Glensheen estate was built between 1905 and 1908 for attorney Chester Adgate Congdon, his wife Clara Bannister Congdon, and their children on a 22-acre Lake Superior property in Duluth whose rugged terrain, stream, dense woods, and gently sloping shoreline had drawn their interest by 1903. Chester and Clara had met at Syracuse University as members of its first graduating class, married after a seven-year engagement while Chester was practicing law in St. Paul, Minnesota, and established a family that eventually included four boys and three girls. After moving to Duluth during the mining boom, Chester used knowledge gained while serving as lawyer to Henry Oliver to build a fortune through land speculation and mining in northern Minnesota and Arizona, and he also owned apple orchards in Yakima, Washington, where he built another house called Westhome. Designed by Minnesota architect Clarence Johnston, the 39-room mansion suggests a 17th-century English country estate and displays the windows, gables, doorways, and chimneys associated with Jacobean Revival architecture. The estate also included formal gardens, a carriage house, a bowling green, a boat house, a clay tennis court, a gardener's cottage, and four greenhouses along the east drive until they were dismantled in 1971, while the grounds produced fruits, vegetables, and dairy products and once supported grazing milk cows. Glensheen closely resembles its appearance when the Congdon family moved in on November 24, 1908, and most of its furnishings are original to that first period of occupancy. In 1969, the heirs of Chester and Clara Congdon gave Glensheen to the University of Minnesota Duluth to preserve it and support public pursuits that might otherwise be unavailable because of budget pressures on public and educational institutions. The estate opened as a public museum on July 28, 1979, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991, and has since welcomed millions of visitors while serving for tours, events, historical research, and studies in museum operations and administration.
