So many Gilded Age mansions have gone the way of the wrecking ball. The Potter Palmer Mansion was no exception.
Born in 1826 in Albany County, New York, Potter Palmer started his career as a humble manager of a small town dry-goods store. He worked hard and eventually owned his own store in upstate New York before arriving in Chicago in 1852. There, he built a dry-goods empire by enacting cutting-edge sales marketing, including “no questions asked returns,” large display windows and allowing patrons to take items home on trial before purchasing. It wasn’t long before he built the famous Palmer House hotel and was responsible for developing State Street.
When his buildings were destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, Palmer borrowed $1.7 million to rebuild them, the largest amount ever lent to a private person up to that time. With it, he reclaimed the swampland north of Chicago’s commercial district, and developed it into what is now the well-known Lake Shore Drive.
His success as a real estate speculator enabled him to build his own residence, a castellated Gothic structure made of Connecticut brownstone and Amherst stone from Ohio.
The massive mansion, built in 1884, had a large dining room that measured 24′ x 32.’
The large 22″ x 42″drawing room opened to the hall allowing guests to circulate easily.
With wainscoting four feet high, the nursery was finished in Hungarian ash, white holly and ebony. Mrs. Bertha Palmer’s Moorish bedroom was reached by one of Chicago’s first residential elevators and was decorated with Turkish furnishings. Its windows resembled those in the Palace of Cairo and the woodwork was ebony and gold.
