It was in the window of an antique shop in Rome where inspiration for the Thorne Rooms, one of Chicago’s most beloved treasures, struck.
During a trip in 1930, Mrs. James Ward Thorne spotted two miniature chandeliers made of bronze and semi-precious stones. An avid collector of miniatures since she was a child, Narcissa Thorne was always on the hunt for tiny treasures to use in the dioramas, dollhouses and small-scale rooms she designed for friends and as fundraisers for the philanthropic causes that she, the wife of the heir to the Montgomery Ward fortune, supported.
On this particular trip, Thorne was tinkering with an idea: to recreate the grand English and French interiors she toured in Europe as miniature rooms for American audiences. As inspiration so often works, when Thorne spotted these particular chandeliers her vision took shape.
Thorne’s idea was revolutionary at the time. Back then, the study of European interior design was strictly by the book — Edith Wharton’s The Decoration of Houses, to be specific — as traveling to Versailles, Normandy and the English countryside was out of reach unless you were, say, the Thornes. Occasionally, art museums would recreate interior rooms as displays, with period furnishings and mannequins dressed in period clothes, but Thorne saw another possibility in miniatures.
In 1931 she set out to create 12 rooms that presented the history of European domestic life dating back to the Middle Ages. Intent on recreating the rooms to the exact design, scale and proportion as the originals, Thorne commissioned the same Chicago architectural firm that designed buildings for Brookfield Zoo and the 1933-1934 Century of Progress World’s Fair to draw blueprints for each room. The shells for the rooms were built by a master cabinetmaker, each two feet to three feet long and 18 inches to 20 inches deep — enough to hold up to 134 objects.
She hired master craftsmen and renowned artists, including woodworkers, iron workers, and a seamstress, to make the furniture, paint frescos, marbleize floors, embroider fine petit point and upholster chairs — all of it historically accurate. She added exterior landscapes and lighting to mimic times of day in order to give more dimension to the rooms, and by 1932 they were ready for their debut at a gallery to benefit the Architects’ Relief Fund.
The rooms were a smash hit, and Thorne was asked to display them at the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago. Thousands of people came to see the exhibit, but Thorne was horrified that it was located in the Paris section and referred to as a peep show. She created 14 more rooms for the 1934 World’s Fair, and all 26 rooms were moved to their own space. No more peep show.
But Thorne was just getting started. Over the next two years she and her team of artisans, working from a studio on North Lake Shore Drive, completed a second set of 31 European rooms; by 1940 the third and final set of rooms, 37 American interiors, was complete. In this time, Thorne curated several showings of the rooms, including an exhibit for the 1940 New York World’s Fair. In 1941, Thorne donated all three sets of rooms to the Art Institute of Chicago.
Not even Thorne could have imagined the impact her finely crafted rooms would have. What began as a childhood hobby grew to become not only one of the earliest and most complete histories of European and American interiors, but among the most highly regarded. Thorne’s decision to employ artists and craftsmen during the Depression gave work to people who needed it, and her insistence that every penny raised from exhibiting the work go to philanthropic causes ensured she never made a dime from them herself.
Today, the Art Institute of Chicago displays 68 rooms created between 1932 and 1940. (These include European rooms dating from the 13th century to the 1930s, and American interiors from the 1700s to the 1930s.) The remaining rooms are housed at the Phoenix Art Museum, which exhibits 20 rooms, and the Knoxville (Tennessee) Museum of Art, which houses nine. In Chicago, the rooms are housed in their own gallery, and several are decorated (historically accurate, of course) for the holidays. The Thorne Rooms remain one of the Art Institute’s most popular permanent exhibits, drawing thousands of visitors a year.