by John H. Waters
William Pretyman, Designer of the
Parlor Wall Covering
Glessner House Museum parlor
The dedication of the newly restored parlor on October 14, 2011 gives us a chance to look at the life and work of William Pretyman, the artist who designed the room’s wall covering. Active in Chicago from the mid-1880s to the mid-1890s, Pretyman is now little remembered here. In fact, he designed a number of significant interiors, several of them in buildings by his good friend architect John Wellborn Root of the firm Burnham and Root.
Pretyman was born in Aylesbury, England in 1849 and traveled widely in his youth, serving two years as an administrator in the British protectorate of North Borneo. By 1882 he had settled in Albany and the next year he married Jenny Remington (of the Remington arms family). In 1885 the couple moved to Chicago, where Pretyman quickly gained access to the upper echelons of Chicago society. He would go on to design interiors for a number of Chicago houses and churches, among them the Glessner House, the MacVeagh House (also designed by H. H. Richardson), the 1888 interior of Second Presbyterian Church at 1936 S. Michigan Avenue, and The Church of the Atonement in Edgewater.
Second Presbyterian Church
Pretyman’s designs for spaces in several Burnham and Root buildings were his most elaborate. They included the banking room for the Society for Savings in Cleveland (1890), Charles Gossage & Co. a dry goods store in the first floor and basement of the Reliance Building (1891), and Willard Hall, the assembly room for the Women’s Temple at the corner of Monroe and State (1892). Of these interiors only the Society for Savings remains. (See further information below).
In 1891 Pretyman was appointed Director of Color for the World’s Columbian Exposition, but resigned a year later. His vision was for a colorful fair, and he did not remain after it was decided to create a “White City.” Pretyman and his family left the U.S. for his native England in the mid-1890s, though he continued to exhibit his art work in this country until at least the early 1910s. He died in England in 1920.
Society for Savings
SOCIETY FOR SAVINGS BUILDING
The banking room interior William Pretyman designed for Burnham and Root’s Society for Savings Building in Cleveland is his only interior, other than the Glessner House parlor, known to survive. The banking room fills most of the first floor of the building and, like the Glessner parlor, its walls are covered with stenciled decoration. Pretyman also designed the elaborate leaded glass skylight for the space.
When the building first opened in 1890, the Chicago Tribune commented, “Mr. Pretyman has used much yellow in its color scheme, and the great room is like a golden burst of sunlight . . . (T)he effect of the whole is beautifully joyous and serene.”
Today, thanks to the excellent preservation of the space, that effect can still be felt.
Glessner House Museum 