Charles G. Dawes House - The Architecture

The Architecture

The house is considered to be an example of the Chateauesque style of architecture, but in many respects it is not typical.

The style was introduced to the United States in 1882 by Richard Morris Hunt, the first American architect to attend the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, when he built a palace in the style at 660 Fifth Avenue in New York for Alva and William Kissam Vanderbilt (demolished, 1926). Architects of the time who attempted to create pure examples of the style emulated the features of the 16th Century chateaux of the Loire Valley in France, usually sheathing the buildings with limestone and decorating them with elaborate Renaissance carving. Perhaps the best example of this style remaining in Chicago is the house at 1801 S. Prairie Ave. (see picture) that was designed in 1890 by Solon Spencer Beman and built for the piano manufacturer William W. Kimball at a reputed cost of one million dollars. The house, which the noted author and essayist Thomas Schlereth from The University of Notre Dame called "a brilliant exercise in the chateau style", was designed using exterior features from the 16th Century remodeling of the Chateau de Josselin in Brittany. Certainly the best example ever built in the United States is the 225 room Biltmore House (1888–1895), the home of George Washington Vanderbilt constructed in Asheville, NC, which was also designed by Hunt.
The detailing of the Dawes house represents more the flavor of rural French architecture, and in this respect has more in common with the rustic character of Grey Towers, the much larger home of Gifford Pinchot outside of Milford, Pennsylvania that was designed largely by Hunt in 1886, but in which Ficken had a hand in some of the details. Even a quick study of the Dawes house, Grey Towers, and the more formally detailed John A. McGill house (1892) in Chicago (see picture) will show how closely they are all related to each other and to their French antecedents, especially to the Château de Chambord at Chambord, Loir-et-Cher in France.
Richard Morris Hunt became the leading proponent of French-inspired architecture after his return to the United States from his studies in Europe in 1855. In 1873 he received both his first urban commission and his first commission in the city of Chicago when he built a house in the related Second Empire style for the iconic Chicago retailer Marshall Field at 1905 S. Prairie Ave that was considered to be the "first really artistic dwelling house" in Chicago, and although the country's enthusiasm for French-styled buildings that he was largely responsible for creating waned in the early years of the 20th century, interest in it remains with us to this day.