(calm intro music) - #^ [Announcer] "Illinois Stories" is brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

- #^ Hello, welcome to "Illinois Stories".

I'm Mark McDonald in Springfield at Edward's Place.

One of Springfield's historic gems.

When we were here three years ago, they had just finished restoring the main level and they started raising money to start restoring the second level.

Well now, not only did they raise the money, but they've completed the job.

So come on inside.

Well Sarah Adams, been quite a while coming.

I mean, back in 19 or 2015, we were here last time when we did a story about the completion of this floor here.

- #^ Right.

- And now since that time y'all have been working on raising money and getting everything you needed to do to finish the upstairs and restore it just as it would've been in 18... what 50...?

- 1857.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

And it's finished.

- Yes.

- And you're having people come in and you've had tours and it's open to the public.

But it was quite a process wasn't it?

- Yes, it was.

But it's such a nice relief now to have it all done.

- Yeah.

We're standing in the front hall of course if you come in the, the front hall, the Benjamin Edwards house this is the first thing you'd see.

And it's pretty grand, but it's not as grand as the rest of the house, but it's a nice entrance.

Isn't it?

- It is.

You know, I like to imagine in 1857 people coming into the house and seeing something like this is really a treat.

I mean it would've been then and it is now.

- [Mark] Oh my goodness.

Yes.

There weren't a lot of home...

There weren't any homes of this stature in Springfield.

This was... this was a noteworthy place where the, really the... "The" crowd of Springfield gathered, wasn't it?

- #^ Oh yeah.

They, you know, they had all the names of course, Abraham Lincoln but...

They even held a political rally for Steven Douglas here.

This was a place to be back in the day you.

- [Mark] Ya, it was.

And of course we know the story about Abraham and Mary Todd, and the courting couch, which is here and, other important pieces of historical furniture here.

But, back to what we're really here for, is the second floor.

And it was, of course the sleeping... the bedrooms are upstairs.

And the attempt was to make this as much like 1857 as absolutely possible, including the wallpapers and everything else that was designed to look just as it does.

And that's the, that's the whole process.

- Right?

Ya.

- Let's go up and take a look.

- All right.

- After you, These old steps still creak Sarah.

(laughing) - #^ That they do, you'll find that throughout the house.

- #^ [Mark] Yeah, you do.

That's a great thing about old houses, creaky, creaky.

Okay.

So we came into the master bedroom first stop.

- #^ Right?

- #^ This is where Benjamin and his wife, now her name escapes me, but this is where they slept.

- Yes, Benjamin and Helen.

- Helen.

- Would've both been in here.

- And this is actually their very bed, isn't it?

- Yeah.

It's one of those special things.

You don't always get the original furniture and know exactly where it goes, but this is their bed.

And the dresser is their original dresser too, as well as the wardrobe behind us.

- [Mark] Yeah.

That dresser, that's beautiful.

It kinda looks like mahogany.

I'm not sure what that wood is, but it's gorgeous, and it looks like it's a match set.

- [Sarah] It is.

Yeah.

- [Mark] It's beautiful with the marble top.

It's gorgeous.

- [Sarah] So these actually would've been in this room when they stayed here.

So they're back exactly where they need to go.

- [Mark] And then back on this side of the room, like you say, this immense wardrobe, and of course houses didn't have closets back then, or few of them.

- [Sarah] No, no, it's totally different from today where, you know, we want a walk in closet, but you know, the wardrobe, as well as the other furniture they purchased from St. Louis.

We still have the receipts for those inside of the furniture.

So it's, it's really awesome that we know exactly where they got it from.

- [Mark] Can you imagine moving something like that around, of course, it would've been a heart horse and a wagon to move that stuff up here from St. Louis.

- [Sarah] Well, a lot of these things too, once they get'em here, they're coming in pieces.

So when we put them back together for a restoration, we had them in pieces and we had them put back together.

- [Mark] We're looking at the original fireplace, now, of course, the whole house was heated with coal, and there were a lot of fireplaces in the house.

- [Sarah] Right.

- [Mark] And then the portrait right above, that's Benjamin himself.

Huh?

- [Sarah] Yeah.

That's Benjamin as a young man, right after he got out of Yale Law School.

He was the first man in Illinois to actually be educated there.

But he looks a lot younger than we see usually in a lot of his images.

(laughing) - [Mark] Let's focus on the wallpaper and we look at that right past his portrait.

Now reproducing these wallpapers.

That's not only in art, but it's a very arduous piece of work, isn't it?

To find what you need to replicate?

- [Sarah] Oh, exactly.

So a lot of times we aren't able to find the original wallpaper designs, but in this room, we were able to find the actual design that it was made from.

So we were able to recreate these historically how they would've recreated them in the 1800s.

- And they're actually companies around the world that do this kind of thing.

If you can find the pattern, if you can send them a swatch, they can reproduce it for you.

- #^ Yeah.

It's amazing.

I can't believe that there are people that can do this, but, you know, we sent it to a company in Ireland and they were able to reproduce and it looks amazing.

- And it's...this is kind of surprising too, because I always think of during this period as being very gaudy.

You know, the carpeting and the wallpapers often were very gaudy.

But that's not the way it was in this house.

- No, not really.

A lot of the period that we're referring to is late 1850s And at that time, it wasn't as gaudy of designs.

We'll see a room later, which has some of the later Victorian designs.

It's a little bit more gaudy as we would see it.

- [Mark] The younger generation wanted it a little more colorful didn't they?

- Isn't that how it is?

(laughing) - [Mark] That's kind of the way it is.

And while we're here, let's take a look at this carpet because not only you try to replicate what you find on the walls, but on the floors as well.

What about this carpeting?

Was this a guess, or did y'all have some indication of what to go for?

- [Sarah] We had a little bit of indication.

Of course a lot of times those sort of fabrics don't survive, but we were able to take old letters that Helen had written to her friends.

And often times she would refer when they would do renovations on the house or they had to replace the carpeting.

She said, oh, we had to put some green carpeting in this room.

So we were able to go off of that.

But otherwise we're just trying to find what was popular historically.

- Right?

The wallpaper's interesting because you don't really know how many layers of wallpaper they may have been until you get lucky and find... - Oh yeah.

- That you can actually take the layers apart and then find that last layer, and you were able to do that in some of the rooms.

- In a house this old too, there were a lot of layers.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- Like peeling an onion.

- Yeah.

I imagine the Edwards ladies like to redecorate, just like people now.

- Oh, they did.

- Every few years let's do it up different.

Let's go into the... Now I call it the nursery.

It's not a nursery, but this is where the children often times slept.

- Right.

- Because they might have been sick at some point they wanted to be near the parents.

Parents wanted to keep an eye on 'em, or this may have been the oldest girl's room when she was a child.

This is the the child's room right next to the master.

- Yeah.

So we do interpret it as the youngest child's room.

Molly, but we also kind of interpret it as a sick room as well.

Because a lot of times when the children were younger, they would be next to the parents because they could, maybe not disturb the rest of the house, but they're also close to their mother when they needed her.

- [Mark] And here we have... you've done this throughout the house.

You have these boards here which show what the room looked like before and after.

And in this case, it looks like the wallpaper that I'm seeing here is not a whole lot different than what was here before.

- [Sarah] No.

In a lot of cases they did a pretty good job about finding similar patterns to what we're looking for, but they weren't always quite historically accurate to the exact date that we're looking for.

And we were able to find the actual pattern of this room.

So of course, when that opportunity came up, we switched it to something that would actually be in here.

- [Mark] While we're looking above the fireplace.

We can see that this area is not covered.

You found some stenciling while you were doing your research here, And if you can look up there and see those roses, those are a stamp of... they tell you what they are and those are very specific.

- [Sarah] Yeah.

So these are Dart Hunter roses.

He was a designer that worked with the Roycrofters and at the time this would've been early 20th century.

So we do have some things in here that are not necessarily 1850s, but these stenciling roses were very, very popular at the time.

So we can actually date because we know when they were popular.

- #^ And if you're one of these restoration specialists and you're digging around down there and you find that you... (gasp) look what we found.

'Cuz that's a real find, isn't it?

- #^ Oh yeah.

It's, you know, - #^ It's a treasure.

- #^ You don't expect to find those things and you peel back the old wallpaper and you find those things.

- [Mark] What a mystery, no kidding.

- [Sarah] It's so cool.

- [Mark] And this area...again, we're above the fireplace.

This area was painted.

It was not wallpapered and it will remain.

- [Sarah] Yeah.

We'll leave it the way that it's... that it is right now.

Yeah.

- [Mark] Yeah.

Okay.

And that way, what you'll do is you let people understand what it is, how it was and then you'll leave it that way.

- [Sarah] Ya.

- They can see the roses perfect.

- [Sarah] So even though we're a historic house, but this house has had a lot of history.

So we wanna talk about all the history of the house.

We don't wanna ignore things that are really cool.

So I want guests to be able to see things like this and realize that this house people lived here for a really long time.

- Let's go into the next room.

Okay, Sarah, before we go into another room, no wasted space in this house.

- No, not at all.

- Even this upstairs hall got used pretty well, didn't it?

Because what...we've got a sewing area.

- Oh.

Right.

Yeah.

So they spent a lot of time up here during the day.

It's got great light, and if you're reading a book, sewing, it's a perfect place for that.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Now in this upper hallway here, of course the banister and everything.

But back that way, if you look through the archway that archway would not have been there in 1856, but in 1857 when they added the back of the house, that all became... that was all new.

That was servant quarters.

- [Sarah] Right.

- [Mark] Back there.

- [Sarah] Right.

- [Mark] Through the archway wasn't it?

- [Sarah] Yeah.

So back beyond that is the addition and then that's how they added in the servant staircase in the hallway.

- [Mark] And if we look down, back this way we can see a look at the floor.

This carpeting was not here before you started the restoration.

This was added as well.

And again, there wasn't carpet in here, so you didn't know what to buy, but you made your best guess, huh?

- [Sarah] Yes.

Yeah.

We made our best guess based on what was popular at the time, and we do know that it was carpeted up here originally.

So that's why we re-carpeted.

- [Mark] And I'm looking up at that...

I know the tran... the windows have transoms, but it all sort of leads to a house... You want an air flow in this house because, of course there was no air conditioning at the time and that would have been open wouldn't it?

That window could open?

- [Sarah] Right.

So in the Summertime, the servants would often open that up and it actually created a pretty decent airflow.

I mean, still not as great as air conditioning, but it really created a nice flow through the house.

- Yeah.

And we mentioned, this was a sewing area.

I don't know who in the family did the sewing but... - Everybody.

- Everybody sewed didn't they?

- Everybody did.

- Because I mean, you had to, everybody had to take care of their own needs.

And this was a sewing area and particularly over here, this is interesting because I love these boards that you offer the public when they come in.

They get a chance to see the before and after.

And this is a real good look here at, at what this looked like before you did the restoration, you can see the floors were, of course their original wooden floor kind of chewed up from all the traffic.

- [Sarah] Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a lot more homey now (laughing) than it was at that time.

- [Mark] Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Really beautiful job.

Well, thank you, Sarah.

- Thank you.

- Yeah.

- Well, Betsy Dollar, Sarah did a great job giving us an overview of the master bedroom and everything.

You're the Executive Director of the Springfield Art Association and that's the organization that owns this building and has for many years.

And we'll talk about that story in a little bit.

But right now we're talking about the restoration of the second floor.

Which by the way, was somewhat expensive and took a while.

But you know, I didn't know that you all worked this fast, (laughing) Your restorers started in October.

- Yes.

- And as we stand here in May it's completely done.

That's remarkable.

I think.

- #^ Well, we actually were shooting for Lincoln's birthday as the first completion date.

But that turned out not to be realistic between replicating wallpaper and actually all the carpets were milled to order on the East Coast on mills that were used in the mid 19th Century.

- [Mark] Really?

- So yeah, it is really period appropriate, but that takes time.

- [Mark] It sure does.

- So, yeah, we're excited to be here in May and ready and open to the public with a completed space.

- Now correct me if I'm wrong.

It was around a $200,000 project.

- Yeah.

A little over 200,000.

- Yeah.

Of which you had to raise most of it yourself, didn't you?

- Yes.

Yes.

We were presented with a challenge grant from the Jeffris Foundation out of Wisconsin.

And their deal is you raise two thirds in a very specific amount time.

We had to do it within a two year period basically.

And then they will match the final third.

They'll top it off for you and send you on your way.

And they only cover interiors and they're very even specific about what things inside the house they will cover, and most of it's infrastructure, wallpaper, lighting, that kind of thing.

They're not real big on furniture restoration or whatever.

So yeah, they're very specific about what.. - [Mark] You know what's really nice about that though it gives an organization like yours, a reachable goal.

- [Betsy] Yes.

So if we can do this, we can do this.

And that's a good way to raise money 'cuz people can say, well I can contribute to something like that as long as I know it can get done for this much.

- [Betsy] Right.

Right.

And it gives a specific timeframe.

It's nice to have a little bit of that urgency.

Like we need it now so we can get this done and it doesn't languish for years and years.

- [Mark] We're in the oldest daughter's bedroom and she would've lived here with her husband for a period of time, right?

- Yes, actually she was the middle daughter.

- Oh the middle.

Okay.

- Middle daughter.

So this was Alice's bedroom and Alice was married here in the house to Benjamin Ferguson.

They were engaged right before the Civil War.

He went off and fought with the 10th Caval Reunion, I believe.

And then came back all in one piece, all good there, they were married here in the house and then stayed for 19 years.

Which is a very long time.

And it's not because Benjamin wasn't successful.

He was wildly successful.

He had a China shop downtown.

That was one of the top sellers in the country.

- Let's look at Benjamin while we're talking about him.

- And... - We got a picture of him here.

- And he ultimately became a President of Marine Bank.

So he did very well.

So after 19 years they built their own mansion kitty corner from here.

So not very far away on Edwards family land.

But the very first night that Alice spent in her re... magnificent home that had windows made by Tiffany and marble from Carrara and no expense was spared.

She sent her mother a note saying she was homesick.

So I don't... (laughing) - That's why she was here for 19 years.

- Ya that's why she was here for 19 Years.

Yes.

So anyway, I think she just, she was comfortable here.

Didn't wanna go too far.

She eventually was comfortable in her own home as well, but she is also the one who is responsible for giving this house to the Art Association.

And we'll talk a little bit more about that later.

She was the daughter who stayed closest to home.

- [Mark] The Ferguson building is still there and is still named the Ferguson building.

And that's where his China shop was.

- [Betsy] Yes.

- And they made enough money... he probably spent 19 years saving money.

- [Betsy] Yes.

- Because he made enough money I could say to build a mansion.

- [Betsy] Right.

- Now, this room, as you can see, this has a little bit wilder wallpaper than the others, a little more overstated kind of wallpaper.

So I assume the younger couple wanted to update in a more modern way.

- Right.

We chose to restore this room to a little bit later because they were the young couple.

They lived here for so long.

This is more in like 1880s style.

It's still not super high crazy Victorian, but it's a little bit wilder wallpaper, bigger pattern, brighter colors.

So we went with that style to interpret it a little bit later.

- [Mark] Yeah.

And let's look at the floor because the floor is interesting.

I see this mat, these sort of like grass mats.

This was typical for this house.

This was the summer floor covering wasn't it?

- [Betsy] Exactly.

This was the summer floor covering.

So every Spring they would roll up... pull out the wall to wall wool carpeting, roll it in tobacco leaves to keep the moths and bugs out and then lay out this mat strawing to keep it cooler.

Again, their whole mission between the transom air draft system and taking out the carpets was to try and be cooler in the Summer.

Apparently they weren't worried about freezing to death.

They were worried about stifling.

- They had plenty of side sources of heat, but in the Summer, yeah.

I mean, there was no air conditioning.

- Right.

- They didn't have much chance... - And the humidity and many, many, many more layers of clothing that they had to deal with.

- People that knew this room before you restored it are gonna recognize that this bed is different and the dresser over there is different.

And these are local Springfield period pieces that were moved in here for that purpose.

Right?

- Yes.

Well, actually these pieces were in the house, but they were in different rooms and the dressers and the bed all belonged to the Bunn family.

There was actually a Bunn family connection between Benjamin his sister, Sarah, was married to one of the Bunns.

And so yes, we have...

I assume that at some point they all moved into houses with lower ceilings and couldn't accommodate the furniture.

- [Mark] I guess, moving the stuff in and out would've been a real chore.

- [Betsy] Yeah.

But all of this stuff is really tall.

So yeah.

A modern house really can't accommodate much of this.

- [Mark] And again you've done the boards over here, the before and after boards.

And I just want to take a look at this So people who have been here before, or even if they hadn't been here before, can look at all the work that it took, the flooring, the walls, the furniture, the mantle at the fireplace, everything has been changed and restored to what we see now here today.

- [Betsy] Yeah.

We've really done a lot too.

I think we've added so much in terms of window coverings, which seems kind of odd, but they would've had lots of opulent window coverings.

So now that is period appropriate where it hadn't been before we didn't have much in the... - [Mark] Everybody knows how expensive window coverings are my goodness that's taken... that's biting off a lot.

- And actually some of the fabrics, again are made to order from period patterns.

- So yeah.

Yeah.

- Can we go down the hall?

- We can.

- Okay.

Let's take a look because this room is kind of special to you because this is the room that was used by the Art Association as an art room, not a museum, but as an art room.

- [Betsy] Right.

- And this is before you had lots... Ooh, it echoes in here too.

(laughing) - This is before you had lots of space, in newer areas where you now have classrooms and exhibit space and gallery space and all that kind.

- #^ Right.

Right.

- #^ But this was a work room?

- #^ Yeah.

This was a classroom.

So in 1913, Alice, middle daughter, gave the house to the Art Association.

And the Art Association actually started out as the Springfield Amateur Art Study Club.

And then they incorporated as the Art Association to take the deed of the house in 1913.

And this house was the entire operation of the Art Association until basically the 1940s.

So all of the upstairs bedrooms were used as classrooms and studios.

We have lots of pictures of people up here with easels painting, drawing, and all of that.

The downstairs was all gallery space and it was exhibition space that would change out periodically, not exactly monthly, but periodically.

And they would attract artists from all over the country to do shows here.

So... - [Mark] So you're thinking is when you're restoring this is since the upper floor was all used for art purposes, we need to keep one room.

- Exactly.

- That actually shows what the history of the house.

- Exactly.

And the goal for keeping this room, or the reason for keeping this room in that capacity is that we have these murals that were painted by our students directly on the walls.

And they had been be in a closet.

Actually, the Art Association sometime after they were painted, had a built in a closet, we took out that wall and were able to expose these works of art that also tell the history of the Art Association in some sort of funny way.

We have photographs of children painting the mural up by the doorway.

And so the linoleum floors and the sort of stark look are all about making art up here in this building.

And then in 1949, they built the first big studio to the East of here and started moving the classes out of here.

But I still meet the occasional person who in the 1940s took a class up here.

And as a kid, when they were done with classes they used to slide down the banister.

(laughing) - And it's a pretty steep banister.

- [Mark] It sure is and it's a long way down there.

- Yeah.

It it's a long way.

So I give them credit.

- [Mark] Yeah.

- For being brave enough.

I'm sure there was a sort of a challenge of who was willing to do it.

- [Mark] Oh my goodness.

- And I'm also impressed that the banister, even, before we started the restoration was as solid as it was with that many kids sliding down.

- [Mark] It's a darn good thing and speaking to kids, let's look over here too, Betsy, because this is, all part of what too...

It's, kind of a shame that these were behind walls.

- [Betsy] Yeah.

- [Mark] But now the wall is gone and you can see that some of the kids work.

- [Betsy] We also know that there was a lot more of it that got painted over.

If you look at this little photograph here behind this boy is actually what you see right up there.

So it was continuing this way and it was continuing this way before that closet was ever built.

- [Mark] Okay.

Now I got one last request of you.

You are part of this project that is being dedicated to an archeological find or an archeological project that's going on in the backyard.

And I want you to take us down there and show it to us.

Okay.

- Okay.

- You got it.

- Betsy, we've left the restored area.

We're in the oldest room of the house now and this would've been the original kitchen and there would've been a big cooking area over here.

And there would've been charred walls and the floor of course had to be cut out because it's it was a different kind of flooring, but this would've been from 1830... - 3 - 33.

So this is now probably the oldest...

In Springfield, the oldest room in Springfield.

- Yes.

- Wow.

It's not gonna be a kitchen anymore and it's not gonna be restored.

It's gonna be your archeology room.

- Yes.

- How fascinating.

- Yeah.

- Well, there's, as we said, there's a lot of history to all of this and the Edwards family and actually the Hoehn family before them utilized their privies in the back as their personal garbage dumps.

And over the years, that is all settled down.

And we have started on new construction behind here.

And before we built a building on top of something important, we did an archeological survey and in the very back of the yard, this is Floyd Mansberger who's a local Archeologists.

- [Mark] Yeah.

- [Betsy] He found this giant brick lined privy.

And at the base of it nearly two feet of compressed artifacts.

- [Mark] Yeah.

- [Betsy] Ranging from bird carcasses from dinner, to medicine bottles, to other drink bottles, to broken China.

- [Mark] That's a good example right there.

- Yeah.

- [Betsy] Doll heads, toothbrushes.

The base of toothbrushes used to be made of bone, ivory hair combs, you name it.

- [Mark] Yeah.

Now Floyd is busy.

He's already made his collections, but now all that stuff has to be cleaned up and categorized and logged.

Right?

- [Betsy] Right.

Right.

- And then much of it will end up here.

- [Betsy] Much of it will end up here.

- Show how the family lived through what they threw away.

- [Betsy] Yes, exactly.

Exactly.

And we hope to even do a bigger show of collections from other families throughout Springfield to show sort of the class distinction through their garbage.

- [Mark] That's fascinating.

Thank you to both you and Sarah for letting us come in and showing us around.

- Well, thank you for visiting.

- [Mark] Yeah.

Thank you.

And, note to those of you who are watching and want to come back to Edwards Place and take a look.

It's open for tours Tuesday through Saturday afternoons, and it's only $5 to take a look around and they'll have somebody help show you around as well.

With another "Illinois Story" in Springfield.

I'm Mark McDonald.

Thanks for watching.

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