Touring America's BEST Bed & Breakfast! (The Beall Mansion) | This House Tours
hi everyone my name is ken welcome to this house today we are exploring the historic beall mansion located in alton illinois this house was built in 1903 and boasts over 10 thousand square feet stick around we're about to go inside today the beall mansion serves as a bed and breakfast with a 4.9 star rating on google if you would like to book a room here visit the link in the description now we've just entered the home and we are now walking through the foyer to the stair hall and before we get to the stair hall let's take a moment to look at some of the details in here we'll notice that the wood is all original to the house now it had been painted over the years but the current owners and operators of the bed and breakfast painstakingly stripped all of the paint off the wood and restored it to its former glory so directly off of the entry is the music room and this house has a rich history with a lot of its residents and i'm going to tell you guys a bit about that history as we go room to room throughout the house and over here we can see these chairs which were owned by senator beall senator beall bought this house in 1909 and as we go up the stairs there's a portrait of him and i'll show that to you guys in just a second a really interesting side note is that music rooms in the victorian era would have originally been painted now the owners decided to strip down the paint to the original wood to expose the cherry wood that was hiding underneath so we can really just enjoy that natural patina that we can see here and the owners of this house have taken such great attention to detail that even the fluting on the bookcases was hand chiseled instead of being created by machines this was to give it a more period accurate feel if we look over here we can even see that it has the original leaded glass windows leaded glass is really intriguing because of the opalescent flare that it gives off whenever light passes through it walking directly across from the music room crossing again through the entrance we come to the main parlor and there's actually a really fun story about this fireplace mantle the current owners found the upper mantles of the fireplaces in both the parlor and in the dining room up in the third floor attic and they had them reinstalled and as we go room to room we will notice that the wood tones in the wood grains change and that's because the different bits of mill work are different types of wood so in this room for example we have cherry wood and here we can see all the period accurate furniture and this actually feeds directly into the dining room the woodwork in this room is all original to the house and we can take a closer look at that to really see what has been done here when this house was purchased there was shag carpet covering up these beautiful hardwood floors and everything had been whitewashed so the current owners of this home stripped everything down to its original finishes and something really interesting if we take a closer look at these pocket doors we can see the original walnut patina that is on them so these doors have never been restained and this is also a really good place to point out how the finishes throughout the rooms change on this side we can see walnut and on the other side we can see oak and all of these doors have different faces on them because each of the rooms has a different wood that themes the room and before we leave this room i want to point out the painting that hangs over the buffet this is a painting that was made by feifenberger the architect who designed this house feifenberger was well known as an architect for the rich and the famous around the turn of the century and is credited with designing some just absolutely beautiful buildings in the midwest walking out of the dining room we come back into the stair hall and we start to see these beautiful details let's take a moment to look at this new post so this house was designed by louis feifenberger and he was famously known for incorporating these grand details into his designs so now let's take a closer look at the details on the newel post each one of these was hand carved and hand chiseled and so that's why they all look just a little bit different from each other originally the newel post had a gas lantern on it however that was already removed before the current owners took possession of the house so they found this beautiful light to go on top of here and the original gas line remains shut off inside of the new post this gesso mirror over here was also original to the house and it was in the honeymoon suite when the owners bought this house so they decided to move it downstairs so that all the guests could enjoy its beauty now gesso is something we're going to see a couple times in this house and that is when plaster is put over wood and then it is painted gold so it's a really old art form and what you're seeing here are the original colors of this frame there are also some beautiful antiques in this space these chests here are cinnabar and they are from japan the pigments would have originally been reserved for wealthy people and royalty throughout all of history and the use of cinnabar actually dates all the way back to the ancient days of babylon now walking this way past the stairs in the stair hall we come to a powder room and this powder room did not originally have a toilet in it however the vanity is original to the house and we can see a built-in soap dish and a shell pattern so it is thought that this powder room was originally here as a mudroom instead of a bathroom now we're going to head upstairs now this house as we mentioned earlier is a bed and breakfast so some things are not set up so much like a house so there is a fully functioning kitchen but it's more or less so to serve the guests here so let's walk up the stairs now and check out the bedrooms so coming upstairs we arrive at the landing and there are three portraits of very important people hung here on the walls and these people all have historical ties to this house so let's introduce each one of them in this picture over here we can see zb job job had the house built as a wedding gift for his son and his daughter-in-law and i'm going to tell you all a little bit more about the daughter-in-law once we get up to the first bedroom but job here is really important because he co-founded the chicago and alton railroad which was known to have been robbed by jesse james several times job even hired the pinkertons to look for jesse james however they were ultimately unsuccessful in finding and capturing him now job was obviously a very wealthy man if he was able to build a 10 000 square foot house as a wedding gift for his son and daughter-in-law he was known for owning a hotel a race track a mill a mine 5 000 acres of farmland and was also in the illinois state legislature in the second portrait is senator beall now when senator beall was younger he started a company making shovels with an initial investment of 75 over the years he became one of the largest tool manufacturers in the nation and made a fortune off of the construction of the panama canal senator beall was also an alderman here in alton and the head of the streets and allies committee he's credited as the man who pulled alton out of the mud after he paved all of the dirt streets with brick he was elected mayor four times and was great friends with teddy roosevelt and teddy roosevelt actually offered him a position in his cabinet which senator beall ended up declining and in this third portrait here is ninion beall ninian beall was the first of the beall to emigrate from scotland to the new world in the 1600s he was given a land grant in exchange for his military service which totaled over 25 000 acres along the potomac today on his former land is where the white house sits so that really puts into perspective how connected this house is and how integrated it is with not only the history of this town and the state but also the nation as a whole coming up the stairs we're going to now head into the first of the bedrooms and this bedroom has a lot of really beautiful and historical furniture in it we can also see that there's a picture rail in this room from which all of the wall decor is suspended and this would have been a very period accurate thing to do in victorian times so the people who lived in the victorian era were more conscientious about putting holes in their walls so they would install picture rails along the tops of the ceiling and this was meant to suspend your pictures from so right here we can see a japanese wedding kimono that has been displayed and we can notice the strings that go over the nail that is in the picture rail so the chairs that we can see below the kimono are antiques from france and the details on them were hand carved there are a few other beautiful pieces to mention in here the bed is solid mahogany the smoking stands are from germans tobacco and they are being used as nightstands earlier i had mentioned that we would talk about the bride that this house was originally built for and she was actually an heiress to dramand tobacco which was one of the largest tobacco manufacturers in america at the time and that tobacco company was combined with several others and basically became a monopoly so it was morganized and broken up on the same day that the railroads were broken up and this fireplace is original to the house it has the original tile and the original cast iron piece right here so each one of these bedrooms has bathrooms attached to it but i'm most excited to show you the bathroom in the honeymoon suite so we will get to that in a moment but let's go explore the other bedrooms before we get there walking out of this bedroom we now come to a loft space and there's a tapestry here this is one of 5000 that exists the original is actually at the smithsonian museum okay so follow me on in here we're going to be exploring the second of the bedrooms and this bedroom is very spacious i don't know if i've mentioned this yet but all the ceilings in here are 11 feet there's also a picture rail suspended and we can see the original fireplace and again the furniture in this room is just jaw dropping this french wedding armor has love birds at the top and if we take a closer look we can see those hand carved details right here so this bedroom also has a door that connects it to the honeymoon suite which we will see in just a moment so if you were to stay here with friends you would be able to rent out this room and the honeymoon suite and have the option to unlock the door that's between the two rooms that way both you and your guests can have a little bit of privacy moving out of the second bedroom we're now going to come to the third bedroom and this is actually the honeymoon suite all of the furnishings in here have been picked out by hand everything has been meticulously put together the original fireplace in this room was removed before the current owners got here however they recreated this fireplace to go where the old fireplace would have been and there's also this amazing tapestry that is up here if you're looking from it from far away it almost looks like it's hand painted but once you get up close you can see that every thread has been hand stitched and the colors are all from the different colored threads just absolute amazing stunning detail here so coming off the side of the room is the bathroom and this room is really spacious we have marble floors a jacuzzi tub and this has lights that light up there's even a palladian window in here to really let in a lot of natural light and illuminate the space there's a crystal chandelier above us and it has the original plaster work that goes with it that is suspended from so cutting across the loft we're now going to come to the fourth and final bedroom that we'll see today this bedroom is the veranda bedroom because it has well it has a veranda off of it so the furnishings in this room are very interesting and there's actually a really fun story that goes with it so this wardrobe right here this thing weighs over 600 pounds when it was being moved into this house it had to be done so by hand because the crane couldn't get it up here so they had to have four men each of them very buff around 300 350 pounds carrying this thing up the stairs and this is a true testament to just how well homes were built the staircase supported over a ton of weight a literal 1200 pounds of weight on it without crumbling or cracking as this piece was moved upstairs now we're going to walk outside and we'll just see the veranda views so the blusters that line this veranda were actually reconstructed by local artisans and from out here on the veranda we can actually get a really good view at the corbels and the dental molding all right so let's go back on inside and let's talk to the owners of this house about their journey thank you so much for opening up the doors to the old mansion for us to film today why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and why you guys decided to preserve this house and open it up as a bed and breakfast well i'm jim belote and my wife and why did we open it as a bed and breakfast well actually we bought it to make it a bed and breakfast because his parents decided they didn't work on them much longer we need to put them on get out of our little bitty house and buy something a bit larger except it got out of control that does happen so you have gone through every effort to make this house as period accurate as possible what what made you decide to go for period accuracy rather than putting modern versions in here or just white boxing it like so many other people would have done it just it deserved it i if it was going to be our own home maybe we wouldn't have done it as pure or as accurate as we tried uh but because it was going to be for others inviting others into what would you expected when you walked through the doors but something that was historically period or more accurate not modern contemporary do you want to do this house would you really expect total contemporary or would you expect more like the turn of the century that we've tried to put in it i people come in and they go wow one person said oh it's a museum i can't sit down no it's not but um they almost all the guests appreciate the fact that it's it's period-friendly it matches the home and that's what we wanted i think too part of our vision was to take people back to a slower pace a more romantic uh a more genteel time in history and to really give them that total experience for them to walk in and unless they notice the air conditioner vent or the smoke detector up in the corner of the ceiling that they really wouldn't know if they were in the turn of the century or whether they were in the modern world and pretend yeah we all need to escape sometimes and to escape back to such a glorious time is a wonderful thing absolutely and i think it is just abs so wonderful that you provide that for guests you provide that experience for guests where they can walk into this house and be fully immersed in what life might have been like in the late 1800s but with these modern conveniences like air conditioning and full-service breakfast um really everything that you could want including jacuzzi tops well we figured that even more because back then if they wanted the water to move a lot they just give their servants why not that's amazing and that's a great point too so i i have to ask you guys why does preservation matter why should our audience look at this house and see it and say i should do this too i don't know that we necessarily said that to ourselves it was like just automatic we've always loved the central wisdom i mean we used to go to chase for brunch and afterwards we would just peruse the streets of the west end and one day we're going to live in one of these houses yeah what a joke that was because we never really truly expected to but out here this home could actually been in the center west end we just started truly appreciating the architecture and how beautiful it was and nobody can do this anymore so if nobody can replicate it why not take care of it and i think that is really the key that uh when these places are lost and 12th street this was millionaires rome back in the turn of the century and some of the beautiful mansions are still here unfortunately some of them got destroyed during the period of urban renewal one of the saddest times from a preservation standpoint in the history of the country but these places will never be rebuilt and people build so-called mcmansions today and they're huge and they have giant theater rooms and indoor swimming pools of all the electronics and all the wi-fi everything and they're putting fiberglass doors and plastic trim just like they use on the track homes for the average working man or woman and how sad that you spend 20 30 40 50 60 70 million dollars and you get the same plastic trim and fiberglass doors that the track combs get these are magnificent and once they're gone they are gone forever they'll never be reproduced it's not practical there are enough artisans the cost is so high uh the woods in this house are the end of the old growth forest they don't exist anymore they're simply non-existent you couldn't get any price reproduce some of the things in this house so if it's going to be gone forever you better make sure you hold on to it because forever is a really really long time those are some truly inspirational words and i want to thank you again so much for allowing us into this house you're welcome it's such a pleasure having you with us we appreciate sharing it with everybody and we appreciate your support of the whole historic preservation process and movement as well we've learned so much and had really a great time learning about the town but beyond the town the history of all the people that lived here or connected with others that lived here and going i never enjoyed history so much i didn't like it in school but i loved it when we moved here that's fantastic and everyone at home i hope that you can take with you a valuable lesson in preservation and i hope you also enjoyed this tour make sure to like comment share and subscribe i'll see you next time on this house you
2021-08-26 03:18
