(gentle music) - [Narrator] 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.

(gentle music continues) - Hello, welcome to Illinois Stories.

I'm Mark McDonald in Jacksonville.

A couple of years ago, we introduced you to a man who moved to Jacksonville, it didn't really know anybody here.

And bought an old church, and two old mansions, that weren't in the best of shape at the time, and had the design of bringing these back to life.

one to be a performance arts venue, one to be a bed and breakfast, one to be an apartment building.

That project's going along and as you look behind me here at the Ayers house, this is part of that project and it's almost completely finished, and ready to go.

And Scotty DeWolf, this has been one heck of a project, isn't it?

- It's the wildest three-dimensional rodeo I've ever been on in my whole life.

(both laughing) - If you say the Ayers house in Jacksonville people know who that is.

- They know that because he and his brother, and their mother had the biggest impact on the economy and the growth of the area at the time.

Because they had the brick factory, they had blacksmith shop, they had the tire throwing shop.

They had the saw mill, the fine woodworking shop on the staircases you have seen.

- Wasn't he a banker too?

- Yes, and he was also in the banking business.

- So he all the money as well.

- Yes, yes, and his father came here of course in 1830, when he was three years old, and his brother was seven, and then he grew them up in the banking business and the retail business downtown.

And when he died at 50 of cholera, (clears throat) he gave 'em the 6 and 1/4 acres and they built on it.

By the time he died in 1902 he owned all the way down to the other house, and all the way down to the hospital and the land the hospital sits on.

was donated by the Ayers family.

- This was built in 18 what?

- They started building it in 1855, and it was a completed and they moved in in may of 1857.

- And you've been working on it, not you personally, but you have some craftsman and they've been working on it for what, a couple of years?

- 2/1/2 years.

- Last time we looked at it, it was kind of a mess.

It was real dusty in there, and they were just taking it apart.

- And the plaster was falling, everything.

- It's a beauty now.

There's one thing on the front as we look at it that you still need to do.

- Yes, we still to do that, and what happened is after $2 million plus, iPlum ran out of money.

- You mean the porch?

- The porch right.

And I ran out of money before that, but God bless 'em, the folks, the Becker family, Joy, Elizabeth and Kristan at the Farmers State Bank, believed in me and gave me a loan where nobody would do that because they're very community minded.

They knew I was gonna do something good for the community.

- Your plan is to make a bed and breakfast out of this, and it will be called what?

- It will be called, at the suggestion of my Florence, Italy, design team they insisted I call it Villa DeWolf, because they said when they design this, they felt they were back home in Florence, because they said this is a distinctively Italianate house with so many Italian details, Tuscan arches you can see on the top there on the cupola.

So they said that they felt they were very much at home.

They said, "Call your place the Villa "not just a bed and breakfast."

- Gotcha.

So we get a chance to go in and actually see all the Italianate details, which are very nearly finished right now, aren't they?

- Very nearly finished.

I would say we're a 94, 95%, so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna be doing a fundraiser of telethon, to you raise the extra 150,000 I need, to get all my tax credits to get another 350,000.

And then there's the Esprit de Corps Academy, a youth school for music and performing arts will be launched, and this will become an economic engine to sustain that, in my lifetime and after it 'cause in my trust I'm leading, this building and the church building, which is now a theater to the nonprofits.

So it can have organically grown revenue all the time.

- That's terrific.

Let's go in and take a look.

- Sure.

(birds chirping) (door creaking) (footsteps clacking) - Well Scotty, I'd say you got yourself a grand entrance.

- Thank you.

You saw it before.

- It didn't look anything like this.

Oh, it's so beautiful and spacious and clean.

- Thank you.

- Everything is spotless.

- Thank you.

- The beautiful original floors, we've got a story about the floors, don't we?

'cause under this are the original pine floors- - There is no red pine- - And we'll be able to show that, and they overlaid this hardwood on top of that.

- Yes they did.

- That's very clever.

- Over the years.

- The staircase is Grande, and what's really nice about that it's one of these winding staircases that goes all the way to the third floor, - Fully suspended.

- So you get a really great effect when you get up there and look down, or if you look up, you get a great effect from this airway.

- It's rarely you see three levels of a fully suspended staircase.

- And the mirror, that actually came, we talked about this being an Italianate house, and that's it.

- Italianate house so that my design team, of Davide Rocchi and Jerry Ingram a native of Jacksonville, found that mirror for me.

And it's a beautiful 190 year old Italian mirror.

- Just getting it here was a real chore I'm sure.

I have just glimpsed at your ballroom, and it's a stunner.

Can we go in there first?

- Yeah., that is our (speaks in French) as they say in France.

Welcome to the ballroom.

- Oh, thank you.

Oh, my goodness.

Oh, and this always was a ballroom, wasn't it?

- That's what they use it for.

- Yes it was.

- So it would have been open just like this with some seating, (door banging) but mostly open.

- Yes, there was never any furniture in the middle of this.

It was always ready for the next dance.

And during the Civil War, an officer, a friend of theirs would come with their wives and dance in their hoop skirt gowns here, while the orchestra always played on the first landing 'cause, in this bouncy live room having an orchestra here would have been too loud.

So they had the music upstairs.

- So the music wafted in?

- Wafted down that staircase, yes.

- And then is this wallpaper?

what is the artwork here?

- The artwork here is very rare wallpaper, from 1820, and it's called monuments of Paris, and this would have been the pair of skyline outdoors along the same river, long before skyscraper buildings.

And it was painted by an Italian artist, but the company that did it was from France, and this original wallpaper is so rare, that a there's less than 20 sets available left in the world, and there's only a place in London where you can see it fully displayed anymore.

- How did they find it?

- An antiques dealer by name of Ed Killam in town found it for me, and negotiated a sale for me.

It was very expensive.

But I decided to do it because it gives this room, an unforgettable experience for the guests.

They'll never forget this room.

- And the way you have it on panels, it's like each individual work of art.

It's not like wallpaper at all.

- And that was Davide Rocchi the architect and Jerry Lee Ingram the designer's idea.

If they hadn't come along I would've done the wrong thing and just plastered it on the walls.

- And you just spent a lot more money because it's so expensive.

- And Ayer did a gratitude.

So all the decor you see, we gotta credit to Jerry Lee, and to Davide of Florence, Italy.

He being a native here, and went to school there and met this architect, and they had been spending the last 15 years, designing the most expensive resort in the world, which overlooks the whole Tuscan wine growing region owned by Mrs. Ferragamo who sold shoes for 10,000 up there.

- That name sounds familiar.

- Multi-billion dollar company and they've been doing that job.

So Jerry Lee reached out to me not knowing me and said, "That's my hometown and I wanna make sure "the restoration you're doing is gonna be a credit "to my hometown."

And it should be.

- You lucky guy.

- And I was so lucky, and hey came for peanuts and an airline ticket, and then when I talked to him on the phone, I said I'd love to have my ceiling done, in an Italian way with clouds and sky to go in with a wallpaper.

And they said, "Our friend that we go caffeine "with on the weekends, is 52 year old "Francesca Laurencich."

And together she and these two guys they make a Vogue Magazine, Conde Nast, Architectural Digest.

They're very well known and she's done major Italian government restorations and so forth.

- It is exquisite.

It's just exquisite.

- It's really 12 days here on a scaffolding doing that.

- It blends in perfectly with the wallpaper.

These chandeliers are unusual too.

- They're grand.

And they're so rare, the only other pair known to exist, are in the US Senate chambers that they found in the basement about 30 years ago, and they were in pieces and they lovingly restored them at great cost, and so when you go to the the US Senate Chamber you'll see these.

The only differences is there's has military figures on the top instead of the classic Italian detail, otherwise it's the same.

- And these were in the house?

- Yes, they were in here and they were all black and all not working, and they had to be rewired and restored by the Fish Find Finishes in Springfield who did the Edward's house.

And they did a stunning job on the chandeliers.

- Oh, they did.

And you're gonna use this as a music room.

You've got your baby grand in here, you've moved in.

On Sundays we play high tea and music salon, this way the public don't have to buy an overnight room to see this.

They can come any Sunday and enjoy classical music or other acoustic music in here, and a high tea experience.

- The acoustics are great because you really get (claps) a nice little background.

(Scotty claps) - When you have the string krotet, it's just like being in a European salon.

- Scotty, it was kind of customary and these big old homes to have a parlor on the left as you come in.

Usually I think that was the formal parlor, and then a less formal parlor on the right.

In this case they didn't do that.

They had the ballroom on that side, and they had the formal parlor on this side.

And it would have been used for, this is where you would receive guests I guess.

- Exactly.

And after dinner this was a favorite spot for guests Ayers and his gentlemen friends, who would come after dinner, and have their brandy and cigars here.

So hence they would close these doors on the pocket doors, and you'll notice that Tuscan archery we're referring to.

- Those doors are very unusual.

- Very unusual.

I don't think you'd find a pair like that in Springfield.

They're 11 feet high, and it's in the Tuscan Italian tradition.

- They're arched.

- That door has to be cut, it has to be huge, and it has to be cut perfectly.

- Exactly, and the doors still work.

I'll tell you another old secret.

There's plumbing runs behind this much space that we saved.

The doors can only go this far closed, but they can close all the way.

- And when this is a BNB, this will be used for what?

- Oh, this would be where guests can congregate and enjoy each other's company.

And if when we have the high tea and music salon next door in the ballroom they could waiting here for the event to happen where they can come here, and get away from the crowd or whatever.

- These aren't matching chandeliers to those in there.

- These are less rare than the other because these have four lights, and those six light ballroom chandeliers are the very rare ones.

And the reason why they're rare, is because in the Civil War, the scorched-earth policy, 90% of those were sold to the southern plantation homes, and those all went up in smoke as you know.

That's why these are so rare.

- Still lovely.

- They're beautiful.

- Were they in the house?

- They were in the house, but they were all black even that that beautiful turned a brass detail was all black from the years of coal, coal fire, and everything, and neglect.

- Marble fireplace.

- Marble fireplaces.

This is a domestic fireplace, but in the ballroom were the ones that were brought from Carrara, Italy.

- That's really Italian marble, but this is a- - It's a local marble product.

- This is original though?

So the house.

- Yes, all original, it 10 fireplaces in this house and 10 bathrooms.

- My goodness.

There weren't always 10 bathrooms, you put the bathroom in there.

- I put two extra ones, but prior to me, well yes, I did put all the extra ones in because all the suites each have their own bathroom.

- That's important.

But 10 fireplaces.

They were burning coal- - They had a big house to heat with a very high ceilings.

- Very high ceilings.

What are they, 11?

- They're a 12/1/2 feet?

- 12/1/2 feet, wow.

That's really something.

And then this was a dining room, and it will be a dinning room.

- This was their formal dining room, and where the restrooms are used to be an informal dining room but we've used up a lot of that already.

For the restrooms we had to put in for the public events.

- When you have guests staying overnight here this will be where they have breakfast?

- I thought it'd be fun to do the old fashioned way and let people eat communally, and get a chance to get acquainted with each other whereas otherwise they may not.

Did he give it an old fashioned feeling?

- How did you choose the wallpaper?

- There's no wallpaper here that's the beauty of it.

You see my design team of Rocchi and Ingram, decided this, the fellow called from Italy and said "I've changed my mind."

He originally had this the same color as that, and he said in Italian, he said we wanna make it more Italian.

And they do this a lot in their big villa these stories.

- So this is painted, it's not- - It's painted on by his design and he did the design.

And sent it over by the Production Express even though he was over here for awhile.

But then he went back, Mrs. Ferragamo needed him for a week and said "I'll send him right back."

By the time she sent him back, the COVID hit, and he's been trapped over there ever since and he's been trapped here, 'cause he has his home over there for 30 years.

- It was kind of a mixed blessing for you because he's here to help you out, did he?

- Exactly and because he's been here for this extended period, the decor has just gone through the roof and it is truly, a world-class effect they've gotten.

Of course working for their Ferragamos.

(laughs) So I'm just so humbly grateful to them because they worked for like dogs for almost nothing.

And just for the love of it, because he lived here and went to high school here, went to college here, and then went to Florence and the rest is history.

And he's just very pleased, and he was up until midnight.

He said, "Don't tell 'em that."

But I said, he was up to way past midnight last night to make sure, that everything was just right for the show today.

He's one of those people that has a passionate commitment to excellence, and I love working with people like that.

- Mayor Ezard, sometime you meet somebody that comes into town and they just have a world going on.

And that's kind of where Scotty is.

He's been kind of a gift to this town, isn't he?

- You know what, we wish we would have had Scotty years and years ago, but we're really glad we got him now.

- This was a big project, and this place was not in the best of shape and now it's a real asset to Jacksonville.

- It sure is.

I've driven by this place all my life born and raised here, and I saw the deterioration of that and for him to take that on, wow.

It speaks volumes because like I said, he found Jacksonville we didn't go out and search Scotty.

He found us and boy, we're happy about that.

- This is gonna be a different kind of a venue for people to come to Jackson, go to stay in.

There's probably not anything really like that here.

- There isn't.

And that's the vision he has, the first time he was kind of laying it out what he wanted to do and how he wanted to do it.

I was like, oh boy, you know what, if anybody can get that done, it's Scotty and he's gonna get it done because it's really close.

(footsteps clacking) - Scotty, I hear your boots on this floor and we mentioned that the original floor earlier and it had been covered with hardwood, but originally the whole house had this pine floor, didn't it?.

- Yes, and it still does.

And the other floors were added over the years on top, because at that time when Gus had his saw mill on his brick factory, this was the only thing he could mill around here was the red pine.

And you'll find it on a lot of old Jacksonville homes before the Civil War.

- It's really pretty.

And does last pretty well, you can see it still there.

- I thought it was worth saving.

- For your early birds when you have guests here, there'll be able to come in here for breakfast- - Delicious coffee and some fresh squeezed orange juice while they're waiting for breakfast.

- That's a pretty piece right there too.

- That's period correct to the house that piece is from 1850, and inside it has a compartment with a tin lining where you could have ice champagne in there.

- That's nice.

And this would have been the it's your kitchen now, it's your main kitchen, but it was always a kitchen.

It was called a keeping kitchen.

- Keeping kitchen because the actual cooking was done outdoors in a cookhouse.

And that they didn't have a fire danger, and they also kept the food odors out of the house And that was typical of the 1840s and 1850s.

- And the original house ended here with this wall.

- It ended here, and then in 1916, when the Hackett's moved in they added on to for a maid's quarters and so forth.

- And of course, you've got your arched windows again.

Over there, - Yes, we see the Tuscan - Italian arches all over again.

- Italian Tuscan look again.

We're gonna see that upstairs too.

It's amazing even in the kitchen.

That's such a beautiful touch.

- Scotty, when you get up these marvelous staircase you get to the suites, the level with the suites the second floor and the first one on your right, it gives you a sense of real modernism.

It's very modern and this old- - You like to mix the old and the new.

It's the design guys.

- He loves the black and white and gray doesn't he?

Was a very clean look.

- And then the artwork is original to him, and he's donated all this wonderful artwork to me.

It's amazing.

- That is remarkable.

- This is very very comfortable looking.

Really nice.

And you've got what, four suites on this level?

- We've got four rooms and all of them have their own en suite beds.

- We're gonna show one of those bathrooms and because everybody wants to view it.

- And this is one of the few fireplaces.

It's one of a kind here.

This is a painted decorated fireplace.

Was this original in the house?

- This original to the house, yes.

- We mentioned 10 fireplaces.

- 10 fireplaces, yes.

- Can you imagine?

That's a full-time job keeping all those fires just going.

- I know, they had to have a staff.

(all laughing) - And I wanna see this bathroom as long as we're here.

So the bathrooms are all designed very much the same, aren't they?

- Yes, very similar.

- And again, the black and white theme again.

- And you notice that you get to push button, light fixtures.

- Just like the old fashioned kind, huh?

That's a nice look that is nice Looking.

The vanity is real Italian and modern.

Neat.

- The Italian touches everywhere.

This is what do you expect from a couple of dudes from Florence.

(both laughing) - And then there's this pleasant area right in the middle, a seating area, and it gets all this light, all this natural light.

- Yes, and this is a classic example of their international design style, That they're known for in Europe and that's why they get in the Architectural Digest and Vogue Magazines and things.

- And there's your arch again.

- There's the Tuscan arch again.

And they created this balance.

See, there was plumbing runs in here, and they covered 'em so you don't even know they were there.

And the rest on the other side, it looks like it's always been there.

- Oh, I see so the plumbing was only on one side, but they matched on this side - The rest on the side yes, - And they matched it.

- Exposed pipes would have looked awful.

And that's the architects design from Italy.

- Did they do the horse for you, just for you?

- Yes that horse is done for me and also he said the only old mudgee he's gonna pay, to the crazy cowboy that owns the house, is that rug with a skin on cowhide and that horse he said, "Don't ask for any lodgepole furniture.

"It ain't gonna happen."

(both laughing) - Sweet number three.

- And again, all original artwork by Jerry Lee Ingram.

- Boy, is he talented.

And of course he designed, and he was able to, did he install that wallpaper on those murals down in the ballroom?

Did he do that?

- No, he didn't but he supervised it, and had the painter lady and worked with her side-by-side to make sure it was done correctly, or had to be put on separate expensive Sentra acid-free panels, So that in case there's ever a disaster of water coming down from the plumbing for some reason they can rescue that, very valuable wallpaper and take it off section by section with Velcro and then put it back again.

- There's one suite that's different.

And why did you choose to make one of them red?

- Because this was a kind of a feminine touch in here and Mrs. Ayers, the mother Eliza Freitag Ayers that we saw the painting of downstairs, she lived here after she no longer could handle herself in the house next door when she got elderly, and she stayed here.

- So this is for her and for the ladies that might want something a little more passionate black and white.

- This will probably be one of our most popular suites, - I would suspect so.

because it's dramatic and very nice, 100 year old carpet.

- And this is a very unusual feature because you don't see this anywhere else in the house.

Are are we covering up something here?

- Yes, we're covering up a window where we had to enclose.

The window used to go to the outdoors, and then we had to enclose and put a wall there because for a fire stair access it had to be mandated by the fire department.

- I wanna show this bathroom too because this is different.

- Put the light on.

- I will.

It's not, I think it's already on.

- Oh, it's on.

- It's already on.

(laughs) - It's quite different.

The floors is the same- - And he's coordinated all the colors so nicely.

You made it red to match the room, and this looks, of course this has a lot of red in it too.

- This is the finest piece of furniture in the whole house, and this is actually looks French but it's from Germany, from the year 1840.

And it took very delicate artists to create brass lace that went over a full tortoise shell.

And this curve is not steamed wood but they had to liberty take wood that big and carve out, an S shaped piece for it.

- Where did you find it?

- It was found for me by Ed Killam, of the local antiquarian antiques and he knew I needed exceptional things and he went on a hunt and found the things I needed for this house.

- Wow.

Scotty, we're on the third floor now.

And this is interesting 'cause this shows that we saw all the finished product.

This is still has a little work in progress to go, but your intention is to make this a family suite, big enough for a family with two or three kids.

- Yes or more because you're gonna have two sleeper sofas here and a big king size thing for mom and dad.

And this way, young families that babe in arms they can run up the three flights of stairs.

But I won't sell it to a senior.

So just perfect.

- You have a little kitchenette here, there's the master and there's the bathroom back over there and you can see- - And he probably did this so mom and dad can do their makeup or shaving and then the kids can use the other part of this play.

- It's kind of neat too because you've the exposed brick you can see what this- - Yes, and that's gonna stay like that.

- Really, really neat.

And then this, they would have access to the rest of this floor as well, which is kind of a public area.

And you still have some work to do here but it'll happen on it.

And this is kind of nice because you've made a reading room/library out of this.

- Yes, median library.

Classic old library with the old book cases.

- Those bookcases came, we mentioned that you had bought an old church.

- Yes, and they came from the church when they built the school in 1920.

These are from the year 1920, and their modular sense we were able to frame the window.

And the Verdin Book Company, in Verdin Books on The Square in Springfield did all the library, custom libraries.

So it's an honor system.

People can check out books, take them to their room.

- Oh, That's nice.

And if they're high tech folks if they're not wanting to read, there's place for their computer to charge and that stuff.

- And they can bring light onto their subject or not.

and no wires to trip on.

And this came from the church too.

This was the big conference table in the pastors palette.

That is nice.

This is, this is going to be a real gift.

It really is.

Scotty, throughout this tour, we've been looking at, there's original artwork over this house, usually by like one photographer and one painter.

But this is a different piece of work here.

- This is an original painting of Abraham Lincoln.

I commissioned one of California's best known portrait artists, Ron Keas, K-E-A-S. And he did this for me, and I commissioned it the minute I bought the house I knew I wanted to Lincoln painting here, and I knew he would knock it out of the park.

And that painting is just magical when you stop and look at it.

- It's very familiar because it comes right from a photograph that a lot of people have seen.

- And as did all the other paintings of this scene of him, the old paintings, but they weren't near as nice as this one.

And then Ron, God bless him, gifted me a huge painting of the newly found picture the Garrett type of Augusta Ayers, the son that built this house, and he sent it.

It's a huge beautiful masterpiece sized painting.

And we're gonna find a special place for it in the house so that for the first time when people see it there'll be the first time they've had a chance to even know what Ayers look like.

I found the photograph in an archive in Texas at Rice University at Woodson Library, in an obscurity just tucked away that nobody would have known about if I hadn't researched, Scotty, thanks, and best of luck on your venture.

- Thank you, it was so good to have you come back and see the after effects than you saw the before.

(Mark laughs) - Yes we did.

Thank you, sir.

After years of preparation, the DeWolf Bed and Breakfast, plans to be open this summer with another Illinois Story in Jacksonville I'm Mark McDonald, thanks for watching.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] 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.

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