The James Charnley Residence is located in Chicago's Gold Coast neighborhood, in the 1300 block of North Astor Street. The house is now called the Charnley–Persky House and is operated as a Museum by The Society of Architectural Historians (SAH). An Adler & Sullivan design, the townhouse is the work of Louis Sullivan and a young junior draftsman working in his office by the name of Frank Lloyd Wright. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970.
The house was completed in 1892 for Charnley, a Chicago lumberman who lived in the house with his family for about a decade. The building was later owned by members of the Waller family, who invested in real estate. The house was purchased by the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in 1986 and subsequently restored. Seymour Persky purchased the house in 1995 and donated it to the SAH who renamed the building to the Charnley–Persky House to honor their benefactor.
The plain brick facade with simple ornamentation was quite different than other houses on the Gold Coast, but the interior is distinguished by rich ornamentation that is typical of Sullivan's work.
Famous quotes containing the words james and/or house:
“Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think they must have such a one as their neighbors have.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)