Preschool room first to be opened at Brucemore in nearly a decade

CEDAR RAPIDS - Doors to a third-floor room at the Brucemore mansion will be opened to the public for the first time when tours resume March 1 at the historic site.

The opening of the Preschool Room marks the first time a new area of the mansion has been opened for viewing in nearly a decade. The last was the second-floor nursery in 2002.

“We're really excited about this,” says April Kamp-Whittaker, director of learning and museum projects at Brucemore, a National Trust Historic Site located at 2160 Linden Dr. SE.

“It's been a long time since we've completely opened a room to the public.”

The Preschool Room is named for the early 1900s preschool that matriarch Irene Douglas started in the mansion for her youngest daughters, Ellen and Barbara. She also invited neighborhood children to attend.

“Mrs. Douglas was a pioneer for (the preschool movement),” Kamp-Whittaker says.

Tour guides will use the room to discuss early childhood education, a timely topic given the current debate over continuing funding for preschool in Iowa, she says.

Visitors won't see the room decorated as it had been for the preschool, though.

Once the Douglas girls were older, the area became a guest room.

That is how today's visitors will see the room, as it was decorated in 1934 by Irene Douglas as she prepared the room for Barbara's fiance, Gail Burck, using furniture from the Grand Rapids, Mich., Furniture Co.

In recent years, the room had been used by Brucemore staff for storing archived materials.

Then in 2009, a donation of the original furniture - two twin-size beds, two side tables, a chair, bureau and desk, all with the same floral design - “served as the impetus” to open the room for tours, Kamp-Whittaker says.

The Des Moines donor, who wishes to remain anonymous, has connections to Brucemore and wanted the items returned to the historic site.

The chair matched two chairs that had been at Brucemore, solidifying the fact that they had once been in the mansion.

Barbara, who later remarried, died in 2001 at age 92. One of her daughters recognized the furniture and confirmed that it had been in the home.

“It's pretty distinctive furniture and she remembered it,” Kamp-Whittaker says.

Kamp-Whittaker says Barbara's wedding on June 29, 1934, was a social event for Cedar Rapids.

One woman remembers ice cream being served at the gates of the estate for any passer-by to celebrate the union. The entire wedding party stayed at the house and traveled together to Minneapolis to celebrate, she says.

---- A 600-guest reception was held at Brucemore after the service at Grace Episcopal Church, 525 A Ave. NE.

---- A wedding veil, wedding album and other items from Brucemore's collection are among the artifacts that might be showcased in the room, which will be one of two open to the public on the mansion's third floor. Twenty-three rooms in all are open for visitors, Kamp-Whittaker says.

---- Decorating the Preschool Room as a guest room will provide a chance to share details about both the grand wedding and the preschool with visitors, Kamp-Whittaker says.

---- “This is an opportunity to talk about two moments in the house's history,” she says.