Edwards Place reveals hidden secrets

The Art Association has owned Edwards Place for nearly 100 years, and all traces of the Edwards family's use of the house have long since disappeared under new layers of wallpaper and carpeting...or have they?

Funded in part by a generous grant from the Jeffris Heartland Fund, Edwards Place has hired the architectural firm of Sullivan Preservation of Chicago to create an Historic Interior Finishes and Furnishings Plan. Anne Sullivan and her colleague Robert Fitzgerald made their first official visit to Edwards Place on September 21, and in just a few hours' time they had brought to light several fascinating details about the construction and use of the house that had previously been lost to time.

Perhaps most exciting was Fitzgerald's discovery of a call bell in one of the rooms in the attic. There has long been an oral tradition that the Edwards family's servants slept in one of the two finished rooms in the attic, but now we have conclusive proof that this is the case. We shudder to think of that bell waking up poor Mary Sage on a freezing winter morning or in the middle of a sweltering summer night!

They also investigated the basement under the children's playroom at the far north end of the house and found evidence of a large masonry structure which led them to believe that the playroom was originally an outbuilding, perhaps a summer kitchen, that was connected to the rest of the house by the addition of the library.

At the end of their visit Buraski Builders showed up to remove the pier mirror in the family sitting room to reveal the original scrap of wallpaper behind it.

The ornate Rococo style suggests that it might have graced the walls as early as the late 1850s, when the Edwards family put on their major addition to the house.

Another discovery was made behind the shelf under the pier mirror in the formal parlor:

We will have to wait for scientific analysis before the true age of these papers can be determined. Nevertheless, it is thrilling to see this scrap of the past emerge, and to imagine what the house must have looked like and what must have been going on within its walls when these papers graced the walls.

Stay tuned for more discoveries as the architects continue to unearth the past at Edwards Place!