![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Getting Out of the House
Jul. 23rd, 2018 03:35 pmAs a (temporarily) unemployed person, I find it needful to occasionally get out of the house. As a Rotarian and the webmaster for our club, I am on several emailing lists, including one from our Forest Preserve Commissioner, Linda Painter. She sent me and several thousand of her closest friends a notice that this past Saturday the Peabody Mayslake Estate was having an open house. I went.
So I first became aware of Mayslake years ago. The mansion is visible from the road I took to work every day, and as a Forest Preserve property, they had a local Shakespeare in the Park operation (First Folio). I had attended a couple of the plays, and was always curious about the house. Herewith is what I learned.
The house was built in the very early 1920s by Francis Peabody, founder of Peabody Coal and Peabody Energy. Like many Gilded Age rich folk, he wanted a country estate, and so he bought 800 acres in then rural DuPage County and hired an architect to build him a replica of a 1500-era English manor house. Alas, he died only 13 months after the house was complete and his widow sold it to the Franciscans who used it for a retreat. They sold off all but about 80 acres and had the final chunk on the market when a local referendum was passed to buy it and give it to the Forest Preserve.
For the most part, the Forest Preserve just uses the grounds as a park. The actual mansion was allowed to get seriously run down, and private money is being raised and spent to (slowly) restore it. I found the tour, which included the rarely-used second floor and the prison-like servants quarters to be interesting and educational. It was a pleasant way to kill an afternoon.
So I first became aware of Mayslake years ago. The mansion is visible from the road I took to work every day, and as a Forest Preserve property, they had a local Shakespeare in the Park operation (First Folio). I had attended a couple of the plays, and was always curious about the house. Herewith is what I learned.
The house was built in the very early 1920s by Francis Peabody, founder of Peabody Coal and Peabody Energy. Like many Gilded Age rich folk, he wanted a country estate, and so he bought 800 acres in then rural DuPage County and hired an architect to build him a replica of a 1500-era English manor house. Alas, he died only 13 months after the house was complete and his widow sold it to the Franciscans who used it for a retreat. They sold off all but about 80 acres and had the final chunk on the market when a local referendum was passed to buy it and give it to the Forest Preserve.
For the most part, the Forest Preserve just uses the grounds as a park. The actual mansion was allowed to get seriously run down, and private money is being raised and spent to (slowly) restore it. I found the tour, which included the rarely-used second floor and the prison-like servants quarters to be interesting and educational. It was a pleasant way to kill an afternoon.
