Robert Henry Allerton was born on March 20, 1873, the only son of wealthy Chicagoan, Samuel Waters Allerton (1828 - 1914), and Pamilla Thompson Allerton (1840 - 1880). Samuel Allerton was a self-made man who made his millions in land, livestock, banking, and other commercial enterprises. Mrs. Allerton died in 1880, five days before Robert's seventh birthday. Two years later his father married Agnes Thompson, Pamilla's younger sister. Agnes Allerton (1858 - 1924) was to become mother, friend, and cultural mentor for her stepson. She kindled his interests in literature, music, gardening, and above all in the visual arts. It was no doubt she was who encouraged the lad to take art lessons at the Art Institute.
The Allertons lived on Prairie Avenue, which in the 1800s was the most fashionable residential street in Chicago. They were neighbors of the Marshall Fields, the Pullmans, the Kimballs, and the Armours. Robert Allerton attended Allen Academy and Harvard School in Chicago, after which he and a friend, Frederic Clay Bartlett, were sent East to a prestigious college prep school, St. Paul's in Concord, New Hampshire. But the young Chicagoans decided not to go on to college, rather they would study art in Europe. Samuel Allerton was not pleased with his son's decision.
Robert Allerton was to spend almost five years studying art in Europe, first in Munich, then in Paris. In late 1892 or early 1893, he joined his friend, Frederic Bartlett, in Munich. There they were admitted to the Royal Academy of Bavaria. Summers brought their return to Chicago. In his autobiography, Bartlett told of their "wild excitement" upon seeing the miles of European pictures at the 1893 World Colombian Exposition. They vowed "to pledge their lives to the creation of beauty." The young men graduated from the Royal Academy in the spring of 1896; in the autumn they continued their studies in so-called teaching studios of Paris, then the art center of the world. Bartlett recalled that they studied drawing in the morning at Ecole Collin, painting in the afternoon at Ecole Aman-Jean, and in the evening they had a nude class with Carlo Rossi. It seems that Robert also attended the renowned Academie Julian. Then at the age of twenty-four, for whatever reasons, he destroyed his paintings, gave up the idea of becoming a great artist, and went home. He did not, however, give up art; for throughout his long life he remained an art lover, collector, and generous patron of the arts.
Upon his return in 1897, his father asked him what he wanted to do. Robert replied that he wanted to become a farmer. Samuel Allerton was pleased, for his advice to a "city boy" like his son had become was: "Get an education and then get in touch with a farm somewhere; while you work it, your good returns will not only be coming in, but you will be laying up health, vitality and character, which are always welcomed by metropolitan enterprises."
When Robert was a boy, Samuel had given him 280 acres of land in Piatt County. Now Samuel gave his son the money to build a house on this land and the responsibility of managing the other Allerton land holdings in the area. Robert named these holdings under his stewardship "The Farms." By 1914, "The Farms" consisted of about 12,000 acres which Robert Allerton had acquired through inheritance, purchase, and trade.
At the turn of the century, wealthy Americans were beginning to look to the English country house as the architectural ideal. In October 1898, Robert left for England with John J. Borie, a young Philadelphia architect whom he had met in Paris. They spent the winter visiting country houses and landscaped gardens. In true eclectic fashion, they selected and rejected ideas for the design of the manor house at "The Farms." By the time they returned in the spring, the present home was planned. Construction was begun in 1899 and the house was more or less completed in 1900. They also chose the basic furnishings in Europe. The brick and stone exterior, the modified H plan, and the long gallery are all characteristics that recall seventeenth-century English precedents, in particular Ham House at Richmond, Surrey. Some of the details remind one of works by Christopher Wren; others recall the Jacobean-revival architecture of the Philadelphia firm, Cope and Stewardson. The architectural historian, Walter Creese, has noted similarities to English Edwardian architecture, and he has compared the grand staircase at Allerton House to those of certain American Colonial houses. Allerton House is not, strictly speaking, Georgian. Borie had studied architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His training is reflected in the elegant and functional plan in which he considered not only the taste but also the physical and psychological needs of his client. Allerton wanted to see earth, sky, and water from every room. In Borie's design, the main rooms open to terraces, lawns, and a formal pool. From his bedroom window, Robert could see the meadow, the reflecting pond. and the Sangamon River. Many of the trees near the house were planted at this time and the pond was formed by damming an existing spring. From the garden front one gets a picturesque view reminiscent of the gardens of Capability Brown in eighteenth-century England. And a person standing in the meadow gets a stunning picture of the house with its mirrored image in the lake. The landscaped garden bordering on meadow and woods presents a harmonious blending of the physical and cultural characteristics of two ecologies. Borie also designed the walled vegetable garden (now called the Brick Walled Garden), the Gardener's Cottage (Gate House), and perhaps the Greenhouses. He sent drawings for theses, along with drawings of landscape construction, from his architectural offices in New York City.
Robert created a model farm empire by using the most modern methods as well as time-honored practices, many of which were set down by his father in Practical Farming (Chicago, 1907). He hired first-rate farm mangers, and, in partnership with his eighteen tenant farmers in Piatt County, was known as a good landlord. He often walked in the gardens, the woods, and the fields, studying farming, forest lore, the plants and animals. Because of his stewardship the Allerton forest was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1971. Nature and art were his great loves. His artistic talents were devoted to the design of the landscaped gardens and to the decoration of the manor house. He collected art and books; he traveled and entertained. Robert Allerton never married. The woman to whom he was unofficially engaged, Ellen Emmet, a New York artist whom he had met in Paris, married someone else.
After Borie went to live in England, Robert Allerton continued to develop the park as his own designer. He created the series of formal gardens which culminated in the amphitheater of the Sunken Garden ( built in 1915). After Samuel Allerton's death in 1914 Robert made further improvements: the bridge over the Sangamon River was constructed in 1915; in 1916 the stable, no longer needed for horses, was connected to the mansion with a marble hall; and the "House in the Woods" by the Chicago architect, Joseph Llewellyn, was built in 1917.
Robert Allerton inherited not only land and money but also many of his father's executive positions in businesses and banks. Among these were Pittsburgh Union Stockyards, Art Marble Company, A.T. Land Company, First National Bank of Chicago (which Samuel helped found), and the First National banks of Spaulding, Nebraska, Allerton, Illinois, and Monticello, Illinois. Business interests required him to spend more time in Chicago. He became a member of several clubs, including Chicago Club, Arts Club, and The Union League. In 1915 the mansion on Prairie Avenue was sold and demolished, and his stepmother moved to 1315 Astor Street on the fashionable Near North Side. Later, in 1929, Allerton became a resident of the new high-rise building at 1301 Astor Street. This apartment house, designed by Philip B. Maher, is a monument to the Art Deco style. Allerton shared this address with the Potter Palmers, his childhood friends, Margaret and Tiffany Blake, and other influential social figures of the day.
A music lover since childhood, Robert Allerton served on the Board of Directors of The Chicago Civic Opera. Since 1894 he was a member of the Art Institute of Chicago: in 1918 he developed closer ties, serving first as a trustee, then as Vice President and then President. In 1929 he established the Agnes Allerton Textile Wing in memory of his stepmother who had died in 1924. Further, he was a generous donor of purchase funds and works of art, in particular statues, drawings and decorative art. Today, visitors to the Art Institute will see engraved plaques bearing his name at the Michigan Avenue entrance.
The twenties also saw the beginning of his close association with the University of Illinois. In 1919 Robert Allerton was asked to serve on the Campus Plan Commission. This association continued until the Commission's charge was completed with the 1923 Master Plan of the area south of the Auditorium. The Allerton Scholarships in American Architecture were established in 1926. Once a year he invited graduating students in architecture and landscape architecture to the "The Farms."
In 1922 Robert Allerton went to a Dad's Day dinner at the Zeta Psi House, Champaign, where he met a young architecture student, John Wyatt Gregg. Gregg had lost both of his parents and Robert had no children, so they were paired for the day. They developed a father-son relationship which was to last throughout Robert's life. After Gregg graduated in 1926, he went to work for the society architect David Adler, a close friend of Allerton. In 1931, because of the effects of the stock market crash, Gregg went to "The Farms" to live as Allerton's architect and protege. Twenty-eight years later, in 1959, after a change in the Illinois law, Robert Allerton adopted John Gregg.
Examples of Allerton's local philanthropy were the Monticello Community House (1921, destroyed in 1950); the Allerton-Phalen Trust for Kirby Hospital; the decoration of St. Philomena Catholic Church; the Gates of Lodge Park (designed by John Gregg); and the Sundial in DeLand.
During the twenties and thirties Allerton and Gregg made several trips abroad to Europe, the Far East, and to the Pacific Islands. They purchased works of art, and they got new ideas for the transformation of Allerton House and Park. Allerton's taste had changed, from Edwardian to modern. One is reminded of the differences between the art and architecture of the 1893 World Columbian Exposition and the 1933 Century of Progress. He had also developed a fascination with Oriental art and philosophy, Scott Mehaffey, landscape architect, has noted a marked change in style at the Park, beginning with the art-moderne remodeling of the Sunken Garden (1929 and 1932). "There were, " Mehaffey observed, "two definitely different periods of design philosophy." The changes continued with the removal of the vegetable garden and mixed borders, the commission of the Art-Deco style Kuohl bronzes, and ending in the purchase of the statue by Lili Auer which replaced the circular pool in the former vegetable garden. Mehaffey finds "the sparse, meditative setting for The Sun Singer is in perfect accord with Milles's sleek, simplified, and almost animated lines. Together Allerton and Gregg created large-scale oases, landscaped and populated with statues, near the house, in the forest, and on the fringes of the woodlands. Landscaped gardens which they redesigned, remodeled, or reconstructed by 1932 are the Sunken Garden (Art Deco showing Balinese influence); the Fu Dog Garden and the House of the Golden Buddhas; the dramatic setting of the Dying Centaur; the circular stage for the Sun Singer which was inspired by the Temple of Heaven in Beijing; and the Lost Gardens, now largely destroyed. The tool shed in the English Regency style and the adjacent barns were designed by Gregg. Changes were also made in and around the house. For example, the Edwardian pergola was replaced by a plain brick wall. The Music Room, originally Jacobean in detail with tapestries and coats-of-arms, was later adorned with a jungle mural frieze by Frederic Clay Bartlett, and finally in 1940 converted to a library devoid of decoration except for the modern wrought-iron railing.
At the 1981 Allerton Legacy symposium John Gregg Allerton remembered the house parties which his father gave each spring. The friends from Chicago who came down for the weekend were joined by other friends and acquaintances from throughout this country and abroad. Guests were given Roman togas and Japanese kimonos so that they would feel relaxed and comfortable. The old conservatory had been turned into a costume room. A tour of the grounds was, to be sure, part of the entertainment.
In 1937 Robert and John stopped at Honolulu on the return trip from Australia. While there they visited Mr. and Mrs. Walter Dillingham, former clients of John's when he worked for David Adler. Louise Gaylord Dillingham had been Robert's childhood friend and knew of his love of natural beauty. She told him of a wonderful place for sale--125 acres on the Bay, Island of Kauai. Allerton fell in love with this island paradise and bought it immediately. By autumn of 1937 John had completed the architectural drawings for the house and he and Robert had begun designing gardens which would incorporate some of the sculpture and garden ornament from "The Farms." They learned about the exotic plants of the South Pacific, so different from those native to Illinois. They moved into the new house in 1938 and began clearing and developing the hundred-acre tropical estate. Furniture, books, and art from the estate in Illinois were gradually moved, sold, or given away. A few things were left in the house.
In 1946 Robert Allerton gave part of "The Farms" to the University of Illinois. He stipulated that "it was to be used by the University as an educational and research center, as a forest and wild-life and plant-life preserve, as an example of landscape architecture, and as a public park. The portion known as the Woodland Property, approximately 1,500 acres in extent, has been named Robert Allerton Park....(another) area consisting of 3,775 acres of land in eight different farms lying north of the Sangamon River, was provided with the stipulation that its income be used to maintain and develop the Park. " Approximately 250 acres was to become the Illinois 4-H and related educational programs. Robert Allerton remained a legal resident of Illinois and he visited the Park almost every year in April or May.
The gardens at Lawai-Kai has become a showplace for rare tropical plants. Robert Allerton was made an honorary member of the Honolulu Garden Club. A generous benefactor of the Honolulu Academy of Art, he gave money for a library and a new wing as well as over two-hundred works of art, most of which are Oriental. Finally, in the last year of his life he gave seed money and then a million dollars for the development of The Pacific Tropical Botanical Garden which was established by an Act of Congress in 1964.
Robert Henry Allerton died on December 22, 1964. He was ninety-one years old. At his request his body was cremated and the ashes were scattered on the outgoing tide in the bay at Lawai-Kai. There was no memorial service. He left us, his public benefactors, living memorials in Allerton Gardens, Kaui, the Honolulu Academy of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Robert Allerton Park.
