John W. Griffiths Mansion
- Architect
- Solon Spencer Beman
- Year
- 1892
- Style
- Chateauesque
- City
- Chicago, IL
Built in 1893-1894 at 3806 S. Michigan Avenue for contractor John W. Griffiths, who helped rebuild Chicago after the Great Chicago Fire, this Chateauesque house by Solon Spencer Beman was one of the last grand homes raised on Michigan Avenue before the Panic of 1893 and industrial encroachment ended the street's run as a mansion row. After Griffiths died in 1937, the house became the meeting hall of the Quincy Club, a social club for Black railroad workers, and later served as the first home of the DuSable Museum of African American History.
the building
Limestone tower and dormers. The limestone-clad house carries an octagonal tower at its northeast corner, corbels running the roofline, and dormers topped with finials — the full Chateauesque vocabulary applied to a single Michigan Avenue house.
the style
Chateauesque design, modeled on French Renaissance chateaux, was the choice of Gilded Age families building showpiece freestanding mansions; here it dressed a contractor's own home at the tail end of Michigan Avenue's era as a millionaires' row.
More on Chateauesquesignificance
Added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 5, 1982. Beyond its architecture, the house holds civic significance as an early gathering place for Black civic life in Chicago — home to the Quincy Club and later the first home of the DuSable Museum of African American History.
nearby
- Wabash Avenue YMCA
- South Side Community Art Center
- Chicago Bee Building
- Martin Roche–John Tait House
- Ida B. Wells-Barnett House
- Crown Hall