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| WEST VIRGINIA'S BUILDING - This useful and
popular structure, uniting the advantages of a summer and winter
residence, was situated with its front to the north, on the northern
circle of the park, at a central place, east of the cross street or
radius that ran to the Art Palace, southward. The great verandas
offered spacious retreats in the daytime and on moonlit evenings, and
the wide fire-places, with their log-fires, made the guest-rooms the
warmest and best ventilated apartments of the park in May and
October, when oil stoves and gas logs were the only resources of far
more pretentious buildings. The architect of this residence was J.
F. Silsbee, of Chicago, and he doubtless had an eye to its salvage
for the lake resorts near by. The dimensions were one hundred and
twenty-three by fifty-eight feet, and its cost $20,000. The cost was
enhanced by the use of ornamental iron work from Wheeling. Among the
historical relics here shown, was a sofa on which the officers sat
while Grant and Lee arranged the terms of surrender which disbanded
the Army of Virginia. The hills of West Virginia boasted their
minerals and hardwoods in the numerous cabinets which filled the
rooms and the carvings of the fire-places and casings of the doors
and windows. The West Virginians naturally felt pride in the fact
that their General St. Clair was one of the four rulers of the
Exposition in the Council of Administration, the supreme junto, and they gained no little
advantage from this circumstance. |
