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(Photograph by Andrew Hope)
As this elegant, substantially constructed house neared completion, owner Charles McIntosh, director of the Milwaukee Harvester Company, proudly threw open its doors to newspaper reporters. They got a room-by-room tour from the Michigan brownstone two-story Corinthian portico to the red Galesburg paving brick used to create especially sturdy walls. The exterior of McIntosh’s costly house reflects turn-of-the-twentieth-century American enthusiasm for Beaux-Arts classical architecture. Although the style was at its height, his choice of materials made this house seem old-fashioned soon after its completion. Its dark red brick and chocolate-colored brownstone, rather than white limestone, meant that McIntosh’s house did not live up to the pale classical ideal.
Although the building has been a school for many years, the interior retains much of its original elegance. The most impressive interior space is a fifty-foot-long French-style ballroom with a plaster-covered ceiling, large windows topped with semi-elliptical leaded-glass transoms, and crystal wall sconces.