Tag Archives: Campbell House Museum

Fall 2013 Campbell House Newsletter — Hot Off the Press!

NewsletterGraphicAlrighty, folks.  So this has been a long time com­ing, and our apolo­gies for not hav­ing some­thing up a lit­tle soon­er but there has been SO MUCH going on around Camp­bell House over the past cou­ple of weeks- not the least of which is the pub­li­ca­tion of the lat­est edi­tion of our newslet­ter, the Camp­bell House Courier!

Next week we’ll have up anoth­er post­ing in our “Peel­ing Back the Lay­ers” series on the CHM restora­tion, but for now we want­ed to get you as jazzed as we are to read about every­thing that’s been going on here at the house over the past year.

Check out the link below to read about our Glo­ri­ous Gowns exhib­it, the new­ly installed restored par­lor draperies, get some updates from Direc­tor Andy (AKA: The Boss), some major events we’ve held like ‘Feast­ing with the Camp­bells’, and a real­ly inter­est­ing nugget of research that we found on Robert Camp­bell and Texas. (hint: if Robert Camp­bell hadn’t been around, the city of El Paso as we know it would not exist today.)

Have we piqued your interest?  Good!

Now click here to check it out.

 

Reflections of the Past

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Camp­bell House­’s Scot­tron mir­ror, August 2013

Part of what makes a vis­it to the Camp­bell House Muse­um such an expe­ri­ence is the enor­mous num­ber of orig­i­nal pieces of fur­ni­ture and knick-knack­ery that fill the halls of the 160-year-old home.  From tables and chairs to armoires and a piano, the house has quite the col­lec­tion of Vic­to­ri­ana.  But occa­sion­al­ly, much like the house itself, these items need a lit­tle elbow grease and T.L.C. to keep them in tip-top shape.  A per­fect exam­ple of this is the adjustable dou­ble mir­ror that can be found in a cor­ner of the Camp­bell House library (see the bot­tom of the page for some up close and per­son­al snap­shots of some of the mir­ror’s detail).

The mir­ror’s design was patent­ed in 1868 by Samuel Scot­tron. Scot­tron was a promi­nent African Amer­i­can inven­tor from Brook­lyn, New York who began his career as a bar­ber and would even­tu­al­ly be grant­ed four U.S. patents.  This par­tic­u­lar piece is unique because Scot­tron designed it so that users could “see them­selves as oth­ers see them.”  In oth­er words, the mir­ror could be adjust­ed so your reflec­tion was reflect­ed, revers­ing the mir­rored image. (Try and say that three times fast.)

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Scot­tron’s dou­ble mir­ror patent, ca. 1868

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Samuel Scot­tron

In the mod­el the Camp­bel­l’s owned, a pair of fan­cy cast iron arms and a high stand sup­port a pair of wal­nut oval-shaped mir­ror frames that swiv­el in all direc­tions.  (As a side note, if you can believe it, the mir­ror was pur­chased for the muse­um at the 1941 Camp­bell estate auc­tion for $5.50!)

How­ev­er, a few years ago, as the muse­um’s restora­tion drew to a close, the mir­ror was in pret­ty rough shape.  In the 1960s, one of the wood frames and mir­rors had gone miss­ing, mak­ing the impres­sive dou­ble mir­ror pret­ty well use­less in terms of its orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed method of use.

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The Camp­bells’ Scot­tron dou­ble mir­ror in the library, ca. 1885

Luck­i­ly, muse­um mem­ber and mas­ter car­pen­ter Don Dill worked long and hard to com­plete restora­tion work on the mir­ror, replac­ing the miss­ing piece and restor­ing it to its orig­i­nal con­di­tion. The mir­ror is still in the same room in which it has sat since the last half of the 19th cen­tu­ry.  (see some detail pho­tos of the mir­ror at the bot­tom of this post)

Don’s work goes hand in hand with the Muse­um’s efforts to con­serve and restore its col­lec­tion of orig­i­nal objects and arti­facts, seen most recent­ly in the hang­ing of lav­ish new draperies in the par­lor sev­er­al weeks ago.

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CHM par­lor & new­ly installed draperies, May 2013.

Click here to read more about the par­lor draperies project,recently fea­tured in Ladue News’ Ele­gant Liv­ing publication.

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“Scot­tron’s” detail on back of mirror

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Detail — left side of mirror

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“Pat’d March 31 1868” detail on back of mirror

Campbell House First Opens 70 Years Ago!

Sev­en­ty years ago today the open­ing of the Camp­bell House Muse­um was report­ed with lav­ish full-col­or (it was 1943) pho­to sto­ry in the Post-Dis­patch. Here it is:

THE COLOR CAMERA AT THE CAMPBELL HOUSE,
St. Louis Post-Dis­patch, Sun­day, Feb­ru­ary 28, 1943

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“A pic­ture of life as it was lived in St. Louis a cen­tu­ry ago is afford­ed vis­i­tors to the Camp­bell House, sit­u­at­ed at 1508 Locust street, which through the efforts of the Camp­bell House Foun­da­tion, has been restored to its orig­i­nal ele­gance and opened to the pub­lic. The house was built in 1851 by Robert Camp­bell, who made  a for­tune as a fur trad­er, and in it were enter­tained many vis­it­ing celebri­ties of the day, includ­ing Gen­er­al Grant.

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After the death of the last of the three Camp­bell sons, none of whom  mar­ried, the house was inher­it­ed by Yale Uni­ver­si­ty. The Camp­bell House Foun­da­tion, a group of inter­est­ed cit­i­zens who want­ed to pre­serve the house as a land­mark, start­ed rais­ing funds for the pur­pose. Stix, Baer and Fuller Com­pa­ny pur­chased the house for the Foun­da­tion, and funds con­tributed were used to restore it. The orig­i­nal fur­nish­ings and authen­tic dec­o­ra­tions have served com­plete­ly to restore both the appear­ance and the char­ac­ter of the house.”

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Today of course 70 years of research has revealed that Robert Camp­bell did not build the house (he and his fam­i­ly moved in three years lat­er) and the “orig­i­nal ele­gance” referred to in the arti­cle was real­ly just a 2oth cen­tu­ry con­cep­tion of a mid-19th cen­tu­ry inte­ri­or (just as an exam­ple, all that bright white wood­work would have nev­er worked in a coal soot filled house). Click the images to read the orig­i­nal cap­tions and enjoy a look back at the first rev­e­la­tion of a real St. Louis treasure.

Make 2013 your date to vis­it Camp­bell House, be it for the first or the tenth time, there is always some­thing new and inter­est­ing to learn from our superla­tive docents and stu­dents. Find our hours and more info here https://www.campbellhousemuseum.org/

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Happy blog-iversary from Campbell House Museum!

1 year ago tomor­row, Camp­bell House Muse­um embarked on a new ven­ture — this blog.  For the past twelve months, we’ve post­ed a let­ter from “This week in his­to­ry”.  Since tomor­row is the 1 year anniver­sary of the blog’s cre­ation, we thought we’d com­mem­o­rate it by updat­ing you on the PRESENT at Camp­bell House!

First, the muse­um would like to thank the loy­al read­ers on this blog.  In 1 year, we’ve had 1,210 hits on this blog, far sur­pass­ing what we had orig­i­nal­ly hoped to achieve.  Thank you all so much for stick­ing with us!  Robert and Vir­ginia Camp­bell and their rel­a­tives can tru­ly come alive when you read their let­ters; we hope you’ve enjoyed get­ting to know the Camp­bell fam­i­ly and that you con­tin­ue to read what your “favorite char­ac­ters” write each week .  We would also like to thank those who have become a “fan” of Camp­bell House Muse­um on Face­book.  We start­ed the Face­book page at the same time we start­ed the blog, and over the course of a year we’ve reached 100 fans!   Both the Face­book page and the blog have increased our vis­i­bil­i­ty in St. Louis and the world; we tru­ly appre­ci­ate all your sup­port.  If you wish to keep up with Camp­bell House even more close­ly, you can also check out our brand new Twit­ter account, camp­bellh­mu­se­um, where we’ll be send­ing out quick tweets for excit­ing stuff in the museum!

Now, here’s an update on what’s hap­pen­ing at the muse­um.  Tomor­row, Sat­ur­day May 15, is our annu­al spring mem­ber’s par­ty.  If you are a mem­ber of Camp­bell House Muse­um, we hope you join us and bring a friend.  If you are not yet a mem­ber, we hope you con­sid­er join­ing ( http://stlouis.missouri.org/501c/chm/membership.htm ) and sup­port­ing our mis­sion of pre­serv­ing the Camp­bell story.

Our “Immi­gra­tion Adven­tures to Amer­i­ca” exhib­it has been up since Novem­ber and has been a great suc­cess!  To go with that exhib­it, we have pub­lished Shel­ley Satke’s tran­scrip­tion of Hugh Camp­bel­l’s 1818 jour­nal, doc­u­ment­ing his immi­gra­tion to Amer­i­ca.  The jour­nal is on sale in the muse­um’s gift shop for $5.95.  It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry, and we hope you all come see the exhib­it and buy the book!  Speak­ing of books, you can still pick up Patrick Mac­Cul­loch’s The Camp­bell Quest in the gift shop!  If you like the let­ters you’ve read here, you’ll love The Camp­bell Quest.   The sto­ries that Patrick tells about his rel­a­tives (some of whom are fea­tured on here) are so fas­ci­nat­ing that you won’t be able to put the book down!  Last­ly, the muse­um is proud to announce the pub­li­ca­tion of it’s upcom­ing chil­drens book, Wel­come to My House — The Camp­bell House by Kather­ine Heugat­ter, illus­trat­ed by Lau­ra Pel­sue.  Let ser­vant Gus Mey­er take your kinder­garten-3rd graders on a fun tour of the house, com­plete with activ­i­ties and pic­tures, and help them learn about the Camp­bell fam­i­ly in their own way!  The chil­drens book is about to be print­ed and will be on sale for $7.95 in the gift shop.   We hope you all come to the muse­um to see these new sto­ries and learn about the Camp­bell family.

Last­ly, we are so excit­ed to announce our new spring event.  On Sat­ur­day June 19, the Camp­bell House will host “A Mag­i­cal Spring Thing” at the Mag­nif­i­cent Mahler Ball­room!  This incred­i­ble night of enter­tain­ment will fea­ture the mag­ic of the cir­cus, the mag­ic of musi­cal the­ater, the mag­ic of dance, the mag­ic of opera, the mag­ic of illu­sion, and the mag­ic of light.  There will also be a live auc­tion fea­tur­ing sev­er­al mag­i­cal things, includ­ing 7 night beach­front accom­mo­da­tions in the Vir­gin Islands, a Michael East­man pho­to, and jew­el­ry from Tiffany and Co — who would­n’t want that?  Wine and hors d’oeu­vres will be served at 7 PM and the show begins at 8.  Tick­ets are $125 or $150 for pre­ferred seat­ing.  Cock­tail attire is pre­ferred and valet park­ing is avail­able.  All pro­ceeds from this event ben­e­fit the Camp­bell House Muse­um.   Please come enjoy this incred­i­ble night and sup­port Camp­bell House Museum!

Thank you all for stick­ing with us through the first year of the blog.  Hap­py blog-iver­sary from Camp­bell House Muse­um!  Here’s to the next twelve months of “This Week in History!”