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If These Walls Could Talk The History of Tudor House and the Drurys
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n a warm summer evening, former Gilmour history teacher Dan Ruminski sits comfortably in one of Tudor House’s leather armchairs, like a grandfather about to spin a bedtime story. Only those gathered to listen are not his grandchildren, but four dozen members of the Gates Mills Historical Society who have come to Gilmour to hear the real-life details of Francis Edson Drury, the turn-of-the-century industrialist who built Tudor House as his country estate. With a penchant for weaving an intricate tale, Ruminski fills in the colorful details that a textbook cannot. The story of Tudor House and the Drury family is one of modest beginnings and fortune, heartbreak and rivalry and, of course, architectural grandeur and opulence. Completed in 1925, Tudor House is actually a replica of Francis E. Drury’s mansion on Millionaires Row. The original mansion was
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Julia and Francis Drury at their home in Augusta, Ga.
designed by renowned architects Frank Meade and James Hamilton, who drafted and built dozens of the area’s historic residences. Located on Euclid Avenue near East 86th Street in Cleveland, the mansion took about a year to complete, cost more than $500,000 to build and measured 25,000 square feet. Today, The Cleveland Clinic owns the original mansion, and the lush six acres of gardens across the street that were known as The Oasis are now home to The Cleveland Play House. Drury’s beginnings were modest, completing the equivalent of only a 10th-grade education. But what he lacked in schooling, he made up for in ingenuity. Among other things, he worked in various railroad machine shops and patented a gear to increase lawn mower efficiency. His real fortune came when he teamed up with Standard