About the Book
John Mills Van Osdel, Architect, and his Chicago
The Story of his Life, 1811 to 1891
There is no question that Chicago is an architecturally significant city. But before Louis Henry Sullivan, John Wellborn Root, and Frank Lloyd Wright, before modernism, there lived a man whose designs built it from the ground up. Written by his descendant, retired architect Burtram C. Hopkins II, more than a century later, this book traces the incredible mark left on Chicago by architect John Mills Van Osdel-a mark tragically largely wiped out by the Great Fire of 1871. From the time he arrived in 1837 to his death in 1891, Van Osdel watched the city swell from a village of around a thousand people to a bustling metropolis of hundreds of thousands. Though his name is little known today, he played a crucial role in establishing architecture as a discipline in Chicago, drafting the Chicago Architect's Code (one of the first of its kind), laying the groundwork for the skyscrapers that would become the hallmark of the First Chicago School of Architecture, and contributing hundreds of architecturally significant structures to the growing urban landscape-as well as countless more (some still surviving) in other parts of Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, and Arkansas.
Van Osdel' s impact would reverberate in large part through his family, many of whom themselves pursued architectural and artistic careers-including his nephew and business partner, John Mills Van Osdel II. This truly encyclopedic book traces this inheritance, with a section on Van Osdel II, doubling as both an architectural history and a work of family genealogy. Vast in scope and exhaustively detailed, it is sure to make an invaluable addition to the shelves of anyone interested in this powerhouse of American architecture and his influential family, who helped transform Chicago from a frontier town on Lake Michigan to the capital of industry it is today.
CONTENTS
Dedication iii
Foreword iv
Preface 1
Introduction 3
PART I
Van Osdel’s Life
Pre-1837 to 1871
Van Osdel’s Ancestry 6
The Van Osdel Family 13
Van Osdel’s Early Years 25
Van Osdel’s Chicago Arrival 31
Early Chicago Infrastructure 36
Van Osdel Makes Chicago His Home 39
Chicago Architects’ Code 50
Other Early Chicago Architects 55
Van Osdel’s Account Books 60
The Lincoln Connection 66
Van Osdel Inventors and Artists 81
PART II
Buildings and Designs
Pre-Fire Buildings and Designs 89
The Great Fire of 1871 176
Post- Fire Buildings 181
Surviving Buildings 259
PART III
Van Osdel’s Life
1871 to 1891
Education and Associations 374
Van Osdel’s European Journals 380
Van Osdel’s Later Years 389
Van Osdel’s Passing 394
PART IV
1891 to 1924
John Mills Van Osdel II 402
Martha McClellan Van Osdel 409
Martha Van Osdel Pohl 411
Afterword 415
Bibliography 416
Index to Buildings and Designs 419
APPENDIX
Buildings and Significant Events 423
Van Osdel’s Will and Codicil 438
About the Author 441
FOREWORD
John Mills Van Osdel was one of the most prominent architects in Chicago as it grew from less than 1,000 in 1837 to over one million in 1890. Before the Great Fire of 1871 he played a crucial role in establishing architecture as a profession in the city, along with W. W. Boyington. Van Osdel’s designs were critical to Chicago’s rebirth in the aftermath of the Fire and he laid the groundwork for skyscrapers that would become a hallmark of the First Chicago School of Architecture. Not only did his career span the decades during which Chicago was transformed from a frontier town on the shores of Lake Michigan into the symbol of a new industrial capitalism, but Van Osdel’s commissions-more than eight-hundred of them-with many becoming landmarks in the urban landscape.
Van Osdel arrived in Chicago in 1837 to build the North Side residence of the city’s first mayor, William B. Ogden. Over the next five decades, in partnership with his nephew and namesake, he designed and directed construction of the homes of many prominent families. He joined a foundational generation of leaders, including Walter Newberry, Juliette and John Kinzie, Frances L. Willard, George Dole, and Julian Rumsey. Many key decisions about civic life were made in the parlors and dining rooms of Van Osdel-designed homes, as Chicago’s elite sought to replicate the churches, schools, and charitable and cultural institutions of the Eastern cities they had left behind.
Van Osdel’s reputation would have been secure if he had only designed homes for Chicago’s rising business class, but his work was more wide-ranging. His commissions included some of the first bridges in Chicago, as well as the first steamship built in the city, hotels such as the Palmer House, and blocks of cast iron commercial buildings for industrialists such as Cyrus McCormick. In the 1840s and 1850s, Van Osdel built the city’s first high school, its first orphanage, and a substantial courthouse, theaters, an armory, a jail, and Chicago’s first Masonic Temple.
In 1859, he designed and superintended the Jesuit Church of the Holy Family that still stands on the Near West Side. In addition to building Protestant churches and Jewish synagogues, Van Osdel designed seminaries, convents, rectories, and hospitals for the emerging city. And his expertise was sought for Northwestern University’s first building in Evanston, Illinois; the University of Illinois in Urbana; and my home institution, North Central College in Naperville, Illinois.
In the following pages, Burtram C. “Bud” Hopkins II provides a robust and wide-ranging biography of his ancestor John Mills Van Osdel (1811-1891). An architect by training, Bud has spent more than 25 years documenting Van Osdel’s legacy, providing new perspective on his remarkable career. And illuminating page after page of his research are stunning historical and contemporary photographs. Without question, this book is a gift to his family members, but it goes far beyond, as an exploration of Van Osdel’s buildings in Chicago and the Midwest region. Van Osdel was an innovator in multiple building types during times of tremendous growth and change. Trained initially as a carpenter, Van Osdel remained close to the construction process even as he moved into design. He pioneered the use of steam power and other utilities in buildings, as well as new materials from iron and steel to terra cotta.
It is worth noting that Van Osdel also helped to organize the small cadre of architects in Chicago in the 1850s into a professional organization. His firm trained many in architecture through apprenticeship, but he also advised the University of Illinois on the establishment of a professional architecture school. Hundreds of Van Osdel’s commissions burned in the 1871 Fire that consumed most of the central city. Undaunted, the 60-year-old Van Osdel threw himself into the reconstruction process, working with his nephew to build and innovate. Some of his last designs in the 1880s showed the emerging skyscraper form.
Their 1873 Kendall Building and 1884 Memory- Omaha building was 7 and 8 stories respectively and revealed the basic three-part skyscraper design. The Memory Building, of steel frame construction sheathed in brick and terra cotta, bears comparison to the more famous 1886 Rookery Building designed by Burnham & Root.
Bud Hopkins provides for us a thoughtful view of Van Osdel’s career—and the many ways that he broke new ground as an innovative designer of new building types. In a 2004 essay in the Encyclopedia of Chicago, I wrote that the history of “Chicago architecture seldom begins with Boyington and Van Osdel, because their work is viewed as derivative and utilitarian rather than artistic and groundbreaking.” After reading the exhaustive work that Bud Hopkins has done in exploring the career of John Mills Van Osdel, I need to revise my assessment. Van Osdel, as much as the famous Chicago architects who came after him, deserves attention for his “vision and daring.” Van Osdel was the first of a long line of Chicago architects who were innovators and inventors, as well as designers and artists. His work made possible the careers of world-renowned architects like John Welborn Root, Daniel Hudson Burnham, who first came to Chicago in 1855, returning in 1867 as a draftsman for Van Osdel, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright.
As a Chicago historian, I am indebted to Bud Hopkins for putting this material together and sharing it beyond his family. In the following pages, you will learn about John Mills Van Osdel who is representative of nineteenth century Chicagoans whose vision, innovation, and risk-taking made the city’s meteoric rise possible. I hope that you, too, will seek out the more than twenty-five extant buildings he designed in the region, powerful reminders that Chicago’s past is ever present.
Ann Durkin Keating, PhD
Toenniges Professor of History
North Central College
Naperville, Illinois
June 2024
About the Author
B. C. "Bud" Hopkins II
Genealogist, author, and retired architect B. C. "Bud" Hopkins II has architecture in his blood. The great-great-grandnephew of John Mills Van Osdel, who had no biological children, and direct descentant of his brother William Clark Van Osdel, Bud was initially inspired by his maternal grandmother, Anna Scott Van Osdel Heyland, to begin writing this book. Anna, who was born in 1870, was twenty-one when her Great Uncle John passed away, and thirty-nine when his nephew and architect partner, her Uncle John, passed. Having grown up hearing stories of them through his grandma, Bud always felt a strong connection to Chicago, its history, and its architecture, and owes his pursuit of his career in large part to these formative years.
Hopkins has also long worked as a genealogist of his sprawling and influential family, having published a series of three books on the subject: The Hopkins/Willcox Family, Volumes I, II, and III. His work researching his family, including John Mills Van Osdel, spans about twenty-five years. He is a member of the Society of Architectural Historians, Biographers International Organization, and Emeritus member of the American Institute of Architects. Bud lives in Plano, a suburb of Dallas, Texas, with Suzanne, his wife of forty-five years, and their cocker spaniel, Siri.
