Potter Palmer’s Chicago mansion.
Photo:
Universal Images Group via Getty Images
You say it’s privacy you want? It can seem in short supply these days, but it’s not a new desire—which is why every time I walk past a pair of high-rise residences on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive I smile about what used to be there. The plot of land’s long-ago owner came up with a direct method of keeping the outside world at bay.
The owner was Potter Palmer (1826-1902), a wealthy businessman whose name became nationally known because of the famed Chicago hotel he opened in the 1870s, the Palmer House. Palmer was involved in lucrative merchandising and real-estate enterprises, and in 1882 commenced constructing the largest home in the city.
The address was 1350 North Lake Shore Drive, and the castle he built for himself and his wife, Bertha, featured turrets and minarets, an art gallery, an 80-foot spiral staircase, a glass dome, towers, velvet wallpaper and an outdoor balcony overlooking Lake Michigan. European royalty and former U.S. presidents were invited houseguests of the Palmers.
But the most memorable and symbolic feature of this house that had everything was what it lacked: exterior doorknobs.
That’s the way Potter and Bertha wanted it. The feature silently proclaimed the Palmers’ desire to establish a barrier of privacy on their own terms. It was the ultimate Do Not Disturb sign—the urban version of a moat.
Bertha Palmer’s
collection of paintings by Monet, Degas and Renoir may have been impressive, but no aspect of the house sent a stronger signal to the world than those naked exterior doors.
Back then, if people wished to call on someone, they either wrote a letter in advance or merely showed up. But those who arrived unexpectedly at the Palmer Mansion instantly got the wordless message from those conspicuously knobless doors: Anyone we want to be in here already is.
There were always plenty of butlers, social…
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