A History of Ellwood House

Isaac and Harriet Ellwood, newly wealthy from their barbed wire investments, hired architect George Otis Garnsey of Chicago to design a stately home on their newly purchased property in DeKalb. A prominent architect, Garnsey was known to the area, having designed St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in nearby Sycamore.

Construction on the home began in April 1879 and the home was occupied by the family in November that same year. The original cost is given in the newspapers of the time at between $40,000 and $50,000.

In typical Victorian fashion, the house combined elements of several historical styles. The mansard roof, adapted from the French Second Empire style, is still one of the most prominent features today. The roof was restored to its original design if multi-colored Vermont slate in 2000.

Other elements were borrowed from the Victorian Gothic style. Most prominent were the small front porch with a Gothic arch and columns, the steeply pitched gables, and the three-lobed arch in the third story windows. Surviving to the present day is the cast-iron roof cresting with its trefoil design.

One of the first major documented improvements to the house occurred just six years after the original construction. When the home was originally designed, the mansion kitchen, servants' rooms and storage were located in the basement. The burdens of stairs, rising kitchen odors, vermin and gloomy ambiance were cited as sufficient cause to relocated all kitchen and service spaces up to the first-floor level.

Garnsey was again hired to design the new addition to the home. Situated at a 45-degree angle off the northwest corner, the new addition added 1,500 square feet to the home. Echoing exterior details of the original home it blended almost seamlessly with the original floor plan.

The new kitchen wing displaced the wooden porte cochere (or carriage entrance), which was moved to the southwest corner of the mansion. Access from the kitchen wing to all four floors was made possible at various connections between the new staff stair hall. Prior to the addition of this wing, the only assumed access to the third floor was via the main rotunda stairs.

American design tastes changed immensely following the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The Ellwoods hired architect Charles Brush of Chicago to transform their home into a classical mansion in the newly popular Georgian or Colonial Revival style. The revival style looked back to the 18th century English and American architecture for inspiration.

Classical elements replaced many of the earlier Gothic features. On the exterior, the most prominent change was the addition of the portico and porte cochere. The entrance was given Georgian features, including a fan-shaped window over the doorway. A Palladian window with a large shell motif highlighted the second floor and a classical cornice replaced the earlier bracketed one. The dining room was also enlarged by the addition of a semi-circular bay matching the portico in design,

Isaac passed the mansion on to his youngest son, Perry and wife May Ellwood. After hiring the architecture firm of Perkins, Fellows and Hamilton, the younger Ellwoods made sweeping alterations to the mansion. Perry and May’s changes brought the mansion to the home we know today.

The most significant changes were the addition of the terrace on the south side of the house, the addition of the sunroom wing and the relocation of the porte cochere to the north side of the portico.

The entire south side of the mansion was “squared up” to accommodate this work. The sunroom wing was a novel addition in the Arts & Crafts style contrasting with the rest of the mansion. Many changes were made to the interior of the mansion at this time too. The most important was the creation of the English-style “Living Room” from two smaller rooms on the south side of the main hall. As a result of these changes, the Ellwood House assumed much more of the feeling of an elegant country house, integrated into the landscape and its spacious pastoral setting.

In 1963, Northern Illinois Proffessor Jack Arends contacted May Ellwood expressing interest in saving the Ellwood House for posterity. Shortly after, Arends joined the Board of the DeKalb Fine Arts Association. On December 4, 1964, May Ellwood and her children, I.L. Ellwood, Patience “Patty” Ellwood Towle, and John Fiske Ellwood, agreed to leave the property to the DeKalb Park District upon May Ellwood’s death with the caveat that the Association be allotted time to establish a museum. The Ellwood House Association (EHA) museum board would come later.

According to a 1972 letter from Arends to Henry Slade, President of the EHA Board, the original plan was “to restore the main floor nut to remodel the second floor into an art gallery. This idea was fortunately discarded several years later when it became apparent that the only sensible thing to do was to restore the house in its entirety.”

Since 1964 the Ellwood House Museum and the DeKalb Park District have operated the entire site as a museum and public park.