Glensheen Mansion Chester and Clara Congdon’s sparkling home shines on

By Peter Passi ppassi@duluthnews.com

Glensheen Mansion remains one of Duluth’s most popular tourist destinations. The stately 39room waterfront home just off London Road was constructed between 1905 and 1908 to house the family of Chester and Clara Congdon.

The Jacobean Revival-style dwelling was designed by Minnesota architect Clarence H. Johnston Sr., and no expense was spared on its interior design and furnishings overseen by William A. French Co.

The original 22-acre property was forested and rugged, but landscape architect Charles Wellford Leavitt Jr. sculpted it into a largely self-sufficient homestead with a greenhouse, terraced gardens, an orchard, a livestock barn and a reservoir.

Chester Congdon, an attorney for the Oliver Mining Co., formed an alliance with industrialist Andrew Carnegie, who would later spin off his holdings to form U.S. Steel Corp. Congdon also had the foresight to purchase significant tracts of land on the Iron Range and continued to profit from the lease of mineral rights to growing mines in the region.

Congdon named his well-appointed new residence in Duluth “Glensheen” in memory of his family’s ancestral home of Sheen in Surrey, England, and with a nod to the narrow valley the estate occupied, with Tischer Creek running through it.

The mansion was one of the first homes in the area to boast electricity and hot running water.

Just eight years after completing work on the mansion, Chester Congdon died of a heart attack. His daughter, Elisabeth Manning Congdon, inherited the estate, where she lived with two adopted daughters, Jennifer and Marjorie Congdon.

On June 27, 1977, Elisabeth Congdon, 83, and her night nurse, Velma Peitila, were found murdered in the mansion. An investigation implicated Marjorie Congdon and her husband, Roger Caldwell. He subsequently was convicted for the murders in 1978, but Marjorie Congdon was acquitted.

In 1983, the Minnesota Supreme Court overturned Caldwell’s conviction and authorized his release for time served. He committed suicide just five years later.

The family donated the home to the University of Minnesota, and it was opened to the public as a historic house museum in 1979. u