Glessner House Museum
1800 S Prairie Ave
312.326.1480
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Glessner House
- When
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Ongoing
Wednesdays–Sundays (noon–3pm)
(schedule) - Where
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- Price
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$10
- Links
Note:
Docent-led tours are available for one house or both. Tours are free on Wednesdays, and meet at the Glessner coach house, on the west end of the building's 18th Street facade.
Chicago's historic Prairie Avenue district — the site of the 1812 Fort Dearborn Massacre — became known after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 as the "original Gold Coast." In its prime, it was an elite neighborhood of Victorian mansions occupied by Armours, Pullmans, Fields, and Kimballs. The most well-preserved of the remaining few houses here are Glessner House, whose fortress-like exterior belies its enchanting, oak-paneled English Arts and Crafts interior; and Clarke House, Chicago's oldest, and the best surviving example of the Greek Revival architecture so popular in the Gilded Age.
