Samuel Nickerson had made a rather large fortune in banking, railroads, and distilleries. His beautiful mansion at 40 East Erie Street in Chicago's Near North Neighborhood reflected his wealth and exquisite taste. His home was a block and a half from Lake Michigan. He had a beautiful view. That all changed with the Chicago Fire of October 1871. In total, nearly 300 people died and 18,000 structures went up in flames. Nickerson's flammable mansion was lost. No problem. He spent $450,000 (about $15 million today) building his "Marble Palace," a 24,000-square-foot, three-story, state-of-the-art mansion. Built with 17 different kinds of marble, concrete, bricks, other stone, and steel, it was fireproof. The mansion became a social gathering place for Chicago’s Gilded Age aristocracy. The neighborhood became known as McCormickville because Cyrus McCormick and his brothers had also built mansions nearby. In 1900, Nickerson and his wife left the mansion and moved to the East Coast. He had been a founding trustee of what became the Art Institute of Chicago. Upon leaving Chicago, he donated much of his vast art collection to the Art Institute.
His home, an architectural marvel, changed hands a couple more times to owners who maintained it but did not restore it. In 2003, Richard H. Driehaus, a businessman, art collector, and philanthropist purchased the mansion to restore it to its original glory and turn it into a museum. He came from modest means. He invested money from his paper route as a kid and kept going until he amassed millions. With his great wealth, he felt he should do something for the people of Chicago, who had been so generous to him. The structure was still in pretty good shape. It was mainly dirty. The cream color stone exterior was blackened from burning coal and other urban pollutants. The interior also needed cleaning and restoration. Lasers gently removed the grime and pollution from the building's sandstone exterior. The tedious process took 18 months. The end result is gorgeous. It is both an art museum and a historical mansion. You can step inside and marvel at how not just the other half lived in the Gilded Age, but how the top one percent lived. You can have moral objections to the extreme wealth, but you can also marvel at the craftsmanship and beauty of the home's details.
The Driehaus Museum is a wonderful example of a Gilded Age mansion. The corruption at the heart of the Gilded Age income inequality was captured in Thomas Nast's cartoon of the time, "Bosses of the Senate," in which bloated Senators in the Senate Chamber had the names of the Trusts, like Standard Oil, who "owned" them stamped on their fat stomachs. Cartoons like that, plus social unrest and political action by Teddy Roosevelt and others ushered in the Progressive Era. Roosevelt's thinking can be summed up by the following quote: “The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the state because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government.” I am thankful that Mr. Driehaus felt that obligation, and wanted to return something by creating this amazing museum.
We certainly live in crazy times. It is a new gilded age. You can effectively use the Thomas Nast’s cartoon now by just changing the names of the trusts to today's billionaires. Midterms are upon us. It is democracy's method of self-correction.
Take a walk to the polls and be sure to vote for whomever you think has integrity, competency, and character. Change will come.
