On Thursday, August 29, 1895, The Daily Journal in Crawfordsville ran the following notice:
To Contractors.
The brick masons of the city are requested to call at my house and inspect specifications for the basement of a structure, with a view to bidding for same. Lew Wallace.
A few days later on September 9, 1895, The Daily Journal announced that General Wallace let the contract for his new study to Myers & Swan. The names of several men have long been associated with the Study—Lew Wallace as the designer, John G. Thurtle as the architect of record and Bohumir Kryl as the stone carver. However, many other men played a significant role in the construction of Wallace’s Study.
Ben Myers was born in Virginia in 1852, but grew up in Danville, Illinois. Like Lew Wallace, Myers was forced out of his home at an early age and to make a living he apprenticed himself to a brick mason. In 1872, at the age of 20, he came to Crawfordsville to work on a high school being built in the city. After completing his work on the high school, he did a couple of jobs in Illinois and then returned to Crawfordsville where he entered into partnership with Nathaniel R. Swan. Together they became two of the most successful contractors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the region. Not content with just building buildings, Myers also became interested in raising prize chickens—which was considered something of a manly avocation in the late 19th century. He gained national and even international fame for his Black Langshan chickens. In addition to winning prizes for his chickens in well over a dozen cities from coast to coast he also became one of the leading poultry judges in the nation.
Nathaniel R. Swan was born in Kentucky in 1852. As a young man he came to Crawfordsville to work on the new Courthouse that was under construction in the 1870s. Swan was so impressed with Crawfordsville that he decided to stay and entered into partnership with Myers. Their partnership lasted for 30 years until 1904, and resulted in the construction of some of Crawfordsville’s most important buildings including the Y.M.C.A. building, Center Presbyterian (Wabash Avenue Presbyterian Church), First Methodist Episcopal church, the Crawfordsville Trust Building, the coffin factory, the nail factory, Poston Brick plant, the Big Four station, the Carnegie Library, the (first) Ben-Hur building, the Masonic Temple, and many of the buildings on the Wabash College campus. After the dissolution of the partnership with Myers, Swan continued building for many years. He passed away at his home at 309 Jefferson Street in January of 1920 while he was in the midst of constructing the H. & D. Shock Absorber Company building.
In going through Wallace’s account books from 1896, there are several other names associated with the construction of the Study that appear with some regularity. Throughout these records Wallace refers to the building as both his Study and the Studio. The bricks were purchased from the Akron Brick Company and the stone used for the exterior door frames, building trim and porch railings was purchased from the Bedford Cut Stone Company. Hetherington & Berner in Indianapolis was paid for the bookcases, anchors and ironwork used in the building. One of their other significant 19th century buildings was the City Market in Indianapolis.
For his craftsmen, tradesmen, and laborers Wallace drew from both Indianapolis and Crawfordsville. William Prosser was paid for cementing and was probably responsible for the decorative exterior foundation cement stucco. There is a home in Woodruff Place in Indianapolis known as the William Prosser house built in 1886. It is a modest home, but it is coated in cement stucco to resemble cut limestone just like the treatment of the Study foundation. Bohumir Kryl is widely recognized as the stone carver for the elaborate exterior limestone banding at the top of the Study, but his boss H. R. Saunders, an English sculptor who worked in Chicago and Indianapolis, actually created the foliate pattern and the design of the faces that Kryl carved in stone. Saunders’ name and the date “1896” can be seen in the plaster faces of the Prince and Princess of India that were created for Wallace’s approval and are currently on display in the Study.
Beyond these companies and men from outside Montgomery County, the craftsmanship of the building that we share with visitors daily can be traced to several other men—many of whom were from Crawfordsville. Captain M.V. Wert, a veteran of the Civil War, friend of Wallace, and later a mayor of Crawfordsville, was paid for lumber and carpentry; H.W. Niestadt for electric work; Waugh Stewart for cementing in the basement of the Study; Mr. Laing was paid as the copper roofer; Mr. Faust for plumbing; Joe Britton for plastering; J.P Walters for lumber; Mr. Binford for tiling (probably water supply and drainage tiles for the plumbing); and Mr. Pickett for work on drainage & plumbing.
Even men who worked as day laborers were noted in Wallace’s records from 1895 and 1896. John Fenton, William Lytle J.W. Faust, James Houston, ____ Burke, John Linton, “Pete,” Mike Mahoney, William Pevler, Fred Pevler, and Rob J. Wood all helped in substantial ways to complete the work of building Wallace’s “Pleasure House” for his Soul.
It is hard to believe that with all of the structural work, artistry and attention to detail that went into the building, just a year after Wallace let the contract to Myers & Swan, the Crawfordsville Review was noting on September 26, 1896 that:
“Gen. Wallace will have his studio in the rear of his residence completed by Nov. 1st. The studio proper has a basement under it in which is the furnace, engine, and water distributors. The studio is surrounded by a stone balustrade, two entrances leading into the large room surmounted by a skylight. This room will be heated by natural gas and lighted by electricity. The brick work is undoubtedly the finest ever executed in this place. The roof is of copper sheeting, this item alone footing up $1,400. The cost including an artificial lake nearly 400 feet in length will be over $12,000.”
While the artificial lake nearly 400 feet long may have been redesigned as the moat and separate reflecting pond, it is clear that Wallace’s Study was nearing completion in late 1896. It was also costing Wallace far more than the $12,000 reported in the newspaper. Wallace spared no expense in the creation of his 19th century “man-cave” including in the quality of the men he hired to complete the building. From the contractors Myers and Swan, to the artistry of Saunders and Kryl, to the work of tradesmen such as Prosser and Britton, to the efforts of the day laborers each man took pride in their contribution to the final product. The Study is not only Wallace’s legacy; it also bears testimony to the enduring quality of the work and talents of these and the other unnamed men who brought Wallace’s design to reality.
