senior historian for the pablt mansion in milwaukee. and today we're standing in the captain frederick pabst mansion that was built in milwaukee between 1890 and 1892. and i always like to start a tour of this house with a little context of why it's here. because if you're visiting the city, you'll see that the house is sitting at 20th and wisconsin avenue which is kind of in the middle of the very heavily commercial district. e pabst mansion should be here today, but when the pabst family chose this site in the late 1880s, this was in the middle of milwaukee's most prestigious residential districts and 50 or 60 mansions were lining the avenue from just outside of downtown out to the countryside at 35th. so, when they built this house, there was already a home standing on the site, and so they tore that down in june of 1890 and began construction of this house.

now, the original cost estimate was $75,000 which was a tremendous amount of money considering that people were only earning about $400 a year. but when the house was completed just two years later, it had -- we go through the house, keep in mind that all of this was put together in two years, the cost had exceeded $254,000 which was unfathomable for most people. as your earning power would have been about $30,000 over your entire lifetime. another thing to be mindful of as you go through this house is that the architects fehry and claus who were local milwaukee architects merged their individual firms over the construction of this house. and while you look at the pabst mansion and the extraordinary attention to detail, it's hard to imagine that over 50 other major churches, residences and commercial buildings were being built by this firm during the same period. so, the pabst family took the

keys to the house in july of 1892. and unfortunately they had a relatively short period of time in their house. captain pabst died on january 1st, 1904 and his wife two years later in 1906. and by that time milwaukee's grand avenue, wisconsin avenue, was known at that point. it was already in decline. people could see that the city was pushing out in this direction. and so real estate values began to rapidly decline, and so this house sat on the real estate mark the for three years before a willing buyer could finally be found in 1908. the archdiocese of milwaukee purchased the house, and that action in 1908 actually saved the mansion. because for the next 67 years the pabst mansion remained as the primary residence of five different archbishops. so, from 1908 to 1975 this was

and continued to be a home. and that's really what saved the house. because as all of its neighbors were converted into apartment buildings and commercial buildings, and eventually they were torn down, the pabst mansion was one of the few great reminders of milwaukee's grand avenue. in 1975 the archdiocese wanted to sell the house, and so very naturally the gentleman who owned the hotel next door to the mansion wanted to purchase the site. and did actually effect a purchase of it in order to tear it down for a parking lot. not uncommon in the mid-20th century. however, the house was in such an excellent state of preservation, that a preservation group came together to form a nonprofit group in order to try to save the pabst mansion. so, after a three-year battle to try to save the home from demolition, the group was eventually able to purchase the

house. and that was not without its own difficulties, because though they wanted to finance a fledgling house museum in 1978, so 23 savings and loans here in milwaukee came together and wrote 23 individual loans for the house. and so with those 23 loans for $10,000 apiece, an estate grant for the purchase of the house, we opened the pabst mansion for tours in 1978. over the last intervening 34 years, we've been going through the pabst room by room, restoring it back to its period of significance, between 1892 and 1906. this room that we're standing in right now was mrs. pabst parlor and this was really the most formal room in the house and probably the least-used room in the house. what's interesting about the pabst mansion to me is that this is truly an expression of the

american gilded age, in that an american family is really kind of taking all the best ideals from europe over a period of about 300 years and compacting them under one roof. so, you have each of these rooms expressing an individual architectural thought. and so this room designed in the french rococo style finds itself in 19th century milwaukee. we're very fortunate that most of the furnishings and the panelling and everything in this house were done here in milwaukee by the matthews brothers. and so this house, while it could have been all of imported materials, actually, again, is an expression of what was capable in milwaukee in the 1890s. we're fortunate that when the pabst family sold the house to the archdiocese in 1908, they sold the house with the majority

of the original furnishings on the first floor. so, those items had been purchased again from the archdiocese and once again returned to their original rooms. using period photographs, we're very fortunate that the pabst family had a commercial photographer come into the house in 1897. he shot two or three plates of several of the principal rooms in the house and so we have an excellent idea of what was in the house originally. and so we used those photographs today, not only in our restoration work but also with my work with the pabst family to help bring original items back to the house. a great deal of the artwork in the collection actually came from a competitive brewer, which i think is very interesting. it came from the blatz family. and so the collection while not original to the mansion is actually very similar to the german genre paintings that were collected by the pabst family and so many of the same artists

are, in fact, on the walls in the pabst mansion. and plus, we've been augmenting the collection with original works as they either come up for sale or have been donated back to us from the pabst family. when we executed the restoration of this room in the early 1990s, we returned all of the woodwork back to its original enameled finish with gold leaf. the silk wall coverings which you'll see behind me were actually remilled for us in leone, france, based on the original pattern that's evident in the photographs. well, as we enter the front hall, this was really a place where your guests would have been wowed by the entrance into the house. and this room was meant to make the biggest statement. this room which was designed in the german renaissance style of the 17th century was executed in

a way that would exhibit the finest works of art in the collection and really give a sense of baronial elegance with the excellent elk chandelier in the front hall. this is a bust of captain frederick pabst, and frederick pabst was born in germany in 1836 and emigrated with his parents when he was 12 in 1848. they came to milwaukee, but milwaukee was such a small town at that point that they really felt that their chances were better for success in chicago. so, they went down to chicago. and that's where captain pabst's mother died in the cholera epidemic of 1849. so, frederick when he was a teenager was interested in maritime career and so he joined the great lakes steam ship company as a cabin boy and then worked his way up to captain.

and so that's what we have the title of captain. and it was while he was serving on a ship on lake michigan in the 1860s that he actually met his future father-in-law who was phillip best, the best brewing company. phillip best had an eldest daughter, maria, and maria and frederick pabst courted for two years and then married in 1862. now, frederick pabst enjoyed his career on the great lakes and so he remained a captain for another two years until he finally retired and bought an equal half interest in his father-in-law's brewing company for $21,000. again, a large sum of money especially when one considers we were in the middle of the civil war. so, at that point he starts his career as a beer baron. but it was a very small brewing company, because best brewing company was only making about 3,000 barrels of beer a year. he took that company from this

very modest start, to a brewing company that was considered the world's largest lager beer brewing company in the world by 1890. and brewing in excess of a million barrels a year. he always retained the title of captain as kind of a friendly moniker of his earlier days. and i think people in milwaukee really enjoyed continuing to call him captain pabst. because no longer may he may have been a captain of a great lakes steamer, about the he was a captain of industry and milwaukee society. this bust in particular was done by a florentine sculptor, who was a sculptor that had arrived in milwaukee in the early 1890s and found favor in milwaukee society. and he would model his subjects in clay, send the forms back to his studio in florence, italy,

and then the following summer return with several crates of white marble statues of milwaukee society members. and so here we have captain pabst. he had found a home in a vermont garden of a pabst descendant for about 20 or 30 years, but he's back in our front hall and we're happy to have him back. at the far end of the hall we have what is known as the musician's nook and two or three musicians in a dinner party could gather and entertain the pabst family. situated in the nook is one of captain pabst's prize d collection. this has always been situated in the front hall of the house. behind it is an extraordinary clock that actually belonged to

emel blatz, the competitive beer baron and a donor of the artwork in the house. this is a black forest box dating to 1890s. this is the music room. and this is a far less formal room than the rest of the rooms we've seen so far. and this is really where the pabst family would have entertained themselves but also their close circle of friends. what's interesting about the pabst mansion is that while it's a 20,000-square-foot house, it's a very intimate house, and so this room that has approximately 15 chairs in it is actually one of the largest seating areas in the house. they were in their 50s when they built the home, and so this house was never meant to have huge amount of guests and entertaining. and while they had several large parties, most of them were done with large marquees on the front lawn rather than having a formal ballroom per se in the house.

the two stools at the grand piano are original to the room and were used for doing duets at the piano. as is all of the original upholstered furniture in this room original and custom built to match the interior style of this room which is 18th century venetian renaissance revival. this large painting here was recently reacquired by us at sotheby's a number of years ago, and this is one of the original paintings owned by captain pabst and had been exhibited actually in australia in the 1890s which i've always found very interesting. eventually it made its way to milwaukee and an art exhibition in 1898 when captain pabst purchased it, and so we're very excited to actually have one of his favorite ship paintings over the piano. this portrait of captain pabst

is another original item to our collection. a very fine portrait done of captain pabst. it's a very funny story about this painting. captain pabst was very interested in chancellor b bismarck, and captain pabst wanted his portrait done by him as well. he pressed limbach in to doing this painting, and as lore has it, that limbach was on his way to a summer holiday and didn't really want to do the portrait. and limbach and pabst kind of mixed it up a little. so, when captain pabst took possession of the painting, it was uncrated here in milwaukee, captain pabst was somewhat disappointed that it was such a

severe portrait of him. and what a lot of people didn't know is that captain pabst had pockmarked skin on his left cheek which limbach had incorporated into the painting. well, captain pabst had the painting dispatched to an artist here in milwaukee and had it overpainted and nobody was the wiser. until 1990 when the pabst family had sent the painting out to conservation in boston and they realized that there had been overpainting, and they had it taken off, revealing the way limbach would have wanted to see captain pabst but not necessarily the way captain pabst would have wanted to be remembered. now, this room was the scene of the pabsts' youngest daughter emma in 1897. this is the room they always celebrated the christmas hol y holidays. and the chris mat tree was kept in the southern bay in this

room. and the captain pabst funeral took place in this room. for whatever reason, the music room was kind of the central point in the mansion. the wall covering in this room is very much a product of the victorian period. and was a product which is still available today. it was made by the same man who made linoleum for floors. you can see this kind of hard textured surface which was hand tooled leather, but actually was material much more resilient that could be easily cleaned. i always like to point out on my tours that we no longer burn tremendous amounts of coal or have gas lights in our homes. and so we have to think about the materials that they use, glass on the front of bookcases. materials that can be easily scrubbed down and cleaned.

because that grit and that residue would build up on every surface in the house. and so it's kind of interesting to kind of put us back in that period when we would have had coal fires going in all these fireplaces. however, the pabst mansion was a modern home of its time, and the house did have central forced air heating in it as well. there were two boilers located behind the mansion underneath a glass coner s conservatory and r was brought into the house in a central room in the basement and was regulated with 16 thermostats in different rooms in the house so you actually got zone heating as much as you could in the 1890s. moving from the music room, into the dining room, you'll see this beautiful, wonderful bright room which was always meant to be very sunny in the morning because it faces east. and really bring ts out all the

richness of all the gold detailing in this wonderful birch woodwork which i was always thought was a somewhat peculiar wood to use in a warm room. but the carmel color of the birch works well to harmonize with all of the gold leaf detail as well. this room designed in the french rococo style really is full of exuberant, the magnificent cabinets, again, all made here in milwaukee. so, i can never stress enough just the level of craftsmanship and woodworking detail that was created here in milwaukee. the table and the chairs are all original to the house, and when the pabst family would have been here with just themselves and their granddaughter, who were the most constant residents in the house i should say, the table would have been compacted down to feed just four. but on more formal occasions the

table would be extended with quite a number of leaves to seat 22. and so when we have done that, you're either in the hearth or in the hall, it really takes up the entire length of the room. and one of the things that i've always found most interesting about this is that this is the largest seating area in the house. and so i think that says quite a bit about captain and mrs. pabst and the way they chose to entertain. the wall covering here is slightly different from what we've seen throughout the house and this was the material that was made in england in the 1890s and was a product called time capsule tapestry, and this material is actually comprised of sheets of linen that have a paper backing placed on them, run through a press, dipped in linseed oil, dried and then gilded. and then the material would come without all the flowers painted, be installed, and then it would

be hand painted to the way the family or the client would want them. now, the house went through one major redecoration in 1960. and so the last archbishop that was here decided to modernize the house. and i don't blame him. because by 1960, this house would have been a very dark and dreary victorian house. kind of exactly what you would imagine it to be in the 1960s for a house that had been decorate deck kcore hadn't been decorated in 0 years. wall-to-wall white carpeting was added and even danish modern furniture was placed in house. and a house such as this would rebel against all of that. and fortunately panelling and woodwork in the house was hardly painted at all, what you're seeing in the dining room is all

the original orange shellack finish that would have been put on the woodwork in the 1890s. but things such as the wall coverings were hand painted back to their original appearance. when we removed the mirrors over the fireplace in 1985, we found huge sections of the original material behind that. and so we used that as our model and our guide to have every rose, peony and tulip hand painted back to its original appearance. the ceiling was re-created here in milwaukee by conrad schmitz studios and, again, using original photographs and color analysis, they were able to re-create this renaissance-style ceiling. the light fixtures actually one of the few remaining major light fixtures in the house, and it indicates that the house was wired for electricity when the house was built.

but also used gas fixtures as well. at the top we have electric lights, the inner ring of lights are electric. the outer ring of lights are gas. of course, you can see the key for adjusting the flame. but as added protection, the pabsts had a fount for kerosene so light could be had at the dining room table. one of the interesting bits that i've run across in the milwaukee papers from the 1890s talks about the pabsts having a party here at the mansion in 1897 and they needed extra electricity to run several strings of japanese lanterns around the exterior of the house. so, there was a streetcar line that ran behind the mansion and they spliced into that wiring and then ran wires up to the mansion to light their lanterns. i always think of this as unregulated electricity that was

running around, you know, and the person that they would get to actually do that. this little fount was actually a wine cooler. and here we have baucus pouring wine to his cohorts, so this container can be filled with ice and then filled with several bottles of german wine. one of the things that i always like to point out is that captain pabst was much more of a wine drinker than a beer drinker. and when his estate was probated in 1904, the inventory showed that they were over 3,800 bottles of german wine stored in the cellars downstairs. this is one of my favorite paintings in our collection, and the pabst family had purchased this work in europe in 1894. and it had originally hung on

this space in the dining room, and it had passed through three generations of the pabst family until the then current owner decided to donate it back to the mansion. so, this has been a very happy coincidence that we've been able to repeat many types throughout the mansion of items that left the house in 1907 when the house was being closed up and then had returned to us in the modern period, returning back to the original walls. i think it has such a great feeling of authenticity or lends itself to the mansion. the overdoor paintings would have been painted by one of a group of artists here in milwaukee. there was a very active art scene in milwaukee in the 1880s. really kind of incredible when you think about it. but there was a group of what they were called the panorama

painters and they would maj the large paintings, and the battle of atlanta is one of the most famous ones and is still surviving and recently restored. but the group of artists led by the pabst son-in-law who was acting as the interior decorator for the house, the designer, would have been employed to paint the overdoor paintings and they're quite extraordinary and they're quite good. but by the 1960s they would have appeared very dark and overvarnished, and so they were painted white during the redecoration. now, because of the amount of varnish that were on them originally and also the level of soot that had built up on the surface, it actually provided a barrier. and so when the paintings were conserved in the mid-1980s, the conservator was able to lift the

white paint off the surface and these are the original paintings that are visible today. these are quite extraordinary that they have survived. well, as we approach the second floor of the house, as you can imagine, these were the private quarters for the pabst family. and just into this room, this was the regency room. this was the bedroom of their youngest daughter, emma. and actually our most recent restoration effort. i'm very excited about this particular room because it really kind of brings together all of the opulence that would have been exhibited in the bedrooms of the pabst mansion when the house was completed. we're very fortunate that the pabst mansion has a visitorship over 40,000 people a year. so, between our visitors and memberships and rentals and foundation requests, that presents a budget of about

$375,000 a year of which support all of our activities as far as the operation of the house. and then the other portion of my job other than being the historian, i'm also the director of development. so we're constantly going out to organizations in milwaukee, but also across the country, to help support the pabst mansion as well. >> this is the first of a two-part look at the pabst mansion. you can view "american history tv" programs at our website, cspan.org/history. a generation before president john f. kennedy acting on behalf of a grateful nation, designated him an honorary american citizen, winston churchill made his own heartfelt tribute to his transatlantic origins. appearing before a joint session of congress, on the day after christmas, 1941, he puckishly

observed, "i cannot help reflecting that if high father had been american and my mother british, instead of the other way around, i might have got here on my own." today outside the british embassy on massachusetts avenue, churchill literally bestrides two nation, with one bronze foot planted on british soil and the other on american. this pleased the old man himself no end. of the statue announced on his 89th birthday, the honorary american said, "i feel it will rest happily and securely on both feet." controversy arose over the sculpt sculptor's depiction of the wartime minister, not because of his defiant stance with his right hand raised in a trademark "v" for victory salute. no, it was another churchill icon, the cigar in his left hand, that offended some members of the english-speaking union, the organization responsible for

the sculpture. in the end authenticity and the cigar won out. unveiled a year after churchill's death in 1965, the figure seems even larger than its nine-foot dimensions would indicate. almost half a century on, winston churchill still manages to dominate his surroundings. >> by the way, i cannot help but reflecting that if my father had been american and my father british, instead of the other way around, i might have got here on my own. why do we study first ladies? that was the question posed and answered at a conference titled "america's first ladies, 18 enduring vision." the conference was the second of three planned at presidential libraries in texas and was convened at the george w. bush presidential center in dallas. over the next hour, a panel