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Item Title


Location
7300 McArthur Boulevard, Glen Echo, MD

Find maps of Glen Echo, MD


Created/Published
Documentation compiled after 1933.

Notes
Survey number HABS MD-1080-D
Unprocessed field note material exists for this structure (N696).
Building/structure dates: 1891 initial construction
Building/structure dates: 1914 subsequent work
Building/structure dates: 1970 subsequent work
Significance: The substantial, three-story tower is the only intact structure remaining from the late nineteenth-century Chautauqua community based at Glen Echo, Maryland. The stonework reinforces the tower's significance as it alone conveys the massive scale of the Chautauqua building campaign and the picturesque quality of the site overall. The Chautauqua Tower, known during the period as one of the gate towers, was constructed of stone in 1891 shortly after Edward and Edmund Baltzley deeded part of their land holdings to the National Chautauqua of Glen Echo. The Baltzley brothers also hired a well-established architect from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Theophilus Parsons Chandler, to design several of the earliest Glen Echo Chautauqua structures, including the Amphitheater. In addition, Chandler drew up plans for a hotel that was never realized. However, it was a local architect named Victor E. Mindeleff who was responsible for the gate tower and for some of the other buildings on the Glen Echo Chautauqua grounds. Mindeleff was remembered as someone with a reputation for creating rustic stone structures and so his milieu fit in well with the Baltzleys's desire to capitalize on the "rugged grandeur of the glen."

Subjects
Stone Buildings (freestone)
Towers
Recreation


Related Names
National Chautauqua Of Glen Echo
Baltzley, Edward
Baltzley, Edwin
Chandler, Theophilus Parsons
Mindeleff, Victor E.
Mindeleff, Cosmos
Gibble, Michael, Field Team
Vazquez , J. Raul, Field Team
Schara, Mark, Field Team
Kutsevych, Bogdan, Field Team
Price, Virginia B., Historian
Boucher, Jack E., Photographer
Schara, Mark, Photographer


Collection
Historic American Buildings Survey (Library of Congress)

Contents
Photograph caption(s): 
PHOTOGRAMMETRIC VIEW OF THE TOWER, LOOKING TO THE NORTHWEST ELEVATION (VIEW TAKEN FROM LIFT)
PHOTOGRAMMETRIC VIEW OF THE TOWER, LOOKING TO THE SOUTHWEST ELEVATION (VIEW TAKEN FROM LIFT)


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