Marty's blog

 Before

I mentioned Thaddeus Giddings in an old blog several years ago and meant to follow up, but never did.  Giddings might have been a kind of spiritual mentor to me - in several ways, though we could never have met.  Definitely a kindred spirit.  And, a resident of Oak Park for about a decade or so, same as me.

A most amazing character, the world does not produce many of his kind!  among other things,  Giddings was a musician – published several books – started music education in the Oak Park Schools – AND – he designed kitchens in his spare time!  His philosophy about kitchen design is from a very practical basis and very much like my own philosophy today, although a few things have changed since his time, especially the need now to combine aesthetics into a well planned and functioning kitchen.  But his ideas are a perfect jumping off point for any modern designer, because they are logical.  Giddings could even be considered a father of modern kitchen design – he certainly had strong influence on at least one important architect at the time.

Architect William Purcell, also from Oak Park, admired Giddings very much and wrote something about Giddings in his extensive journals. Here is some brief biographical info. of Giddings (if anyone ever comes across the book biography, please let me know!!), and here is a link to the history of the famous Interlochen Music Academy in Michigan of which he was a founder.  I had several friends who are now doing well in the acting and music professions who are Interlochen grads – no better place in the Midwest for young people to get that kind of comprehensive arts education and performing experience.

Originally from Anoka, Minnesota, Giddings left his early mark there, and then across the country from New York to Los Angeles.  The author of several books relating to music education, some of his books are still in print — those not are still floating around out there in used book stores, important references to those researching the history of public music education in the country.

The magic of the Internet and Google has led me to learn about two historic landmark sites in Anoka, both the legacy of Giddings;  the “stone house“, one of four whimsical structures (three are now gone) Giddings built for himself on his property the Rum River in Anoka.

(ABC Newspapers photo)

The other is the historic outdoor Anoka Amphitheatre designed by Purcell and Elmslie, considered by some to have taken the Prairie School of architecture to it’s most refined stage.  Sadly, the years have taken their toll on the structure.

(Windego Park Society Photo)

But both monuments to this mostly unknown genius are now somewhere in the process of restoration.  Let’s hope the effort is not lost because of the current economy!

If I could accomplish only half as much in my lifetime as Thaddeus P. Gidding did in his, I might consider myself a success!

Photo from the Second Book of the North Shore ; homes, gardens, landscapes, highways and byways past and present- by Marian A. White, pub. J. Harrison White, 1911

Ogden Armour was heir to P.D. Armour of meat packing fame - inheriting the business and Chicago’s richest fortune at the time.  Writer Arthur Meeker, whose own father was Ogden Armour’s partner, described the house, and the malaise of an unhappy marriage between Ogden and his wife, Lolita (a close friend of Meeker’s mother) – and Armour’s affair? with Opera star Mary Garden.  Intersting stuff.

Meeker in his 1955 book Chicago With Love;  a polite and personal history described the J. Ogden Armour “summer house” in Lake Forest, Illinois this way:  [When he and his sister Mary were children]

…”We had everything we could possibly want – more, no doubt, than was good for us – but the Armours had that, and a great deal else as well.  Not long after Arcady [Ogden's manse] was built, Ogden Armour, my father’s chief partner, erected an elaborate companion piece, Mellody Farm, a couple of miles north-west of us.  We felt seignorial with our hundred acres: the Armours had a thousand.  They made a long drive in from Telegraph Road bordered by rows of young elms, which had to be buttressed by wires to withstand fierce Midwestern winds.  Half-way along it, the road swooped over a huge stone bridge surmounting the St. Paul tracks (the Armours had their own station), then down again to two lakes, well stocked with bass and perch, but always, mysteriously, fuller of bullheads than of anything else.  These ornamental pieces of water were the haunt of a race of war-like swans, which were wont to chase us whenever we came near them.  A little farther on, a patch of woodland concealed the stables and greenhouses and other outbuildings; the drive swept grandly past lawns and clumps of trees to the house itself, an authentic vision of pale marbles and rose-pink plaster.  It was, naturally, an Italian villa;  I always felt the trouble with it was that it was too damned Italian.  Nothing could have looked more lamentably inappropriate under the high, thin prairie sky than this ponderous pleasure palace, with its fountains and rose gardens and formal, cypress-lined terraces, in which nobody took any pleasure.  (shall I except the little Meekers, running wild upstairs amid a riot of silk afghans, scented bath salts, and solid-gold toilet sets?)  The interior was, if possible, even grander then the exterior; it was as sumptuous as the late Lady Mendel [designer] and an unlimited bank account could make it….What was it for?–the panelled library of books nobody read; the music room with its harp and organ and grand pianos no-one knew how to play; the lake that wasn’t fished; the horses that weren’t ridden; the roses in the garden one hadn’t time to smell!

“Having been born and brought up in a happy family, I found it disturbing to learn that there were unhappy ones, too, not only in story-books, but living next door, as next door goes in the country.”

The house still stands; it is part of Lake Forest Academy and is used for receptions, corporate functions, wedding and banquets.