Misunderstood Beauty
By A Yahoo! Contributor, 7/13/10
We have many mansions still around from the gilded age in the Chicagoland area. This mansion was built prior to the building of power behind Chicago. The man who built this mansion gave us Chicagoans the first starts of what we now know as the CTA. This home was built by a man who was dirt poor and prospered from business. The town of Galena where this wonderful home was built, had propered around the lead mines there. The town was majority filled with minorities who worked the mines. The man who built this mansion believed that a Black man should have the right to read and write and secretly taught his workers to do so. This man came from nothing and tried to bring others up along with him. Maybe you should stay away from Galena period, since the wealth of the town was built on lead mines, which was 60 percent of the country's lead use at the time. Lead which was mainly used for bullets. But instead you pick on the home owner for being ostentacious? Please. The current owner, this person purchased a special home from Illinois history, and refurbished it to its original glory, and now shares it with us. So sorry if he cannot trace all of the original peices to the home to please those who wrote scathing reviews. Maybe you should attempt to find those pieces and see how difficult it is. The $12 fee is much more inexepnsive than many other docent lead tours I have seen. And coming from the Archival community I know how difficult it is to restore as well as maintain a beauty such as this structure. My husband and I thought we got much more for our money - we were surprised to get to see as much as we did. The menial $12 dollars supports the upkeep of the historic home's structure. Which in order to keep with landmark status can only be upkept and repaired inspecific ways in accordance to historical landmark rules and regulations. In a time of cookie cutter houses with no character - I am so thankful to the person who purchased this home for me to see. Someone in an earlier review chided the owner for not living there. That is actually not true. The owner does live there and the closed rooms are reserved for just this. However, again with the home's upkeep and historical furniture, one cannot constantly keep things and sleep and live on all of these fine antiques. This home was the site of the midwest's first indoor plumbing - for toilet use. The home has an ingenious air conditioning system - way before its time. I would also like to point out many docent jobs are volunteer work. And another comment to the person who chided a docent for questions asked. Think about the situation... did you wait for the docent to finish his/her story? Or were you constantly interrupting them? They do ask at the end of each presentation if there are any questions. Was your reaction based on ego? Please give this home a chance. I am not affiliated with the home owner at all and found, as a fan of history and perserving it, that this was so worth the money. The stories were interesting... and I was able to tell my grandmother that I saw Scarlett O'Hara's actual green drapes. How fun and spontaneous is that?!