RVing Around America with Ron and Kathy: Charles Conrad Mansion, Kalispell

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Wednesday afternoon take the tour of the Conrad Mansion here in Kalispell. This mansion was built in 1895, has 13,000 square feet, 26 rooms, 8 bedrooms, 8 fireplaces and 3 bathrooms and was owned by just one family, the Charles Conrad’s. In 1974 the home and its contents were donated to the city as a historic site by Alicia, the youngest daughter.

Side Porch

Back entry gate

Back of House

Rock wall surrounding the house, original

The house itself is unchanged since it was designed and built by a well known architect of the time from Spokane. Alicia inherited the house when her older brother Charles died, but she fell on destitute times, boarded the windows up and stacked all the furniture and belongings into the house and closed it up until giving it to the city. As a result 90% of the furnishings in the home belonged to the family. What a treasure it is to have those artifacts. Unfortunately, you cannot take any photos in the house. See the Charles Conrad Home, Kalispell, MT on the internet if you are interested in learning more about the home and seeing pictures from when the family lived there and today.

Our tour guide was extremely well versed in her subject and gave a very interesting and informative tour telling us about the family, the furniture and home. One antique bedroom set was an antique when the Conrad’s purchased it and today the lovely pieces are over 200 years old. We learned the prices of some of the furnishings as receipts for many were found among Charles Conrad’s papers. One beautiful table in the Grand Hall cost $50 when purchased when wages at the time were about $20 a month. Some unique features of the house were the rounded arches found in several places, the laundry on the top floor due to high water table in Kalispell, a freight elevator used for moving furniture and other items, imported marble lavatories in each bedroom and bathroom.

Among the other items of interest in the home are the Edison electric lights (most still work) found on the sun porch, the imported French stove which cost $122.75 and custom made to fit the space (has a grill hidden behind a sliding door on the stove), electric dishwasher (nothing like today, very large and bulky and dishes still had to be hand dried) , warming oven found in dinning room radiator to keep food warm, bottle glass window in the Great Hall to name but a few interesting items. Charles Conrad also helped preserve the American Bison by starting his own heard which formed the nucleus of the herd now found in National Bison Range which we visited a couple of days ago.

After the tour we did some driving around the nearby neighborhoods and spied a few interesting and beautiful old homes.

Taking a walk around town later, we photographed a few of the historic buildings downtown as well as touring a couple of antique stores to see if we could find any treasures. None were found but the buildings were interesting.