Prologue: The year is 1867.
Chicago is young, ambitious and growing rather quickly. The Great Fire is still four years away, Prairie Avenue is becoming the place to be, and just around the corner on Calumet Avenue, a rather handsome new house has appeared.
It belongs to banker and businessman Calvin T. Wheeler. He couldn't possibly have known it at the time, but the house bearing his name would spend the next century and a half doing something it proved remarkably good at: surviving.
Through fire, fortune, changing fashions, industrialisation and the occasional rather questionable renovation, the house would remain standing while much of the neighbourhood around it disappeared. Today, more than 150 years later, it is still here. And it has quite a story to tell.
Come in. We'll show you around.
Chapter I: First, a rather grand house.
Calvin T. Wheeler was doing rather well for himself. A banker, businessman and former president of the Chicago Board of Trade, Wheeler commissioned architect Otis L. Wheelock to design his new Calumet Avenue residence.
Wheelock drew inspiration from the fashionable Second Empire style, an architectural movement influenced by nineteenth-century France. The result was unmistakably grand: three storeys of respected proportions, tall arched windows, elaborate stonework and a distinctive mansard roof that still crowns the mansion today.
Constructed of natural red brick, the house combined Second Empire elegance with Italianate architectural details, creating a residence befitting one of Chicago's prominent businessmen. Decorative floral carvings adorned the window surrounds, ornamental pilasters framed the façade, and intricate architectural flourishes made certain that this was not a house inclined to go unnoticed.
Then came 1871. The Great Chicago Fire tore through the city, destroying thousands of buildings and changing Chicago forever. Wheeler's house survived. And that was only its first narrow escape.
Chapter II: Then came the Kohns.
Three years after the Fire, Joseph A. Kohn purchased the mansion and moved in with his wife, Julia, and their growing family. And grow it did. The Kohns had eight children, five daughters and three sons, and the house quickly became something rather different from a grand architectural statement. It became a home.
There were family dinners, formal visitors, children moving between rooms, horses in the coach house and all the beautiful disorder that comes with a house properly lived in.
Joseph belonged to a prominent family of German Jewish entrepreneurs who had arrived in Chicago during the early 1840s. Together with his brothers Abraham, David, Henry and Julius, the family established H. A. Kohn Bros., a wholesale men's clothing business on Lake Street that became one of Chicago's leading clothing enterprises. The family was equally involved in the city's developing social and cultural life, with connections to early Jewish religious institutions and the prestigious Standard Club.
But the most memorable family stories are not always about business. Family history recalls Julia fleeing the Great Chicago Fire with her children, a parakeet and a silver soup ladle among the possessions she managed to carry. Why the soup ladle? After more than 150 years, we're afraid some mysteries are entitled to remain mysteries.
Chapter III: A little makeover never hurt.
By the 1880s, Chicago had become wealthier, grander and considerably more fashionable. And apparently, so had the Kohns. Rather than leave their Calumet Avenue home behind, they gave it a rather splendid update.
A dramatic two-storey bay and elaborate covered porch introduced new architectural flourishes, complementing the mansion's original Second Empire design. Visitors approached a handsome porch supported by columns with Ionic capitals, beneath intricate floral carvings and ornamental woodwork.
And tucked into the architecture was a particularly fitting detail: a carved pineapple. In nineteenth-century decorative tradition, the pineapple symbolised welcome and hospitality. A rather lovely coincidence, considering what the house would eventually become.
Not a house frozen at a single moment in history, but one that had grown and evolved alongside the people who lived within it. And that, we think, makes it all the more interesting.
Chapter IV: Life in Chicago's first Gold Coast.
By then, this corner of Chicago had become rather extraordinary. Prairie Avenue and its surrounding streets formed what would later be remembered as Chicago's first Gold Coast, home to some of the city's most influential families, including names such as Pullman, Armour and Field.
Behind the imposing façades were formal parlours, elegant dining rooms, private libraries, servants' quarters, elaborate staircases and coach houses. Victorian entertaining was a serious business, and the Kohn residence was very much a part of this world.
Its entrance vestibule welcomed visitors with polished oak panelling, marble mosaic flooring and decorative glass. The parlour offered an elegant setting for entertaining; the dining room had sliding doors that could separate it from the rest of the house. And beneath it all, the basement kitchen sent prepared dishes upstairs by dumbwaiter, so meals arrived without interrupting the occasion. Very civilised indeed.
For a time, this was one of the finest addresses in Chicago. But fashionable neighbourhoods have a habit of changing.
Chapter V: A few details worth noticing.
The original entrance vestibule was designed to impress from the very first step: a marble mosaic floor, polished oak panels, carved architectural details and an ornamental ceiling.
Then there is the staircase. An intricately carved newel post, elegant balustrade and decorative details guide the eye upwards, where a skylight brings daylight through the upper levels of the mansion. The staircase also features historic stained glass, one of the many details that survived the building's changing fortunes.
Upstairs, the former master bedroom enjoyed views towards Lake Michigan and the unusual privilege, for its time, of a private bathroom. Its fireplace was fashioned from white Carrara marble with Siena marble inlays, both imported from Italy. These were rooms intended not simply for living, but for living exceptionally well.
Chapter VI: The party moves on.
The Kohn family remained associated with the house for more than three decades. As the twentieth century began, however, the city's commercial centre expanded southwards, and the wealthy families who had made Prairie Avenue fashionable moved towards newer neighbourhoods along the lake.
Factories, warehouses and commercial buildings gradually replaced the grand homes of the Near South Side. One by one, the mansions came down. The Kohn residence, however, had other plans. Or perhaps it was simply too stubborn to leave. Either way, it remained.
Chapter VII: From drawing rooms to printing presses.
The Wartenburg Publishing Company, a German Lutheran publishing business, acquired the property and adapted it for commercial use. Rooms were altered, walls moved, and the second floor was adapted for printing and binding. A warehouse replaced the earlier coach house and stables. The grand Victorian residence had officially gone to work.
In the mid-1940s, the property passed to the Murphy Butter and Egg Company, a wholesale food supplier serving restaurants, hotels and hospitals. Yes, really. We did promise you a good story.
Yet these unlikely chapters may have helped save the house. While neighbouring mansions were demolished, this one remained useful. And so it remained standing. Just.
Chapter VIII: A house almost forgotten.
By the 1990s, the once-grand residence stood empty. The original slate roof had been lost. The magnificent cornice had disappeared. Commercial alterations had concealed or removed features that once defined the home. Even the original front doors had been stolen.
After surviving the Great Chicago Fire, the transformation of Prairie Avenue and more than a century of changing ownership, the mansion now faced perhaps its greatest threat: demolition. This could very easily have been where our story ended.
Fortunately, Debra Seger had other ideas.
Chapter IX: Enter Debra.
Some people look at a neglected Victorian mansion and see an impossible amount of work. Debra Seger saw a future. In 1997, she acquired the property for $10,000 and began the extraordinary task of bringing the mansion back to life.
Historic photographs were carefully studied. Lost details were researched and recreated. Exterior corbels were hand-carved, and the enormous copper bay was painstakingly stripped and restored. Inside, original features began to reappear: the marble mosaic entrance floor, decorative ceilings, historic woodwork, the staircase and its balustrade, and the skylight.
After more than a century of settling, the roof required hydraulic jacking to bring it back into alignment, allowing the staircase to sit properly once more. One imagines the house giving a rather enormous sigh of relief.
Chapter X: Officially worth saving.
Chicago agreed. In 1998, the Wheeler-Kohn House was designated a Chicago Landmark, recognising its connection to the city's early residential development and its importance as a surviving example of Second Empire design.
After spending decades adapting simply to survive, the house finally had formal protection. And now there was something rather more exciting to consider: what would happen when the doors opened again?
Chapter XI: Welcome to The Wheeler Mansion.
In 1999, the house began its next life, this time as The Wheeler Mansion, a boutique hotel unlike anything else in the city.
Once again, people slept upstairs. Once again, conversations filled the downstairs rooms. Only now, you didn't need to be a Wheeler or a Kohn to receive an invitation.
The house that had survived so much was doing what it had always done best. Opening its doors.
Chapter XII: The history is right in front of you.
The rather lovely thing about The Wheeler Mansion is that its history isn't locked away in a display case. You're standing in it. The staircase beneath your hand has witnessed generations come and go. The mosaic beneath your feet has welcomed more than a century of footsteps.
Some details have survived since the nineteenth century. Others have been carefully recreated or thoughtfully renewed. It is not simply a building that survived history. It is a building that has been given the opportunity to continue making it.
Chapter XIII: Still here.
Chicago grew. The Great Fire came and went. Prairie Avenue rose to prominence and faded from fashion. Industry arrived, families left, businesses moved in, and the house deteriorated. And someone decided it was worth saving.
More than 150 years after the first key turned in its front door, The Wheeler Mansion stands beautifully restored, thoughtfully appointed and ready to welcome another generation of guests. Because the finest historic houses are not simply admired from a distance. They are meant to be lived in, celebrated and enjoyed.
Epilogue: Keep the key.
Your chapter starts here.
