1801 S Prairie Ave
Chicago, IL 60616, USA

William W. Kimball House (Cahner's Publishing Company, Inc.) - National Register of Historic Places

Statement of Significance:

In his Old Chicago Houses, published in 1941, John Drury cited the Kimball House as Chicago's finest example of the French Chateau style of architecture. Indeed, its significance as typifying this style is recognized nationally today. Marcus Wiffen, architectural historian and author of American Architecture Since 17.8p: A Guide to the Styles, includes a photograph of the Kimball House among tie illustration she gives of the Chateauesque" style.

The "Chateauseque" style, according to Wiffen, is characterized by masonry construction, asymmetrical plans, and silhouettes with high steep sided hipped roofs rising to a ridge or a flat top. These roofs are surmounted by metal railing s or openwork metal cresting. Dormer windows with pinnacled gables are universal to the style. In the Kimball House, these characteristics are epitomized,

Solon S. Beman, architect of the Kimball House, was brought to Chicago from New York in I879, by George Pullman. Chiefly noted for designing the village of Pullman, said to be America's first planned industrial town, Beman is also known for having designed Chicago's Studebaker (now Fine Arts) Building and Grand Central Station, in addition to the Kimball House.

Villiam W. Kimball, who commissioned Beman to design his house, was the founder of a piano and organ manufacturing company that was to become one of the city's leading firms. According to Chicago and it’s Makers, Kimball was one of the city's best-loved citizens. He was also one of its wealthiest and is said to have spent a million dollars on his mansion.

Built on Prairie Avenue, which an old Chicago ^yin g quoted by Arthur Meeker in his novel Prairie Avenue described as "the sunny street that holds the sifted few," the Kimball home stood near those of Marshall Field, Philip Armour, Pullman, and John J, Glessner. With the Glessner House, designed by H. H, Richardson in 1886 and designated an official "Chicago Landmark" in 1970, the Kimball House is practically the last remaining evidence of Prairie Avenue's high point as Chicago's foremost residential street during the l880's and l890's.

With the exception of the Glessner House, the mansions on Prairie Avenue followed the vogue of the day and were built in styles derived from architecture of the past. The Kimball House was no exception. Patterned by Beman after the Chateau de Josselin, in the French province of Brittany, it is significant today because it portrays a way of life long since gone from the Chicago—and American—scene.

The house is further distinctive because it stands in the immediate vicinity of an event important in Chicago history—the Fort Dearborn Massacre. I t was near what is today l8th Street and Prairie Avenue that those men, women, and children fleeing the Fort during the War of l8l 2 were slaughtered. A statue which formerly marked the spot is now housed in the Chicago Historical Society, while a plaque commemorating the tragedy is affixed to the building at the northeast corner of the intersection, across from the Kimball House.