afternoon and early evening every Tuesday.
The SAMA complex is a major adaptive reuse project from the 1980s. The former Lone Star Brewery, whose solid brick buildings dated from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was transformed into the museum, complete with neon-decorated skybridge on the fourth floor. Sounds Vegas-like, but it isn’t garish.

The museum has a sizable collection befitting its location in a sizable city, including ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman art, North American, Latin American and Spanish colonial pieces, collections representing Japan, Korea, and India, three galleries of Chinese works from early times to later dynasties, Near Eastern art, an Oceania gallery and more.

I decided to focus on two of the museum’s strengths — art from Antiquity, especially Rome, and Latin American folk art — though I did spend some time looking at American paintings and Texas artwork.

Here’s something that gets your attention, or ought to, right when you enter SAMA’s commodious Roman art gallery.
A second-century CE statue known as the Landsdowne Marcus Aurelius. Wonder what the original colors looked like.

“Begun by Gavin Hamilton (1723-98), one of the most prominent British explorers of classical sites of the eighteenth century, the Lansdowne Collection came to hold more than one hundred stellar examples of classical statuary, displayed in a specially designed gallery in Lansdowne House in London,” says a blurb for Reconstructing the Landsdowne Collection of Classical Marbles.

“The collection, however, was dispersed in the years after 1930, and its works are now scattered across the globe.”

This particular one wound up at SAMA, a donation of the 20th-century American owner of the piece, a rich fellow I’ve run across before: Gilbert Denman Jr. In fact, he left his collection of ancient art to the museum, making the gallery possible.
Another Denman bequest: the Lansdowne Trajan. The Romans were clearly not shy about official nudity.
A beat-up portrait of Hadrian.

Here’s something you don’t see every day: Etruscan art.
In this case, a lid from a sarcophagus. Considerably worn, with an unsettling face that looks at us from across 25 centuries or so. As historical peoples go, the Etruscans are a half-remembered fragment of a haruspical dream.

I also spent time at the Latin American Folk Art gallery, which is part of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art. Rockefeller had his hobbies, and one of them was collecting Latin American folk art.

As the NYT reported when the center opened about 20 years ago: “When Nelson A. Rockefeller made his final trip to Mexico in 1978, several months before his death, his eye was drawn to a small hacienda surrounded by a picket fence along a rural road in Oaxaca. Atop each picket was a tall, strangely striking figurine made of rough pottery.

“The former Vice President stopped the car, walked to the door and discovered the shop of a family of potters. Each statue on the fence had been damaged somehow in the making and just perched on the fence to help advertise the shop. They were evocative pieces spanning many years, left to bake in the Mexican sun. Rockefeller bought them all.”

These fellows greet you at the gallery.
Molds for papier mache figures, ca. 1930, artist unknown, from Celaya, Mexico.

The work of another unknown artist.
A Parachico Mask (Mascara de Parachico) from Chiapas, Mexico. Polychromed wood, glass, ribbon and cactus fiber. Ca. 1970 and about as funky as can be.

By contrast, the artist of these delightful creations is well known.

They’re painted earthenware by Candelario Medrano, a Mexican artist who died in 1988. “Medrano began his career by producing toy whistles, mermaids, roosters, and other animals,” the museum says. “Later, he placed them on airplanes, boats, towers, merry-do-rounds and trucks, thereby creating delightful and colorful scenes of fantasy.”

As usual, the museum isn’t selling postcards based on artwork that would make unusual cards, like this.

“The Psychoanalyst (El Psicoanalista),” ca. 1994 by Jose Francisco Borges of Brazil.

The Amy & V.H. McNutt Sculpture Garden

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Just outside the Briscoe Western Art Museum in downtown San Antonio is the Amy & V.H. McNutt Sculpture Garden. It’s shady, so even on a hot day it was pleasant for a short visit.
V.H. McNutt was a mining engineer who made a fortune in potash in New Mexico in the 1920s. Later he and his wife owned a large ranch near San Antonio. The McNutt Foundation is in San Antonio even now.

Many of the sculptures involve Native American themes. Such as “Strength of the Maker” (1990) by Denny Haskew.
“Bird Woman” (2001) by Richard Greeves.
“Rainmaker” (1998) by John Coleman.
“Dance of the Eagle” (1986) by Allan Houser.

“Crow Brave with Fan” (1985) by Doug Hyde. Unlike most of the other pieces in the courtyard, a work in granite.

“Chief Quanah Parker” by Jim Reno. No date noted that I could see, but I suppose before 2008, since the artist died that year.
Quanah Parker had a prominent place at the small museum at Palo Dura Canyon State Park that I visited earlier this year. He was one of the leaders the last of the Comanches’ big raids, the Battle of Adobe Walls, in 1874.

The statue’s a good one, and he certainly looks like a Comanche war chief, though it would be more interesting if Quanah Parker’s statue looked like this.

This is “Thank You Lord” (2011) by Harold Holden.

And a detail from “El Caporal” (2015) by Enrique Guerra.
Detail because he appears to be driving some bronze cattle, not pictured here, ahead of him.

The Briscoe Western Art Museum

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On Tuesdays, the Briscoe Western Art Museum in downtown San Antonio — in full, the Dolph and Janey Briscoe Western Art Museum — offers free admission from 4 to 9 p.m., so after wrapping up my work that day last week, I decided to visit within that window of discount opportunity. It’s still a fairly new museum, open only since 2013, so I’d never been.

The building, which is on W. Market St., is not new. It was the main city library from 1930 to 1968, so I don’t remember it as that, though my mother and grandparents would have known it.

The lobby is striking. This image was taken before the installation of a reception desk toward the back, and a large bronze, John Coleman’s “Visions of Change.” A lot of restoration apparently went into bringing the interior roughly back to its library-era look.

For some decades after the library moved, the building housed the Hertzberg Circus Collection, an enormous array of circus artifacts that the library used to own. That I remember. Vaguely. I know I went once as a kid. Around the beginning of the 21st century, the Witte Museum acquired the collection and plans were laid for the current museum.

Something like the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, the Briscoe focuses on art from both the Indian and non-Indian populations of the West, but it also has a lot of artifacts. In nine galleries on three levels, that includes paintings, sculptures, guns and other weapons, such as a fancy sword owned by Santa Anna, saddles — Pancho Villa’s and Roy Rogers’ — jewelry, Mexican santos and retablos, a chuck wagon, a replica stage coach, and a collection of spurs that takes up an entire wall.

There are some Texas touches, such as a windmill in motion. Other Western states have them, but windmills have a special place in the history of Texas.

There’s a de facto shrine to Dolf and Janey Briscoe in the form of Dolf’s desk and some other items. As you’d expect, the Briscoes donated art and ponied up money to make the museum possible.
Good old Dolf. I think of him as a mellow governor, as befitting his ’70s time in office. I’m sure that’s nonsense, though: you don’t get to be a successful politico, much less governor of a large state, by being mellow. Not even if you start out as one of the richest men in the state. Rich in a traditional Texas way, too: a vast ranching operation. None of this microchip or cyber-fortune wealth for Dolf (well, maybe he branched into all that before he died in 2010).

My own favorite item in the museum: a large diorama behind glass walls depicting the storming of the Alamo. Carelessly, I didn’t check to see who created it, though it might be the work of one Tom Feeley. The museum’s web site is unhelpful in telling me. But whoever it was did a first-rate job.

The diorama includes all of the walls standing at the time of the siege, plus the buildings, and thousands of two- or so inch figures — armed Mexicans and Texians, horses, cannons — all done with incredible attention to detail. It captures the moment when the defenders, surrounded on all four sides by masses of Mexican soldiers, are about to be overwhelmed; but they’re still fighting.

Headphones are attached to a low wall below the glass, and you can listen to short items about various participants in the battle — the big three of Travis, Crockett and Bowie, of course, but also Susanna Dickinson, Joe (Travis’ slave), Gen. Cos and Santa Anna.

Near the diorama is a life-sized bronze of Travis, “Col. Travis — The Line” by James Muir, who specializes in heroic and allegorical work. That is, it depicts Travis drawing his famed line in the sand. A se non è vero, è ben trovato sort of story if there ever was one.

The artists in the museum’s temporary exhibit were a little unexpected: Andy Warhol and Billy Schenck. The Warhol part of the exhibit is very late Warhol (he died the next year): his 1986 Cowboys & Indians series. The artist gave his colorful and instantly recognizable treatment to the likes of John Wayne, Annie Oakley, George Custer, Geronimo and TR, among others.

Warhol might have been at risk, in earlier decades, of being a hopelessly dated artist, one whose reputation is forever stuck in the 1960s. Somehow he seems to have avoided that.

I’m less familar with Billy Schenck, who, unlike Warhol, is still alive and working. He’s “Warhol of the West,” according to the museum, and there are some similarities, especially in his generous displays of color. On the whole, he’s a match for Warhol. His work on exhibit at the Briscoe includes a number of the pieces in the slideshow at his web site.

The Day I Met Casper David Friedrich

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Odd what makes an impression. The Charlottenburg Palace? Good, very good. Casper David Friedrich? I was fascinated. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen that many of his paintings since — some at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, as I recall, and maybe one at the Met and one at the Louvre that I’m not sure I saw. Most of them are still in Germany.

July 8, 1983

Breakfast and then on the bus around 9. The wrong bus. But we found the right one before long and soon were downtown, heading our separate ways. I found the U-bahn and went out to the 1936 Olympic Stadium, still complete with fascist sculpture, which reminded me some of archaic Greek statuettes with their smiles. Saw the pool where The Festival of Beauty diving sequences were filmed.

Took the U-bahn and then walked to Schloss Charlottenburg. First I wandered the expansive grounds and saw the busts of the 12 Caesars and their wives. Went into the palace for a tour. Wore woolies over our shoes and looked at the fine old furniture and the vast collection of porcelain, among other things.

Back on the U-bahn. Met Steve, who had had his hair cut (part of the experience of visiting Berlin, he said), and we went to the National Gallery. Impressive collection, Neoclassical, Romantic, Impressionist, some early Modern, took in Monets, Renoirs, some Picassos. Especially taken with Renoir’s “Im Sommer.” Hard not to be.

Then I saw an entire wall of Casper David Friedrich. I didn’t remember ever seeing anything of his, or knowing much other than the name. Wow. I spent some time with them. Especially “Mann und Frau in Betrachtung des Mondes” and “Eichbaum im Schnee.”

The gallery wasn’t that large, which was a virtue, and later we headed for the Reichstag to catch a bus. En route we passed as close to the Brandenburg Gate as you can without getting shot at.

Back in West Berlin we ate some fish for dinner and Steve returned to the hostel. I walked some more and discovered a glittering shopping center off Budapester Straße. Then I went back to the hostel, tired.

The Hegeler Carus Mansion

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Back to posting on July 8. A good Independence Day to all.

Before we went to Streator to see the Walldog murals, we visited LaSalle, Illinois. Like Streator, LaSalle is in LaSalle County, though it isn’t the county seat either — Ottawa is. Unlike Streator, LaSalle is on an Interstate. On two of them, in fact, at the junction of I-80 and I-39.

Those roads were still far in the future when a German, Edward C. Hegeler, came to LaSalle in the late 1850s. Before long he and his partner Frederick William Matthiessen, another German, were American zinc barons whose fortunes were made during the Civil War.

Why LaSalle? It was near coal deposits and the Illinois & Michigan Canal, besides a rail connection to Chicago. Smelting zinc required a lot of coal in those days. Zinc was to be had in southern Wisconsin. Cheaper to bring the zinc to Illinois than the coal to Wisconsin, I suppose.

As propertied men of the Gilded Age often did, Hegeler had a mansion built for himself and his large brood. In our time, it’s the Hegeler Carus Mansion, completed in 1876 in that Second Empire style we associate with eerie residences because of the drawings of Charles Addams.
William W. Boyington designed the house. He’s better known for the Chicago Water Tower, but he also did the Joliet State Pen and the current Illinois State Capitol.

The Carus in the name is after Hegeler’s son-in-law, Paul Carus, who wasn’t a zinc baron. He was a scholar, eventually running Open Court Publishing Co., which was founded by old man Hegeler, who clearly didn’t have a one-track zinc-oriented mind. Open Court published — publishes, it’s still around — titles in philosophy, science, and religion.

We took the 3 p.m. tour of the Hegeler Carus Mansion on Saturday, partly as something to do during the hotest part of a hot day. The house doesn’t have central AC, but thick walls and wall units and fans made it tolerable inside.

A third-generation member of the Hegeler-Carus clan lived in the house until 2004, when he died aged more than 100. Now a foundation owns the place, and it’s doing the slow work of restoring the mansion. A few rooms are finished, complete with high Victorian furniture and wall and floor decor — there are some elaborately styled floors in this house — and many, many books.

“The elaborate interior decoration of the Hegeler Carus mansion is the work of August Fiedler, a talented German-American who excelled in interior design and furniture making,” says The Story of a House. “Although he designed many interiors in Chicago and elsewhere, most have been lost, leaving the Hegeler Carus as the largest and most intact surviving example of his work.”

Most of the rooms aren’t finished yet. Still, the flavor of the place is distinct. A historic property doesn’t have to be a House Beautiful specimen to be enjoyable.