Historic Mansions

Alexander Stewart House (Embassy of Luxembourg), Washington DC

Date added:January 19, 2011

Alexander Stewart was born in the Province of New Brunswick, Canada on September 12th, 1829. In 1849 he moved to Wausau, Wisconsin where he was employed by a small lumber company. He rose to manager and eventually, through investments, gained control of "a great deal of lumber land in Wisconsin and Michigan" and some of the western states. (The Washington Post, 5-25-12) Active in politics, Stewart was a delegate to the 1884 Republican National Convention; and from 1895 through 1901, he served three terms as a United States Congressman from Wisconsin.

In 1908 his wife, Margaret Gray Stewart, purchased a lot at 2200 Massachusetts Avenue for $20,000. Shortly afterwards, Alexander Stewart was issued a permit to build a $92,000 residence on this site.

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Alfred Uihlein House, Milwaukee Wisconsin

Date added:November 29, 2009

Alfred Uihlein House, Milwaukee Wisconson

This excellent, late nineteenth-century mansion was built for an executive of the nearby Schlitz Brewing Co. and was at the time it was demolished one of the last surviving homes in the once affluent German residential area popularly known as Uihlein Hill. Alfred Eugene Uihlein, the mansion's first owner, left the house to his three surviving children, who donated it to the Archdiocese of Milwaukee in December, 1935. It became the property of the City of Milwaukee in 1970.

The original owner of this house was a prominent member of an illustrious Milwaukee family. Alfred E. Uihlein (1852-1935) came to the United States from Germany in 1867; and after working for a few years in breweries at St. Louis, Missouri, and Leavenworth, Kansas, he settled in Milwaukee, where he joined the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Co. One of Milwaukee's early breweries, this company was founded in the late 1840s by August Krug, Uihlein's uncle. On Krug's death in 1856 his business manager, Joseph Schlitz, took charge of the firm; and after Schlitz died nineteen years later, Alfred Uihlein and his brothers operated the brewery. Alfred served as superintendent until 1917, when he succeeded Henry Uihlein as president. Under the Uihleins' leadership Schlitz became one of the nation's leading breweries. (in 1969 it was the second largest brewer in the country.)

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Chalet Schell (Northfield Chateau), Northfield Massachusetts

Date added:January 07, 2010

Francis Robert Schell, a New York capitalist drawn to Northfield by an interest in its religious work, acquired 125 acres of land in the heart of town where he built his "castle." Completed in 1903 while the Schells were in Europe, the chateau contained 99 rooms and stood on a knoll at the highest elevation of the grounds overlooking the colonial village of Northfield. Apparently his wife was horrified when they returned and saw the mansion: She had always wanted a "rose-covered cottage in the country." Local residents who worked at the Northfield Inn, where Mrs. Schell lived, remember Mrs. Schell being asked about the castle. Her response was "I don't like it, and I never go near it." She insisted also that her room in the inn face away from the chateau.

After the death of Mr. Schell, the mansion became a burden upon his estate, fell into disrepair, and finally fell into the hands of the Northfield Hotel Company, which bought it for the land value and used it as an adjunct to its inn. It remained more ornamental than practicable, with its great rooms, its vast mirrors, its costly crystal chandeliers, it ramps, and its stairways objects of curiosity rather than utility. It was torn down in 1963.

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