The Wandering Chimney Pots

As the cold winter weather approaches it is a perfect time to take a closer look at what else, chimney pots.

If you have visited the Campbell House recently, you may recall three chimney pots as part of the Lucas Place exhibit. As we moved the chimney pots back into storage, we thought it might be interesting to recount their history. For supposedly stationary objects, these pots have moved around quite a bit, perhaps emphasizing the truthfulness of the old adage, “Not all who wander are lost.” This, then, is the tale of the wandering chimney pots.

The three chimney pots, from left, are A, B, and C for this article’s purposes.

 

But what is a chimney pot? A chimney pot is made of terra cotta and is placed on top of the chimney to expand the length of the chimney inexpensively, and to improve the chimney’s draft. A chimney with more than one pot on it indicates that there is more than one fireplace on different floors sharing the chimney.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the chimney pots were never the subject of historical photographs at Campbell House. Luckily, however, there are just enough photos of the side and rear of the house that their presence can be discerned. In one of the 1885 photographs, for instance, the chimney pots can be seen sticking up above the carriage house. Upon closer examination, the octagonal pot (we’ll call it Pot B for now) sits on the rearmost chimney, servicing the kitchen and rear third floor. The round pot (henceforth Pot A) is on Mrs. Kyle’s Bedroom’s chimney. Interestingly, in another angle of the house, another round pot can be seen on the rear parlor chimney. Pot A could be either one of these.

Peaking above the Carriage House are pots A (in blue) and B (in red)

A closeup of the chimneys clearly shows the exact style of both pots.

This angle shows the pots on the rear parlor and Mrs. Kyle’s bedroom. Either pot could be Pot A.

Notably, there are no pots of the Pot C variety. To find them, we have to fast-forward to 1930, when suddenly there are eleven of them. For some reason, when those pots went up, the decision was made to save pots A and B, and place them together on the rearmost chimney on either side of Pot C. As grateful as we are for the decision to save them, we can’t help but wonder: why put the fanciest two pots on the least visible chimney?

It’s easy to overlook the chimneys in this photo, but looking closely reveals that two of the three pots on the rear chimney are different in size and shape. Pots A and B have moved again!

 

Whatever the reason, pots A and B remain on the back chimney in this photo from the 1960s. The C pots, however, have been rearranged, possibly by the museum. Now, two C pots rest on each of the parlor chimneys, providing better symmetry than was present in the 1930s.

Although hard to make out, Pot A is circled in red, and Pot B in blue.

 

The pots are rearranged yet again after the museum’s first restoration in 1968. Evidently looking for the best aesthetics, the museum plopped pot A on the rear parlor, and pot B on the front parlor. It may have been at this point that pot B was plugged by cement, although for what reason (and why only this pot) is unknown.

 

Despite decades of exposure, the collection of chimney pots survived whatever Mother Nature threw at them, suffering little more than staining and discoloration. That all changed in 1998, when a strong gust of wind sent one pot, of the “C” type, hurtling towards the ground below. Luckily, no one was injured, although the pot lost much of its upper third. This pot now lives in the basement.

Its a hard life, being a chimney pot.

 

When The Restoration began in 1999, the pots were moved yet again. With scaffolding thrown up around the whole house, the decision was made to temporarily remove pots A and B for their safety. Naturally, the pots have never returned to the roof. For some reason, pot C was also moved off the roof.

This brings the saga of the chimney pots back to where we began, with the pots heading towards storage. Given their propensity to move around, though, maybe we’d better keep a close eye on them…

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The Missing Pieces

St. Louis Star-Times article from 1941. Click to view larger version.

Part of what makes the Campbell House Museum so special is its collection of thousands of original furnishings and personal items left behind by the Campbell family. CHM’s originally-furnished interiors are nearly unparalleled in the United States – it’s a special place. But it’s important to note that we don’t have everything. In fact, we’re missing quite a bit. Large pieces of furniture, beautiful works of art and countless papers, books and knick-knacks have left the halls of the Campbell House over the years. The big reason? An auction of the house’s contents that happened in 1941.

Hazlett Campbell died without an heir in 1938, leaving behind a sizable family fortune and an 11,000 square foot townhouse full of beautiful things. While the money was eventually split between distant family members, the house posed a larger issue. Cousins who had inherited the interior furnishings and fixtures of the building opted to auction them off through local auction house Selkirk’s. At this point, the story becomes familiar. A dedicated group from the community banded together, raised funds and purchased back hundreds of items as they passed across the auction block. Most of what you see on tours of the Campbell House today is only here due to the dedication and financial support of these fine folks. But they didn’t get everything. While many of the pieces that “got away” did so because of the group’s financial constraints, others were allowed to be purchased by others because they didn’t neccesarily fit with the foundation’s vision for the Campbell House Museum (still two years away from opening to the public). In the years since, few items have left the house and some have even returned. Here are some of the things that got away…

Click the gallery below to view the slideshow.

While the Campbell House has an incredible number of original family items in its collection, many pieces were lost at an auction of the house’s contents in 1941. Handled by local auction house Selkirk’s, pieces ranging from jeweled tankards to silver and fine china left the Campbell House, some for the first time in over a century.

These battle axes likely belonged to James Campbell and are pictured here in his rooms at the Campbell House ca. 1885.

Several pieces of statuary in historic pictures of the house are missing today. This massive bronze piece, entitled “Gloria Victis”stands in the middle of the front Parlor at the Campbell House ca. 1930. It was likely originally purchased for an apartment owned by the Campbell sons in Paris, France.

Today, the Campbells’ Gloria Victis stands in a family mausoleum at a local St. Louis. The piece was sold at the auction of Campbell House’s contents in 1941.

Another large statue was found in the Dining Room. This bronze, entitled “The Florentine Singer” likely stood watch for decades in the same spot. All that remains today is a ghost mark of the statue’s base on the Dining Room’s oak floor.

This piece too stands today in a family mausoleum in a local cemetery after being sold at auction in 1941.

Though Campbell House’s collection contains thousands of original family furnishings and personal items, very little belonging to the servants and enslaved people who also lived at the Campbell House remains. When the Museum opened in 1943, servant furniture was not saved and spaces used by “the help” were either closed off, converted to display galleries and even used as a break room for docents. Pictured here is an image of the Head Housekeeper’s bedroom, ca. 1910. This photograph was recently donated to the Museum by the family of longtime Campbell servant Mary Boerste. Though Boerste’s furniture is long lost, the arrangement of the room’s period furniture has been changed to reflect the placement of the room’s original contents.

Mary Boerste, pictured here in front of the garden gazebo at the Campbell House, worked for the Campbell sons as a housekeeper for more than thirty years. All that remains of her at CHM today are these treasured photographs.

Perhaps the largest missing piece of the Campbell House collection is the Servant Hall which once stood at the rear of the property. This two story, four room building was home to the many servants who lived with and worked for the Campbell family over their 84 year tenure on Lucas Place. After the Campbell House opened as a Museum in 1943, the Servant Hall was converted into a caretakers residence.

The Servant Hall was razed in 1968 to make way for a new staircase and office space off the back of the Museum. A planned tea room and lecture hall that would have filled most of the Servant Hall’s footprint was never realized. At any one time, 8 to 10 servants lived and worked with the Campbell family in the mid to late 19th century. By the early 20th century this number had shrunk to 3 or 4.

Though Campbell House does still have a few of the Campbell family’s books, the vast majority were lost after Hazlett Campbell’s death in 1938. Many of the books seen on display today are antique replacements. Luckily, some of these books are still within reach here in St. Louis. The Campbell Family Bible is today part of the collection at the Missouri Historical Society.

When Hazlett Campbell died in 1938 there were likely tens of thousands of pages worth of family and business documents spread throughout the house. While a significant number were preserved, today in the collections of CHM, the Missouri Historical Society and the Mercantile Library, it is likely that just as many were lost. The historic documents that remain serve as the primary means of understanding the Campbells and their lives.

This magnificent set of Old Paris china was Virginia Campbell’s best, purchased in the 1850s for her new home on Lucas Place. Each piece in the set of more than 200 plates and dishes is painted with a different fruit, nut, vegetable or flower. Only about half of the set remains at CHM today.

Even fewer pieces remain of Virginia Campbell’s finest set of Waterford crystal. The set was split in half and sold at the 1941 auction.

A highlight of tours at CHM is the historic icebox in the kitchen. But did you know it isn’t the original? Like many other items from “The Help’s” sections of the house, the original icebox has been lost to time. The icebox in the kitchen today was purchased by the Museum in the early 2000s and is likely very similar to the original.

When we zoom into this 1880s image of Hugh Campbell’s bedroom, we see an early camera on his center table. This boxy contraption points to the long-held theory that Hugh was an amateur photographer and may have even played a role in taking the invaluable pictures of nearly every room in the house that were the inspiration for our massive restoration in 2000.

While most of the Campbells’ bedroom furniture was saved, two beds are conspicuously absent from the collection of the Campbell House Museum. These Victorian beds with rounded headboards may have been sold at the 1941 auction of the house’s contents.

Another missing bed, this one from Hugh Campbell’s bedroom. Today this room has been restored as a library.

One of the most striking missing pieces of the Campbell House collection is this bejeweled Russian tankard, pictured here in the Cambridge home of James Campbell during his years at Harvard. After his death in 1890, the tankard remained with his brothers at the Campbell House. It was sold at the auction of the house’s contents in 1941.

In the past decade this tankard reappeared on the market. The 1941 buyer passed away and it again went up for auction. It was described as “Russian Jewel Encrusted Silver Tankard with elaborately worked foot & body with applied 8-pointed stars, surrounded by alternating rubies & emeralds” It sold for $34,000.

In the second floor stairwell a furry friend peers into the Master Suite. This polar bear skin rug was sold at auction in 1941.

In addition to beautiful furniture, the Campbell family had an impressive art collection. This painting, entitled “The Lost Greenhorn”, was one of a series by renowned American artist Alfred Jacob Miller. It was sold to an art dealer at auction in 1941 and today likely resides in a museum or private collection somewhere in the United States.

This watercolor landscape, by the renowned St. Louis painter George Caleb Bingham, hung in the front hall of the Campbell House for nearly a century. The Campbells likely bought it in person from Bingham’s studio in St. Louis. Today the Campbell House Bingham landscape hangs in the Newark Museum in New Jersey after having been sold to a dealer at auction in 1941. A copy of the original in a similar frame hangs today in the front hall of the Campbell House Museum.

Ongoing Restoration Projects – It Never Ends!

Painter Dave creates a wood grain design on the primed outer front doors. The magical mixture he uses for this is made from stale beer and Karo Syrup. The sugar content of both ingredients means the design is easy to manipulate and takes a long time to dry.

If you’ve been to the Campbell House more than once, you know that something is different on every visit. Some new bit of history has been discovered or a new artifact is on display or maybe new window dressings have been put up. Last week, painters completed the finishing touches on two very special projects here at the Museum, both involving doors. Giant. Doors. The first project was our outer front doors. The substantial, 9 foot outer front doors provided the Campbells and their ornate smaller inner front doors a barrier between the house and the city street. They’ve been hanging on their hinges for 164 years and counting and have experienced a wide array of temperatures, precipitation, soot, smog and pretty much anything else you can imagine in their lifetimes. Ten years ago, as the Museum’s restoration came to a close, these doors were restored with a faux-grained wood finish. A decade later, they were beginning to show their age and the time had come to restore the restoration (anyone who has lived in an old house for any length of time will understand this).

Carefully… carefully… those doors were heavy.

The other project was even more exciting. A generous grant allowed us to tackle a restoration project that’s been on the back burner for years, decades really. The Campbells’ elegant double parlor has a set of pocket doors leading into it, designed to smoothly slide open and closed for a “grand reveal” of the gilded room and its contents. The thing is, they haven’t opened and closed very smoothly for about 70 years. In fact, they were jammed solidly open. The grant allowed us to hire some woodworking professionals to come in, remove a portion of the door frame and pull the doors off of their tracks. What they found was unexpected, but not surprising. The wheel mechanism in the bottom of the door still worked perfectly – the problem was that a century and half of dust and coal soot had built up inside the wall and piled at the bottom of the door’s enclosure, creating a solid heap which the door was riding up and jamming itself on. After removing the clog, oiling up the mechanics and replacing the doors on their tracks, they’re back to working as well as they did when Robert and Virginia bought the house back in 1854. The painters that worked on restoring our outer front doors then restored the pocket doors’ faux wood grain finish – and they look GREAT! Click below to see the “GRAND REVEAL” through the Parlor pocket doors and click through the gallery below to see the two projects happen from start to finish.

Outer front doors sanded, filled and ready for a new paint job

Detail: outer front doors

Painter Dave applies a coat of primer. This will be the lightest tone of the spectrum of colors in the wood grain’s finished product.

Primed outer front doors.

Painter Dave creates a wood grain design on the primed outer front doors. The magical mixture he uses for this is made from stale beer and Karo Syrup. The sugar content of both ingredients means the design is easy to manipulate and takes a long time to dry.

Outer front doors with wood grain design applied and the beginning of the final coat.

Detail: outer front doors

Almost there! Applying the darker overcoat for the finished product.

Done! How ’bout them doors? 164 years old and never looking better!

Parlor pocket doors being removed from the wall for the first time in more than 100 years.

Watch out for the gasolier!

Carefully… carefully… those doors were heavy.

Part of the door frame has to be removed in order to pull the doors out.

With the doors out, our trusty craftsmen could determine what was causing the doors to jam.

As it turns out, the problem wasn’t the doors themselves but piles of soot and debris that had built up inside the walls on either side. So here’s a picture of the inside of a wall at Campbell House.

The lock and latch mechanism inside the doors. A simple design that still works perfectly 150+ years later.

Lining the doors back up on the track and reinstalling them in the Parlor walls.

Parlor pocket doors repaired and fully closed for the first time in decades! Now to fix that paint job…

Painter friend working to recreate a faux wood grain to match the rest of the hallway’s woodwork.

Done and done! Another breathtaking restoration project at the Campbell House, and one that’s been on the “To Do” list for a long long time.