surrounded by picturesque buildings in historical styles, including the
Gothic Revival Greenstone Church.Beman was born in the borough of
Brooklyn in New York City, New York, to a father who was fascinated with architecture and who maintained an extensive collection of books on the subject. The house was purchased in 1959 by
Margaret Taylor-Burroughs and became the first home of what is now the
DuSable Museum of African American History in 1961. The house is a designated Chicago landmark and is listed in the
National Register of Historic Places. , designed by Beman in the
Romanesque Revival style. In 1879, Beman received a commission from
George Pullman to design what would become the nation's first planned company town, and he relocated to Chicago to carry out the extensive work involved. Pullman arranged for Beman to design the many buildings involved, while landscape architect
Nathan Franklin Barrett created the street and park system. Located south of Chicago on the shore of Lake Calumet (in what would become Chicago's Far South Side), the company town of
Pullman included more than 1,300 houses, a factory, monumental water tower, theater, church, hotel, market, and schools but the town of Pullman soon became controversial. Celebrated for orderliness and planning at first, Pullman's reputation soured when the
Pullman Palace Car Company refused to lower town prices or rents for workers after cutting their wages, touching off the bitter national
Pullman Strike. Ultimately the courts forced Pullman to relinquish the town, it was annexed by Chicago, and is now an Illinois state historic site. Beman's early buildings tended toward
picturesque eclecticism with varied historical details. Fashionable at the time, these styles included Gothic Revival,
Queen Anne,
Romanesque Revival, and
Châteauesque (sometimes called
Francis I style after the French king from 1515-1547). In Pullman, Beman designed block after block of rowhouses that "feature a variety of elevations and detailing that create an overall picturesque appearance." Also included among the buildings for the Pullman development were Hotel Florence (Queen Anne style), Greenstone Church (Gothic Revival), and the Pullman Administration Building (Romanesque Revival). Continuing his historicism, Beman's subsequent work for wealthy Chicagoans included a magnificent Queen Anne-style residence for Marshall Field Jr. (son of the
department store magnate) at 1919 South Prairie (1884) and two Châteauesque mansions:
W.W. Kimball Mansion (1890-1892) at 1801 Prairie Avenue and John W. Griffiths Mansion (1892, later Griffiths-Burroughs House) at 3806 South Michigan Avenue. With asymmetrical plans and elevations, high-pitched, visually complex rooflines, and "fancifully treated chimneys", Châteauesque enjoyed a period of popularity for "the elaborate homes of America’s newly-established wealthy families" beginning with the Vanderbilts. Beman was quite skilled at Châteauesque, which when successful involves "the adroit mixing of Renasissance and Late Gothic details... [and is] rather tricky for any but the cordon bleus of the profession." In Chicago, Beman also designed the
Studebaker Fine Arts Building (1884) at
Michigan Avenue and Van Buren Avenues in the
Chicago Landmark Historic Michigan Boulevard District, the Pullman Building on Michigan Avenue, and parts of George Pullman's
Prairie Avenue home, which was also later demolished. In 1897, Beman also designed Pullman's monument at Chicago's
Graceland Cemetery, a towering
Corinthian column flanked by curved benches. Elsewhere, Beman designed the distinctive Pullman summer home at the
Thousand Islands, "
Castle Rest." Beman designed several buildings for the
World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. Caught up in the trend toward
Neoclassicism favored by
Daniel H. Burnham, director of the Exposition, after this Beman "abandoned his former playful eclecticism and took on the sobriety and unity of the Renaissance and classical styles." Beman's other projects in Chicago included the
Grand Central Station and its train shed at Harrison and Wells (1891, demolished 1971), the
Blackstone Public Library (1905) in the
Kenwood neighborhood, and the Hamilton Club Building at Madison and Dearborn Avenue (1913, Demolished). The Blackstone Public Library Branch, built in 1905, was Chicago's first branch library. The design was a near duplication of the James Blackstone Memorial Library in
Branford, Connecticut (1896). Both libraries were built with bequests from the Blackstone family of Chicago. (1891) He also designed the
Pioneer Building in
Saint Paul, Minnesota (1889), the
Procter & Gamble factories in
Cincinnati, Ohio, the
Studebaker Administration Building in
South Bend, Indiana, the 14-story
Pabst Building in
Milwaukee,
Wisconsin (1891, demolished), the Loyalty Building in
Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, the
Pullman Memorial Universalist Church in
Albion, New York (1894), the
Michigan Trust Company Building in
Grand Rapids, Michigan (1891), the Batavian Bank Building
La Crosse, WI (1883), and the
J.M.S. Building, also in South Bend (1916). ==Christian Science==