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November 2005
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November 15, 2005 Tuesday 7:00 PM
December 13, 2005 Tuesday 7:00 _PM
January 16, 2006 Tuesday 7:00 PM Comments and suggestions for Society activities are always welcome, now and in the future! Remember to keep the third Tuesday of each month marked on your calendar for monthly RIPS meetings and activities. 2005 HISTORIC PRESERVATION AWARDS Now is the time to look around your neighborhood and the city to note preservation work that is finished or nearing completion. Please bring your suggestions to the next RIPS meeting or contact Diane Oestreich at 788-1845 or oestreich@qconline.com. POSTCARDS FROM HOME Do you have any older postcards of Rock Island? We are in need of interesting historic postcards for use in the Postcards From Home series which RIPS writes for the Dispatch/Argus. Watch for the series which now runs on the first Sunday of each month. SAVING HISTORIC ROCK ISLAND SCHOOLS ÒSchools for Successful Communities: an Element of Smart GrowthÓ (about 50 pages), is being circulated among those wishing to review it. If you did not sign up to read it at the meeting and wish to do so, contact Linda (wickerph@aol.com) or Diane (oestreich@qconline.com). HAUBERG HOLIDAY SCHEDULE RIPS volunteers will be helping with holiday festivities at the Hauberg Civic Center. On Friday, December 2nd RIPS will decorate a pre-lit tree with traditional ornaments provided by the Center. This is expected to take only about an hour and a free lunch will be served to all helpers. December 9th is an open house for area school groups. Children will meet Santa and have a holiday snack. RIPS volunteers are needed to greet the students and talk briefly about the home and its preservation. We will be focusing on the tulip motif found throughout the home. And finally, on Friday, December 16, we will remove the decorations from our tree. To volunteer for any of these days, contact Linda Anderson or Diane Oestreich. HAUBERG: MONUMENT TO THE TULIP Although the winter winds are blowing, inside the gracious mansion that was the home of John H. and Susanne Hauberg tulips "bloom" in timeless, seasonless profusion. The 20-room home, high on the hillside at 23rd Street, may be the world's largest monument to the tulip. They appear in hundreds of stylized designs throughout the house, more than 300 in the decor of the living room appropriately named "The Tulip Room". The tulip was the favorite flower of Susanne Christine Denkmann, youngest daughter of Frederick Carl A. Denkmann and Catherine Bloedel Denkmann, a prominent and wealthy Rock Island family. Her father had formed a partnership in 1860 with his brother-in-law, Frederick Weyerhauser, in a lumber business that prospered. When construction began on the home in 1909 Miss Denkmann decreed that tulips "grow" there forever in plaster, wood, concrete, and stained glass. Her wishes were faithfully carried out. Tulips in various sizes and shapes, from a few inches to several feet, appear in leaded window inserts, carved paneling, urns, organ screens, 1ights, fireplace mantels, and sculptured ceilings. When the home was new all rugs and much of the furniture featured a tulip design. The house, finished in 1911, just in time for Miss Denkmann's marriage to John Henry Hauberg, was designed by Prairie School architect Robert C. Spencer, Jr., a close friend of Frank Lloyd Wright. It is a mature work of early modern architecture, and although there are in it reminiscences of medieval half- timbering, they have become disciplined into a geometric non-historical rectilinear structure. The home is probably the largest ever designed by Spencer and it marks an important milestone in the outward spread of early modern architecture from its midwestern center at Chicago. Wrapping around a curving hillside the house has a very disciplined but irregular plan. The service portion is set at an angle to the main house, which has an interior floor plan that is varied and irregular. The main entrance to the home announces its motif on huge brick pillars and tulips also appear at the sides of the front doors. The living room contains a pair of handsome wooden organ screens designed by the architect George M. Niedecken, who is also credited with the painted decorations on the beams of the library ceiling, the geometric screens in the ceiling of the stairway, and the decorative plaster borders of the ceilings in the downstairs rooms. The fireplaces in the library and dining room are original to the house. In 1926, the living room fireplace was replaced by one imported from an 18th century English castle fashioned from two kinds of marble and featuring center carved panel pictures that tell the story of "The Fox and the Crane". Stained and leaded glass windows abound in the house and many contain delicate tulip forms. Those in the dining room offer a grand view of the Hauberg grounds which extend down the hillside to 12th Avenue. Upon completion of the house, the hillside was an open meadow. But in keeping with the Prairie Style, Miss Denkmann retained landscape architect Jens Jensen to complete the estate. Mr. Jensen was born in Denmark and began working as a gardener for the Chicago park system after coming to this country in 1884 at the age of 24. As his design talents became apparent, he began to design both public and private landscapes. He worked closely with several architects of the Prairie School as his philosophy of landscape was closely allied with theirs. He believed it was important for people to be able to maintain some connection with the natural heritage of their region, and he used his designs as vehicles to provide this experience. His designs emphasized native plantings in a natural setting. On the Hauberg estate Mr. Jensen added extensive plantings which included mature trees, built a stream and lily pond, and designed terraced gardens. The result is aWisconsin woodland predominating in birches and evergreens. There are more than 40 varieties of trees on the tract. Many distinguished guests were entertained at the Hauberg home over the years. The list includes Prince Wilhelm of Sweden, the sculptor Lorado Taft, the author Carl Sandburg, and Logan Kakague, grandson of Chief Black Hawk. And both the Haubergs took active roles in the community. Mrs. Hauberg, after having studied at the Chicago Kindergarten College and worked as a kindergarten teacher in a slum settlement house in New York, saw an opportunity to build such a facility in her own community. She named it the West End Settlement and it was located at 5th Street and 7th Avenue. It provided a Sunday school, gymnasium, kindergarten, fife and drum corps, milk station, crippled children's clinic and the services of a nurse and social worker free to the public. Mrs. Hauberg also worked with such groups as Associated Charities, Bethany Home and the Woman's Club of Rock Island. John Hauberg was an avid historian and his collection of oral histories from members of the Old Settler's Association and descendants of the Sauk and Mesquakie tribes are today on file at the Rock Island County Historical Society and at the Augustana College Library. He also played a key role in preserving Dickson Cemetery, also known as Pioneer Cemetery, which is now a part of Black Hawk State Park. And still today the Haubergs are contributing to their community. In 1956, the children of the couple, Catherine Hauberg Sweeney and John Hauberg, Jr. conveyed the Hauberg Estate to the City of Rock Island on the condition that the city operate the property under the name "Hauberg Civic Center" for park, educational, recreational and cultural purposes. On April 28, 1957, the doors of Hauberg Civic Center were officially opened to the citizens of Rock Island and they remain so today. In 1973, the Hauberg Civic Center was entered in the National Register of Historic Places. It continues to make a great contribution to Rock Island's architectural heritage. Thanks to Barbara Parker, former administrator of Hauberg Civic Center, for information on the Hauberg family and home.
Rock Island Preservation Society |