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It’s 1934 on the Chicago Northside, already several years into the Great Depression. A Sister of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, dressed in habit, is helping to move books out of the tall, art-deco skyscraper where she lives and teaches. Luckily her school, Mundelein College, has enjoyed more financial security than many others during this trying time and has just recently purchased a nearby mansion.
As she exits the skyscraper and walks east towards the new school library, she looks past the beautiful white marble house toward Lake Michigan. She’s excited for the school to inhabit this new building, but little does she know over 90 years from now, they’ll still be there.
Piper Hall was designed and built by American architect William Carbys Zimmerman in 1909, who designed it in the American foursquare or prairie-box style using white Vermont marble. This style was popular throughout the Midwest in the early 20th century and is most noted for being the style famed architect and Oak Park native Frank Lloyd Wright mastered.
In addition to these elements, Piper Hall has some fine architectural features. Beyond the grand oak staircase from the first to the second floor is a large stained-glass window from the original construction of the house.
Emily Reiher is director of the Women and Leadership Archive, or WLA, located on Piper Hall’s third floor. Reiher said the nature motif from this window is repeated throughout the house, including on several smaller stained glass panes on the ground floor.
“This is one of the great mysteries of Piper Hall,” Reiher said. “Even though there’s been two historic renovations in Piper Hall’s history, this piece of art has stumped us historians. To this day we’re not quite sure who the artist is. We know that it’s not Tiffany, but it’s definitely of that era and would have been original to the home.”
The house first served as the personal home for Albert and Cassie Wheeler. Albert was the President of the Illinois Tunnel Company when it dug the underground freight tunnels beneath the city. Those tunnels carried cargo on a two-foot wide track before their abandonment in 1959. Cassie was an artist and was heavily involved in the construction of the house — so much so that it was nicknamed “Cassie’s Dream Castle.”
Albert’s work forced them to move westward just seven years after the completion of the house, so they sold it to another couple, Albert and Bessie Johnson, for $150 thousand, or almost $4.5 million in today’s money. The Johnsons stayed there until the onset of the Great Depression forced them to sell the home to a group of nearby nuns who were working to open Chicago’s first Catholic women’s college, Mundelein College.
