Theurer-Wrigley House
- Architect
- Richard E. Schmidt
- Year
- 1896
- Style
- Renaissance Revival
- City
- Chicago, IL
Joseph Theurer, owner of the Schoenhofen Brewing Company, commissioned this Lincoln Park mansion in 1896 from architect Richard E. Schmidt, working possibly with Hugh M.G. Garden—two architects who later helped define the Prairie School. In 1911 the Wrigley family bought the house, and it has been known as the Wrigley Mansion ever since.
the building
A brewer's Italian palace. Schmidt built the house in a late-Italian Renaissance style at a grand scale: a four-story main house of more than 15,000 square feet with eight bedrooms, a conservatory, and a ballroom, plus a separate three-story coach house with further bedrooms.
Considered for the mayor. By 1984 the house had sat vacant for decades, and a plan surfaced to convert it into the official residence of Chicago's mayor. The plan was never carried out.
the style
The house is built in a late-Italian Renaissance Revival style, a grand historicist mode Theurer chose for a mansion meant to announce a brewing fortune; the same architects, Schmidt and possibly Garden, would soon turn away from this kind of historicism to help invent the plainer, horizontal Prairie style.
More on Renaissance Revivalthe architect
Richard E. Schmidt designed the house in 1896, possibly with Hugh M.G. Garden; both architects went on to become prominent figures in the Prairie School movement.
significance
The Theurer-Wrigley House was designated a Chicago Landmark in 1979 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
nearby
- Building at 2440 N. Lakeview Avenue
- Building at 399 West Fullerton Parkway
- Reebie Storage Warehouse
- Francis J. Dewes House
- Ann Halsted House
- Elks National Memorial Headquarters Building