At the end of the nineteenth century, a row of magnificent mansions extended for several miles along Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, which rivaled Bellevue Avenue in Newport in the eyes of local boosters as the “most beautiful street in America.” Sadly this millionaires’ row has been almost entirely demolished, as its affluent homeowners fled to the suburbs, and as these buildings aged and became expensive to maintain.
But an impressive vestige of this Gilded Age splendor remains in the Hay-McKinney Mansion on University Circle, which stands across from the Cleveland Museum of Art and is maintained by the Western Reserve Historical Society, the city’s oldest cultural organization. The one stately home in Cleveland that is open to public tours, the building offers a glimpse into the grand lifestyle of wealthy Clevelanders during the period when great fortunes were being made in the city, by figures such as Amasa Stone in railroads, Samuel Mather in Great Lakes shipping, Mark Hanna in coal mines and railroads, and John D. Rockefeller in oil. And, of course, this was also the period when Mark Hanna developed the modern political machine and engineered the election of four Ohio-born Republican presidents.
The house was constructed for Clara Stone Hay, the widow of a figure notable as both a writer and statesman, John Hay. The intimate of the writers Henry Adams and Henry James, Hay achieved early fame as the author of a book of popular verse, Pike County Ballads, written in vernacular speech. He then served as Abraham Lincoln’s private secretary, co-authored a multi-volume biography of Lincoln, and ended his career with distinguished service as secretary of state under President McKinley. He stands out as one of the most versatile and fascinating characters of America’s Gilded Age.
After her husband’s death, Clara decided to move from Washington, DC, back to Cleveland, to be near her sister, Flora Stone Mather. As an architect she chose Abram Garfield, the son of President James Garfield, a graduate of the architectural school at MIT, who designed the house in the Renaissance revival style that had recently come into fashion—and was beginning to replace the Romanesque style popularized by H. H. Richardson. Curiously, she never actually occupied the house (which was not completed until 1911), since, after her sister’s death in 1909, she decided not to return to Cleveland but to stay in Washington. A few years after her death, her children sold the house to a wealthy steel magnate Price McKinney. He died in 1925, and his widow sold it to the historical society in 1938.
The mansion is twenty thousand square feet in size, and it’s useful to think of the structure as two distinct buildings covered by one roof, one for the wealthy owners and the other for the impressively large collection of servants needed to serve just four or five people—a staff that numbered at least ten in 1920. Downstairs, for the family, there’s a flowing suite of public rooms, including an impressive grand entry hall (Figs. 2, 3), a front parlor, and a dining room with a curved bay of windows (Fig. 9). In the dining room one can view the impressive array of dining utensils in use at the time, including a set of silver tongs made specifically for eating asparagus. Upstairs, in the family area, are parlors, sitting rooms, and several impressively large bedrooms (Figs. 11, 12).
Perhaps the most impressive architectural feature is the staircase in the entry hall, which was brought from the Hays’ former house on Euclid Avenue, which was demolished at the time the new one was built (Fig. 2). It was carved by John Herkomer, a Bavarian-born master carver in Cleveland, a portrait of whom is displayed above the first landing, along with his carving tools.
Rather different in character is the plainly finished servants’ area for the help, who performed the innumerable household chores required to keep up the house in an era before home appliances. They cleaned and dusted, mended dresses, cooked and served meals, did laundry and ironing, polished the silver, stood in attendance, and performed endless little chores such as scouring the grime out of kerosene lamps. Their zone, amounting to a substantial building in its own right, was in the back of the house, behind the dining room; they slept in tiny bedrooms on an upper floor.
A little-known fact is that the Western Reserve Historical Society holds one of the largest and finest costume collections in the United States, with well over forty thousand items of clothing. Only a small handful of other museums own a collection so large. It’s also a collection with a distinctive character. Most of this country’s major costume collections, such as that at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, focus on costume as an artistic and theatrical art form. While the distinction is not always neat and clear, and while many of its holdings are very stylish, the Western Reserve’s collection is tipped more toward social history. Most of the garments came from the Cleveland area; in a great many instances, we know exactly who owned them. They offer a glimpse into aspects of history and social history that are easily overlooked.
This distinctive viewpoint is very evident in the exhibition of women’s evening wear now on view in the Hay-McKinney Mansion, Fashion After Dark, curated by the historical society’s costume curator, Patty Edmonson (Figs. 13–16). It explores a remarkable shift in human behavior that we tend to take for granted today: the way that innovations in artificial lighting moved us away from dependence on sunlight and opened up a world of socializing and entertainment at night.
This revolution in illumination occurred in two phases—the development of light from coal gas in the early 1800s and the invention of practical electric lighting in the 1870s. Interestingly, Cleveland was the first city in the world whose streets were illuminated with electric light. In 1879, when Thomas Edison was still perfecting his light bulb, engineer Charles Brush introduced arc lighting—in which illumination comes from a raw electrical charge within a bulb, rather than the glowing filament in an Edison bulb—to Public Square, and then went on to illuminate cities beyond Cleveland, such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. In the case of both gas and electricity, these new technologies were used for street lighting well before they reached private homes. The new forms of illumination encouraged the emergence of individuals who, in reverse of using sunlight as their clock, socialized at night rather than by daylight.
What’s fascinating and intriguing is how women’s fashions responded to this change, with new colors, new fabrics, and new devices for creating sparkle and adornment. Gaslight flickered and was warm in color; electric light was steadier and cooler in tonality. Gaslight favored colors such as cream and red, and endowed them with a warm glow; electric light encouraged a somewhat cooler and broader palette. The discovery of synthetic dyes led to new colors such as mauveine. By the early twentieth century, a whole new spectrum had opened up for evening wear, but as an alternative to using color, many wealthy women wore black, which they adorned with light-reflecting jewels, sequins, paillettes, rhinestones, and other glittering adornments. New methods of manufacture led to the development of trimmings made of cut steel and faceted glass and of new materials such as Bakelite, which replaced earlier sequins made of gelatin, which tended to soften or melt with body heat and humidity.
Along with being a visual treat that nicely complements the formal elegance of the Hay- McKinney Mansion, Fashion After Dark encourages us to reflect on a momentous change in the way people work and socialize that we tend to regard as unremarkable today.
Guided tours of the Hay-McKinney Mansion are available on Saturdays at 11 am and 1 pm. The exhibition Fashion After Dark is on view to June 30.
HENRY ADAMS is a professor of art history at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.
