By Judy Carmack Bross
Erica Meyer, Kathy Rice, and Joan Blew at the Glessner House Garden Party
Corporate Sponsor Berglund Construction’s Eric and Jill Dexter and Susan and Jack Tribbia
“With 2025 being the 150th anniversary of the founding of Morris & Co., we knew the best way to celebrate that was a gala at Glessner House, which is believed to contain the most complete representation of Morris’s work of any publicly accessible house in the United States,” Executive Director and Curator William Tyre on the recent Glessner House Garden Gala celebrating the renowned textile artist William Morris, a founder of the Arts and Crafts movement.
Glessner house tour showcasing its William Morris designs
Tyre, who invited guests to tour the Glessner House collection before rosé, lemonade and delicious garden party treats under a twinkling tent in the Glessner courtyard, told of the Glessner-Morris connection. “Over the past forty years, we have meticulously restored all the major rooms in the house, replicating the Morris wallpapers, textiles, and rugs which showcase and complement the collection of original furniture and decorative arts, many custom-made for the Glessners.”
Executive Director William Tyre addresses Garden Party guests
“Morris remains popular today, so it is easy for visitors to the house to forget that when the Glessners selected their Morris items in the mid-1880s, they would have been considered rather avant-garde in their tastes. These choices aligned with their selection of H. H. Richardson as their architect, who offered them an unconventional house design that suited them perfectly, but was not understood or liked by many of the neighbors, who referred to it as the fortress or the jail.”
Board President Ronald Loch and his wife Kathy
Gala Chair Nancy Hornak, John and Joan Myers, and Mary Alyce Blum
Sean Eshaghy and Peggy Snorf
The Glessner House board established the John and Frances Glessner Award in 2022 to recognize and honor an individual each year at the gala who has made an outstanding contribution to the cultural or civic life of Chicago. Aligned with the Glessner House mission, vision, and values, the award promotes our efforts to spark excitement in architecture, history, and design. Past recipients include architect Gunny Harboe and architectural historian Susan Benjamin.
Award Recipient Melinda Watt with Executive Director William Tyre
Tyre introduced to Garden Party guests to this year’s recipient and told of the William Morris connection:
“This year’s recipient is Melinda Watt, Chair and Christa C. Mayer Thurman Curator of the Textile Department at the Art Institute of Chicago since 2018. In this role, she oversees the global textile collection formed by a series of visionary department heads, and leads the textile installation program both within the department and throughout the museum. To date, her exhibitions at the Art Institute include Morris and Company: The Business of Beauty (2021), Fabricating Fashion (2022), Gio Swaby: Fresh Up (2023), and Threaded Visions: Contemporary Weavings from the Collection (2024). Watt is also a board member of the Textile Society of America and the International Center for the Study of Ancient Textiles.
“Previously, Melinda was a Curator in the department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as Supervising Curator of the Antonio Ratti Textile Center.
“I first had the opportunity to meet Melinda in May 2021, when she contacted me about the William Morris exhibition she was planning. A number of Glessner textiles reside in the Art Institute collection and she was anxious to see the house in which they had been displayed. She was quickly drawn in by the Glessners’ remarkable lives and the extraordinary level of documentation that survived through photographs, journals, and other writings.
“A meaningful collaboration ensued, as I shared more and more information with her, and she, in turn, provided deeper insight into the Glessners and their selection of numerous Morris textiles and other items for their home. It was Melinda who first used the term “avant-garde” to describe the Glessners and the design choices they made, and that concept has really stuck with me. By the time the exhibition opened in December 2021, the Glessner story had been expanded to fill the entire fifth and final gallery.”
Grace Brandt and Dylan Doetch at Glessner Gala
Barry Sears, Sylvia Dunbeck and Jeff Mercer
Barbi Donnelley, Todd Schwebel and Norma Bramsen
Among Chicago’s most knowledgeable historians, Tyre delights online followers with entries from Frances Glessner’s journals. We asked him if she wrote about Glessner House garden parties?
“We did not base the garden party theme on Frances Glessner’s journal. The family left Chicago each year in early May and didn’t return until the middle of October, so they never used the courtyard for entertaining. However, they had extensive gardens at their 1,500 -acre summer estate, The Rocks, located in Bethlehem, New Hampshire, laid out by their close family friend Frederick Law Olmsted. The journal makes many mentions of picnics at various beauty spots around the estate.
“Although Frances Glessner is known for a range of talents from silversmithing to jewelry making, and needlework to beekeeping–as well as being an accomplished pianist–one of her greatest talents was hospitality. The journal is full of letters from grateful recipients of this hospitality, whether it be for a meal enjoyed in the house, or the opportunity to spend the night in one of the guest rooms. When Frances Glessner first met architect Henry Hobson Richardson, she specifically asked him to preserve the “cozy” feeling of the smaller house they were living in at the time. She wished to create a warm and inviting interior to welcome her many visitors.
“Although the Glessners sometimes hosted large entertainments, such as two dinners for the entire Chicago Symphony Orchestra, they preferred much smaller gatherings where they could easily interact with their guests. An excellent example of this is their informal Sunday suppers which brought together friends, often unmarried men, who would otherwise have not had the benefit of a family gathering. The suppers brought together authors, artists, craftsmen, and musicians who appreciated the carefully curated circle into which they were welcomed”
Glenn and Donna Gabanski
Paddle Raise
Cheryl and Mark Van Ausdal
The party’s paddle raised funds for the new accessible ramp designed by Susan Reinhold and her team at Revive Architecture LLC. Located inside the 18th Street entrance of the Visitors Center–the former coach house– the ramp will provide full ADA-compliant access to this area, which serves as our primary program space, as well as providing access to the courtyard where concerts and other events take place.
Tyre told us:
“The decision was made to place the ramp inside the coach house, to minimize the impact on the landmarked exterior, and it also provides maintenance advantages. The total cost of the project is $239,000 of which $70,000 has been raised to date, including $35,000 in pledges made by more than 65 attendees at the gala.”
Susan Vandermeulan and Mary Aronin
Joan Flanagan and Joan Goldstein
We asked Tyre how Glessner House keep the story of an important aspect of Chicago alive.
“Glessner House provides so many ways for people to connect with history, and how that history is still relevant today. We are fortunate to possess a huge archive of materials on the family which allows us to understand who they were and what was important to them. Frances Glessner’s journal, maintained over forty years, is more than 5,000 pages long and chronicles their lives in Chicago from 1879 until World War I. John Glessner was an exceptional writer, penning a history of the house in the 1920s, and authoring numerous books and manuscripts. People are inspired by their lives, whether it be Frances Glessner’s skills as a craftswoman, or their daughter’s groundbreaking work in death scene investigation, for which she is remembered today as the “mother of forensic science.
“What strikes me the most about the Glessners is their commitment to making their adopted city of Chicago a better place in which to live. They both strongly felt that wealth came with responsibility, and John Glessner was a self-made man, rising from a bookkeeper to becoming a vice president of International Harvester, one of the largest corporations in the country when it was organized in 1902. The institutions they supported with their donations and time included the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Art Institute, the Orphan Asylum, Rush Medical College, the University of Chicago, among many others. John Glessner served as president of the Commercial Club which engaged Daniel Burnham to create his pivotal Plan of Chicago, still referenced in civic planning. Frances Glessner was deeply involved in the Chicago Society of Decorative Art, whose purpose was to train women in various handicrafts as a means of respectable self-support.
“This commitment to the city of Chicago and making it a better place to live continues to inspire people. It also reminds people that it took people like John and Frances Glessner in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who had the vision to support the institutions that make Chicago vibrant and a world-class destination today.”
Additional fundraising is underway for the important ramp project, and donations are always welcome at:
