Society acquires rare portrait of 1879 Illinois House of Representatives

In 1879, the new statehouse in Springfield was not yet finished when the Illinois House of Representatives moved in. The occasion called for a celebration, recorded for posterity by an unknown artist (or artists) in a curious, 5'x 7', hand-painted photo collage. The collage, which featured photographs of the individual legislators and their staff glued onto a hand-painted and sketched background of the House chambers, disappeared for several decades, and recently surfaced in a Des Plaines photo lab.

Former Illinois State Representative and ISHS board director Redd Griffin learned of the collage from Michael J. Walter, president of The Perfect Image, Inc, where the image was being stored. Griffin thought the artifact might be historically significant and that ISHS might be interested in it. Walter agreed to let Griffin have it. The collage was temporarily moved to Alexis Studios in Chicago and photographed for the Society by studio owner Wayne Toberman.

Early this spring ISHS Executive Director William Furry, and later David Joens, Director of the Illinois State Archives and a member of the ISHS Advisory Board, drove to Chicago and brought the collage back to Springfield, where it is being stored and studied by statehouse historians and architects. Toberman, Joens, Griffin, and ISHS Vice President Mark Sorensen, who is also the State Capitol Historian, had also spent many hours of preliminary research on the image. According to Joens, the image has already provided new details about the interior of the House chambers as they appeared in 1879.

The information couldn't be timelier. The statehouse is undergoing a multi-million dollar restoration this summer, and the target year for interpretation is 1879. The Illinois State Historical Society plans to have the collage cleaned and restored in time for the spring legislative session, and to exhibit the image in the restored House chambers.

Illinois Heritage 23