admin The final result of their collaboration is the subject of a new book, A House That Made History: The Illinois Governor’s Mansion, published by Rizzoli. Both a chronicle of the Governor’s Mansion’s rich history and a visual ode to Smith’s masterful interiors, it provides an unprecedented and retrospective look at one of America’s most famous homes.
Smith swathed many of the rooms in harmonious blues and greens—colors calm enough to provide a gentle backdrop to the house’s impressive permanent art collection, which M.K. has distinctly added to and curated: there are historical portraits of Abraham Lincoln, but also folksy ceramic bluegills (the state fish of Illinois) from a local artist with a studio in the Mississippi River town of Alton. New to the home are a number of modern pieces, such as Theaster Gates’s “Faded Flag”, a graphic composition made of decommissioned firehouses. Meanwhile, the Lincoln Room has a sculpture by Richard Hunt, and the Music Room features a grand piano donated by the estate of John H. Johnson, the publisher of Ebony and Jet magazines.
There are historical artifacts aplenty—the dining room has china from Mary Todd Lincoln prominently displayed—as well as creative homages to famous state symbols. One hallway, for example, is adorned in a striking corn motif, a nod to one of the Illinois’s largest crops.
One of M.K’s and Smith’s most ambitious undertakings was the Chicago Room, however, which pays homage to Illinois’s largest city and the unbridled creativity that emerged from it in the 20th century. Pieces from the Kalo Shop, a leading producer of silver goods during the Arts & Craft movement, line the shelves, and the room features both Frances Elkins’s signature tea paper on its walls, and two reproductions of her canopied beds. (Elkin, the younger sister of the city’s most famous architect, David Elkin, was described by Billy Baldwin as “the most creative designer we have ever had.” She did several notable interiors in Chicago and its suburbs. ) In the corner is a Samuel Marx secretary cabinet. M.K hopes the Chicago Room becomes their interior hallmark: “We created that room, and we also thought it would be great to leave a little bit of a legacy from our administration in the house as well,” she says.
Speaking of legacy: M.K. has also made sure that all her predecessors—and former stewards of the mansion—got their due. In one hallway, she’s hung the portraits of former first ladies of Illinois, including Cora Tanner, an outspoken abolitionist and anti-lynching activist. A section of the Rizzoli book, too, remembers their accomplishments. “The first ladies, I think, get forgotten in history,” she says.
Below, see inside M.K. Pritzker and Michael S. Smith’s Illinois Governor’s mansion.
