History of a Home

Potter Palmer's greatest contributions to U. S. social history were the silver dollar motif for barroom floors and his Chicago home at No. 1350 Lake Shore Drive.* Last week, after a lapse of three years, the great castellated pile that he plunked down on a sand dune in 1882 was repossessed by his family.

Potter Palmer built his mansion for Mrs. Bertha Honore Palmer, a Kentucky belle, out of a fortune he had made in the dry-goods business and plowed back into a mile of State Street real estate. In its day it cost more than $1,000,000 and was generally considered a thing of rare architectural beauty (see cut). Inside it was a magnificent hodgepodge. The great central hall, three stories high, was largely Italian. There was a Louis XVI salon, an Indian room, a Moorish room where the rugs were impregnated with rare perfumes. The grand ballroom was plastered with a splendid collection of French paintings. The murals were by Gabriel Ferrier. But what most impressed a Chicago still living close to the stockyards was a private elevator and the report that the huge castle was burglarproof. The doors had no outside locks, no knobs. The only way to get in was to be admitted from the inside. And Mrs. Potter Palmer saw to it that more than a knock was necessary for that.

The moment the house was finished it became the social capital of Chicago. About it and Bertha Honore Palmer, firmly enthroned in her own Italian hall, sprang up a vast folklore. One famed Chicago social organization once had the temerity to entertain simultaneously with Mrs. Palmer but only a society editor appeared. Bertha Palmer maintained winter palaces in London and Paris but they served chiefly as hunting preserves where she caught European royalty and nobility for her Chicago castle. Chicago was good to Mrs. Palmer. It was always properly dazzled by her social display. Her only serious setback occurred in 1893 during the World's Fair. The Infanta Eulalie of Spain, whose spun glass dress of 2,500,000 threads weighed only one pound, attended one of her levees but curtly refused to meet her hostess-- "that innkeeper's wife." For this famed snub Mrs. Palmer soon made up by having King Edward VII at her London home. Chicago still believes that Mrs. Palmer spurned an offer to become the Queen of Serbia.

Only once did Mrs. Palmer let down the bars. Managing her Son Honore's campaign for a seat on the City Council, she shrewdly invited 500 members of the 21st Ward Marching Club to the Castle. More at home in West Side brothels and saloons, they arrived behind a brass band. As they filed in Mrs. Palmer, in elaborate evening clothes and a diamond necklace, personally thanked each & every one of them for their political efforts in her son's behalf. Honore Palmer was elected, served two terms.

In 1902 Potter Palmer died in his Lake Shore Drive home, leaving his wife $8,000,000.

In 1918 Mrs. Palmer died, not at the scene of her greatest social triumphs but in far-off Florida. She left an estate of $15,000,000 of which her Son Potter Jr. was active manager.

In 1930 he sold the family castle to Vincent Bendix for $3,000,000. That aviation and auto accessory tycoon listed it in the telephone book as "The Bendix Galleries," after adding Rembrandts and Christys. He modernized the elevator, installed a barber's chair for his own use and gave many a loud party. Later he passed it on to a syndicate for the amount of the mortgage, $2,000,000.

Last week Potter Palmer Jr. bought it back for an estimated $1,500,000. He proposed to develop it as a smart hotel. A slight, shy, curly-headed man who dislikes society as much as his father did, Potter Palmer Jr. lives quietly in an Astor Street triplex apartment filled with Chinese art (he is president of Chicago's Art Institute). He and his beauteous wife, now summering at Bar Harbor, have four children and though Potter III has a daughter, there is as yet no Potter IV.

*First dollar inlay was in the Palmer House barber shop, whence the idea spread to saloons all over the land.

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