A House of History

The Hegeler Carus Mansion in LaSalle will immediately impress children with its sheer size and imposing appearance.

Hegeler Carus Mansion will fascinate children

Story by Summer Traver E Photos by Shannon Serpette

Looking for an informative place to take your children where they’ll have to put down their devices and learn something? The Hegeler Carus Mansion in LaSalle will give children an insight into local history and how life used to be. The general tour will show them what life was like for children long before they had phones and computers, and it can give them a greater understanding about industry and immigration.

Tricia Kelly, the longtime tour director at Hegeler Carus Mansion, gives fascinating tours, sharing what she’s learned about the Hegeler Carus family, as well as tidbits about family legend and lore. She encourages children to keep records of their own, documenting their lives for future generations.

“If you want your story told, keep a journal,” she said.

While walking up to the mansion, one could be reminded of the Scooby-Doo haunted houses or the Addams Family house because they, along with the Hegeler Carus Mansion, are all examples of Second Empire-style homes.

“We are fascinated with these buildings because we grew up with them, but we didn’t grow up in them,” Kelly said.

The sheer size and old age of the mansion will intrigue young visitors right from the start – it’s almost 150 years old with 57 rooms. Ten of the rooms are bedrooms, and there

Hegeler Carus Mansion tour director Tricia Kelly shows off the mansion’s roofline. She said that style of roofline was used by one of the spooky mansions featured in the opening credits of the original Scooby Doo cartoon.

are eight bathrooms.

German immigrant Edward Hegeler settled in LaSalle and began a business, the Hegeler-Matthiessen Zinc Company, with his business partner, Frederick William Matthiessen in 1858. If your child has ever been hiking at Matthiessen State Park, they’ll be interested to learn that the park is named for Frederick and that some of the land for the park was donated to the state of Illinois by Frederick’s heirs after he died in 1918.

The Hegeler Carus Mansion was actually built on the zinc company property. Edward Hegeler had a huge family of two sons and eight daughters, which is another fact that will seem unusual to today’s children, who typically have much smaller families than that.

“This was a place full of children,” Kelly said.

The eldest child, Mary Hegeler, will be the main focus on the tour because women were not allowed to do much during this particular time period, and she accomplished a lot with her dad’s support. In the general tour, you will learn about Mary Hegeler and her accomplishments and just where the Carus name comes from.

Children on this tour will find a few spots in the house that will hold special appeal. When you enter, there is a two-floor gym on a lower level that you can view from the upper level. There are original hanging rings, a stationary bike, and more. The hollow, wooden dumbbells were used by the women to keep their muscles toned. At a time when women were expected to be dainty, Edward Hegeler encouraged his daughters to exercise.

“Girls were supposed to be pretty to look at, delicate,” Kelly said.

Another interesting observa-

These old-fashioned dumbbells are hollow and were used for women’s workouts.

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This area in the mansion, the children’s balcony, was where the children would put on shows and entertainment for others.

Two antique dolls inside the Hegeler Carus Mansion. A sled and some other toys of the past.

One unique feature the Hegeler Carus Mansion has is a home gym. Even the girls in the family were encouraged to exercise.

Mansion

FROM PAGE 5 tion was how the house was built. The walls have two layers of brick wall along with horsehair paste to insulate the home. There are parts of the walls where you can see how they were made. Some of the rooms have been renovated to their original form.

Children will notice devices they aren’t familiar with in their modern lifestyles, including a light switch that you need to pull out in order to turn on the lights.

While many of today’s children are educated in public or private schools, things were different for the Hegeler children. They were homeschooled and were taught three languages, two musical instruments, and they all learned to swim. The children were treated like little adults. They were not allowed to eat in the dining room until they had adult manners, so they ate in the children’s room.

In the children’s room, visitors can see some of the books the children read. German was spoken fluently in the household, so there were many books in the library in German. There were no televisions, so if the weather was nice, the kids were outside playing. In the winter, they built snowmen just as we do now, but they were more elaborate. There is an actual picture of one of the snowmen that looks like a sculpture, and the details are amazing.

When inside, some things the children did to keep occupied were playing hide and seek, reading, and playing with the toys they had, such as Victorian dolls. The children also had unique pets like a parrot that could talk and a monkey, as well as a dog named Tatters that left his mark on the house.

“I think it’s really important for kids to understand there was a time when cell phones did not exist,” Kelly said.

Boys on the tour may find it interesting how little boys dressed back in older times.

An unnamed tutor in a photo at the Hegeler Carus mansion. If the idea of reading or writing in cursive is intimidating to your children, this crosshatch example at the Hegeler Carus Mansion will impress them.

Mansion

FROM PAGE 7

“Little boys wore dresses. They were called frocks,” Kelly said.

The Hegeler Carus Mansion is an excellent place to tour to give children some perspective on how different life was in other centuries. Kelly wants people to keep in mind that these tours would not be possible if people from the past hadn’t meticulously kept journals and documentation of photos.

“We are losing our history faster than at any point in history. Keep records. Print out your photos and write out on the back the first and last name and date with specific location,” she said.

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