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The Vaile Mansion, A Gem in Independence, MO

2 Jul

I love old homes that have been turned into museums.  So when I read about the Harvey M. Vaile Mansion in Independence, I knew it had to be part of one of our local excursions.  When I discovered it, the mansion was not open to the public.  It is only open from April 1 through October 31 on Thursdays through Sunday for regular tours, although it does have a holiday season in December. 

We planned our visit to the Vaile Mansion for May and took a short trip over to Independence to check it out. It was worth the trip!  The mansion is lovely.  It was built in 1881, the mansion has 31 rooms.  But what surprised me is that only two of the rooms were bedrooms!  There were not many people who lived there, but they had plenty of places to use to stay away from each other!! The brick hoe also has nine lovely marble fireplaces of different colors.  Important to keep warm with in the 1880s.

The house was designed by a local Kansas City architect, Asa Beebe Cross. It was the height of modern technology for its time.  It has flushing toilets, fueled by a 6000-gallon water tank.  Copper bathtubs were installed in the bathrooms.  The room where the tank was later used as an informal dining area. The kitchen had hot and cold water!!!

Unfortunately, Harvey Vaile and his wife, Sophia, did not enjoy the mansion for long.  Sophia, who had stomach cancer, died in 1883.  Vaile continued to live there, but he died in 1894.  They did not have any children.  But Harvey Vaile did have nieces and nephews that contested his will which led to a legal battle and their being unable to pay the attorney, who then acquired the mansion!

Over the years it was used as a sanatorium and a nursing home and owned by the attorney Carey May Carroll.  After she died and it was to be demolished a local couple, Roger and Mary Mildred DeWitt, purchased the mansion and began making repairs and restoring it. Mrs. DeWitt donated it to the City of Independence in 1983.

I loved it. The building looks like a mansion should look.  It has a gothic air of mystery!  In fact, my husband commented that it looked a lot like the house in a lithograph I have made by a local artist (Randal Spangler, see link below.)  about a spooky Halloween house!  We are sure it is the inspiration! In fact, in October they do hold Spooky Tours, and supposedly the house has a resident ghost!

I loved the massive wooden entrance door, and the beautiful leaded glass throughout the house.  The staircase that goes up three stories and ends in a skylight at the top is wonderful.  All the carved wood bookcases and cabinets, along with the painted ceilings, which were part of the original house, makes it truly a gem. The bathrooms, with the cooper tubs and toilets are so unusual for the time! Colonel Vaile was forward thinking!

The furniture is all from the period, but none of it was original to the house. But there are many lovely pieces included an organ, piano and music box.  Throughout the house there are little pieces of history to experience. The best part is that a docent takes you on a tour of the house to point out special objects and to answer questions.

The grounds of the house are also lovely.  In early spring a Strawberry Festival is held there. Local couples can rent the house and its grounds for weddings.  It would be a great place to be married.

In all you just need about an hour or so to go through the house.  The day we went we were the only people at that time. As we were leaving more guests were arriving.  It is very close to the Independence Square, so we headed over to complete our day by eating lunch at the Court House Exchange.

https://www.vailemansion.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaile_Mansion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asa_Beebe_Cross

Trick or Treat House: https://www.randalspangler.com/store-2-1/p/sanctuary-of-knowledge-tplyf-j8pyx-mmn56-8et9k-k4tkm-cshzd-b6res-r9t4e-3fes4-23a3n-59ghm

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Santa Fe’s  Multitude of Museums

9 Jun

Museums, museums, museums.  So many to choose from, so many to see.  We went to six museums over our six days in Santa Fe.  I decided I would list them all in one blog from my favorite to my least favorite.  That is not to say that any of them were bad, just that these are how I enjoyed them. 

New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors.  Located behind the Palace of the Governors, on Lincoln Avenue right off the Plaza, The New Mexico History Museum is a great place to understand Santa Fe and the relationships among the Native cultures, the Spanish heritage and the American ‘invasion.’  With three floors of exhibits and the additional space located in the Palace of the Governors, there is a lot to see here.  Way more than I anticipated, which is why I ended up not seeing all of it, even though I had good intentions to return on another day to complete seeing the exhibits in the Palace of the Governors. I do love learning history!

The first floor packed in 500 years of history!  It was a lot to take in, but really explained the importance of both the Native and Spanish and Catholic influences on New Mexico.  When the United States took over the New Mexico territory, the relationship between all these groups changed dramatically. 

One of my favorite exhibits was in the mezzanine, “Settling the Standard: The Fred Harvey Company and Its Legacy.  Since Fred Harvey started in Kansas City, and I have seen the displays at our History Museum, I was delighted to see the story retold here.  This exhibit was much more in depth than the exhibit I have seen at a Kansas City museum.  It might have to be another blog!

The next two museums were at Museum Hill, just outside downtown: the Museum of Folk Art and the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture.  We decided to go to the Museum of International Folk Art first, turning to the right as we entered the museum plaza.  (I recommend getting a Culture Pass, which includes a number of museums for a $30 fee.)

The first exhibit we visited was “Multiple Visions: A common Bond.” Alexander and Susan Girard donated their extensive folk art collection to New Mexico, and it was added to the Folk Art Museum.  When I entered this room, I was first excited and then overwhelmed.  The art seemed endless; it covered walls, hung from the ceiling, filled hundreds of display cases. We walked around the entire room, looked in every case, and were mentally exhausted, visually overstimulated, but filled with the joy of the art.

Luckily the next two rooms were much calmer, so we could feel more ease as we left the building.  I really enjoyed “la Cartoneria Mexicana,” which was several rooms of unusual creatures made of paper and paste.  Between the first exhibit and this one, there is a short movie that explains how the exhibit displayed.  I liked it. The creations made of paper and paste were magical.

The final room held the curators’ favorite pieces.  It was a calming room!  A short visit to the gift show then we walked the outside labyrinth to continue the calming process.  You really do need to rest your brain after being at the Folk Art Museum.

We ate lunch at the lovely restaurant on the hill, and then went over to the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. Really an excellent place to learn about the indigenous peoples in the “Here, Now and Always” exhibit.  The statues outside the building brought me joy, especially the one of the young hoop dancer, it reminded me of the young girl we had seen doing the hoop dance in the Plaza. 

 Inside there was all the information needed to understand the native peoples who lived in the New Mexico area. The pottery, the weavings, the baskets, the jewelry, and the information on how they lived before the Spanish and then the United States took control is important to know.  Another great museum.

IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Art: Near to the St. Francis Cathedral, this museum showcases the work presented by the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). It displays the most progressive art.  I loved the interpretations of traditional objects and the jewelry.  There were some pins that looked like bugs that were stunning.  I loved a silver belt made by Denise Wallace and beaded cuffs made by Marcus Amerman. 

However the room filled with plastic bags, I viewed, I walked through the room and I tried to understand it.  I just did not get that exhibit. But then it was about the artist being frustrated about the inability to communicate, so perhaps I did understand it.  However, like anything else, art is subjective and there were many other exhibits in the museum I did enjoy.

Georgia O’Keefe Museum: Just a few blocks from the Plaza, on Johnson Street, it is an easy walk. My instructions: Get your timed tickets in advance. This is a small museum, and they limit how many can be there at any one time!!!    See the movie first!  No one told us about the movie, so we did not see it until the end. 

The museum goes in one direction, so you have to turn around and walk back through all the rooms when you finish, so you could do one side going and the other side going back. As for the art. If you enjoy Georgia O’Keefe’s work you will enjoy this museum. I actually liked the last room the most, where there was information about her life, “Making a Life” and her art supplies. I have to be honest, much of her later art did not appeal to me. But it is interesting to see.

New Mexico Museum of Art: Situated catty corner from the Plaza on Palace Avenue,the museum building is set up like a hacienda.  You can walk around the exhibits in a circuit, or you can cut through the courtyard.  I loved the murals that decorated the courtyard.  I am not a big fan of some modern art, and so these exhibits were not my favorite.  However, I like to see what younger artists are doing, so I enjoyed seeing the interpretations of pottery design.

Other blogs about New Mexico: https://zicharonot.com/2024/06/06/the-great-rio-grande-river-gorge-and-taos-pueblo/.

Learning about the Crypto-Jews/Conversos in Santa Fe

https://www.nmhistorymuseum.org/

https://www.moifa.org

https://www.indianartsandculture.org

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https://okeeffemuseum.org

IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA)

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The Great Rio Grande River Gorge and Taos Pueblo

6 Jun

I wasn’t sure what I would see when we arrived at Taos Pueblo.  Our tour for the morning had been cancelled due to a funeral, but fortunately they were able to reschedule for the afternoon.

Before we even arrived at the Taos Pueblo, we had already visited the city of Taos, where we had time to walk around, see some sites and eat lunch.  We chose to see the Kit Carson home. The most striking bit of information I found there was that Kit Carson’s first wife was Arapaho, as was his oldest daughter, and he had adopted three other native American children who had been orphaned.  These facts made it difficult to reconcile with the same man who was supposedly so cruel to the Navajo people.  However, there is some dispute on what he actually did for and against the Navajo nation. But I digress.

Taos the city, has a nice, small dusty plaza (due to construction), but after being in Santa Fe for five days, it paled in comparison. No matter, I was still glad we had a chance to visit it and see the sites.  After lunch I was ready for our next adventures.  I was not disappointed.

As we drove a bit out of Taos, our tour guide pointed out the flat area we were passing through.  It did look perfectly flat, until it wasn’t!  As I was sitting near the front,  I was among the first to notice a giant rift in the land.  A deep canyon, where at the bottom, ran the Rio Grande River.  Here it did not look so wide, but as we were 600 feet above it, who knows!  As we drove across the bridge, we were amazed that this gorge was here. 

The bus stopped at a overlook area, where others had also come to see the gorge.  Some were students drawing pictures of the bridge and gorge. Some were just looking across in amazement.  Others were shopping for art sold by native artisans.   My husband and I joined the group that traversed over some stones and the barrier to get to the highway and the bridge to view the raging waters from above. Wow! It was well worth going out to see it, even though it was not in our original schedule, making me glad that our trip to Taos Pueblo was changed to the afternoon.

After seeing the depths of the Rio Grande River Gorge, we traveled back towards Taos tothe Taos Pueblo, the home of the Red Willow People.   Since there had been a funeral, there were some places that were off limits. But the main areas of this World Heritage Site were open for us to see. 

My first thought was ‘perfect setting. What an ideal spot to put a town, where a creek runs through it. With all the snow melt, the water was really running through it.  While most people took photo after photo of the North Pueblo and the South Pueblo, I took photo after photo of the water.  “el agua es vido.”  Water is life.

A young college student provided context for us.  Her family is a member of Taos Pueblo, and they still have a home the Pueblo, even though they do not live at the Pueblo full time.  Only 10-15 families actually live there throughout the year, with no running water, but the creek, and no electricity. These are part of the requirements of a World Heritage Site: no changes.

Our tour started in the Chapel.  We were not allowed to take photos inside.  But there were three things that I was surprised by.  First, it wasn’t a statue of Jesus above the alter, instead it was a statue of Mary.  Second, the decorations surrounding the niche holding her statue was a mural of vegetables, large green leaves. It was very peaceful.  Finally, there was a decorated coffin in the room.  Our guide told us 95 percent of the members of the Taos Pueblo were Catholic, the other five percent practiced the indigenous religions.  The coffin was to remind them that they were forced to convert and that many died.

In my mind this makes no sense, why practice a religion that you were forced into to following, while being such a painful past you keep a coffin in your church.  I even asked.  Her response was noncommittal, but in Taos Pueblo I have the feeling from the décor of the church that their Catholic practice is not exactly what they do in Rome.

We learned the history about what happened in 1847, when women and children were gathered in the San Geronimo Church for protection from the US Army.  It did not protect them. The Army destroyed the church and killed about 150 people.  Not a good way to start off a relationship between the Taos people and the US government.  But we know that the US government and people were often cruel to the indigenous peoples of the USA.

Taos Pueblo should be seen to understand the relationship of the indigenous people with the Spanish of the early 1600s to the United States in the 1800s to the present.

For those interested in shopping, many of the homes are now storefronts for both food and art. But for me the highlight was just seeing Taos Puebl0 as it would have looked in the 1600 when the Spanish arrived and later in 1800s when the United States took over the New Mexico territory.

Home

Other blogs about New Mexico: https://zicharonot.com/2024/06/09/santa-fes-multitude-of-museums/

Learning about the Crypto-Jews/Conversos in Santa Fe

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Olathe, Kansas, Field Trip for our Anniversary

24 Mar

As I have written before, I love museums.  So for the last few years, my husband and I have discovered new places on field trips close to home to visit. The last two years, we have spent our anniversary day seeking new places to see. (See blogs below.). This year I focused on two sites in Olathe, Kansas.

School for the Deaf

First stop, Museum of Deaf History, Arts and Culture, A Deafhood Institute. I became intrigued by the site and the museum when I served on jury duty at the courthouse in Olathe.  Each morning and afternoon I would drive passed the Kansas School For the Deaf. and think that we should visit it. There is a personal connection as my husband is a member of the hearing impaired community and has needed hearing aids for the past six years  My interest piqued when the school I worked at added sign language to the curriculum and I met two people who taught there.

The school was established in 1861 as the Kansas Deaf-Mute Institute.  Its’ name changed over the years, using words we no longer use to describe it.  It received its’ current name in the early 1900s. The school serves Kansas children starting at age 3 and continuing through age 21. Its mission is: “To ensure that all students we serve achieve their full potential in a language-rich environment.”

The Museum of Deaf History, Arts & Culture was founded in 1988, with the museum building opening across the street from the school’s campus in 2001 and getting its name officially in 2017.

I was intrigued to see the changes in how the deaf community has been treated over the years and the rise of abundant social, cultural and educational opportunities.  Learning how sign language came to the United States through a French educator and how that changed the lives of many deaf people to me was important to know.

 For me the most interesting was watching a 17-minute documentary about the deaf community of Martha’s Vineyard.  This island had a larger than normal population of deaf people.  A large percentage of the population of the island used sign language and spoken English to communicate. Offically called Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL), it was used until the 1950s. With the development of American Sign Language, this local sign language slowly disappeared. However, some of the signs in American Sign Language come from MVLS. 

Also known as the William J. Marra Musuem, the museum is opened Wednesday through Sunday from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm.  It is free, but there is a donation box at the entrance.

About a mile from this museum was our next stop, The Mahaffie StageCoach & Farm Historic Site.  I had been there almost 40 years ago when I worked for the local Girl Scout Council for a large scout event.  I remember it as a small site with the main limestone house that was built by the Mahaffie family on land that bordered the Santa Fe Trail and ended being used as resting stop for travelers both on wagon trains or stagecoach. 

The house was built in 1865 by Beatty and Lucinda Mahaffie as a home for their family of eight children, it is one of the last remaining stagecoach stops left! Their farm was one of the most successful farms in the area.  And even though the trains brought the end of the wagon trains, this farm survived!

Now operated by the City of Olathe Parks and Recreation Department, it is a much larger restored site than I remembered.  There is now a large Agricultural Heritage Barn and the Heritage Center to explore that has exhibits and information about the family and life in the 1800s.

When we went on a Friday afternoon, the main house was closed. However, we were able to explore the Heritage Center and walk around the grounds of the farm and the buildings.   During this time of year, the house is only open on Saturdays. But between Memorial Day and Labor Day it is open from Wednesday through Sunday and has living history activities, which are also available on weekends in April, May, September and October. Cost is $3.00 a person.

https://www.ksdeaf.org

https://www.museumofdeaf.org

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha%27s_Vineyard_Sign_Language#:~:text=Martha’s%20Vineyard%20Sign%20Language%20(MVSL,to%20participation%20in%20public%20life.

https://www.mahaffie.org

https://wordpress.com/posts/zicharonot.com?s=Anniversary

Money Museum, A Numismatic Joy

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