By Sarita Hopkins Weeks
Jamestown is proud to be the site of the Robert H.
Jackson Center. Here is revered Robert H. Jackson, one of the greatest jurists
of all time, who was a Justice of the United States Supreme Court and the
outstanding chief prosecutor of the Nazi war criminals in Germany following
the Second World War.
The site chosen for this important Center at the intersection of Fourth Street
and Prendergast Avenue was the Jamestown Scottish Rite Masonic Temple, which
was originally the home of the very prosperous early Jamestown citizen, named
Alonzo Kent. He came to Jamestown in 1932 at the age of 22 years with a mere
50 cents in his pocket. Mr. Kent set up a writing school, a dry good business,
and later became president of a Jamestown bank, which he and four friends
organized in 1853. The bank was located in his dry good store and was reorganized
in 1864 to become the First National Bank of Jamestown.
Alonzo Kent’s energy led him to also buy a farm in the Town of Busti,
and build the Kent House Hotel in Lakewood, one of the largest on Lake Chautauqua.
Being very interested in horses, he erected a large brick building behind
his mansion in Jamestown to house them. This part of his total property was
later altered by the Scottish Rite and made into the present auditorium and
stage for the Masonic degrees. The Kent mansion was the first brick home built
in Jamestown. It was built in 1858. No expense was spared when this Italianate
mansion was constructed. The finest woods were used in chambers designed by
noted architects.
The original entrance to the Kent home faced Fourth Street and was under a
large porch whose roof was sustained by handsome Ionic pillars. The windows
are semicircular, arched with elaborate cast iron caps and cast iron sills.
In later years an entrance was made on the Prendergast Avenue side of the
home where a circular driveway was created for cars to drop off their passengers,
the cloakroom being just inside. It is hard to realize that the cloakroom
was originally occupied by the Kents as the kitchen and pantry whose door
would open into the dining room. The dining room is now the Board Room of
the Center and is somberly elegant. It is centered with a modern table and
chairs above which hangs a brilliant multi-branched brass chandelier, with
matching sconces around the room. Its walls are made of many small glass panes
held together by elegant strips of lead. A large china cabinet, almost as
wide as the room, faces the fireplace. Its embossed and molded glass doors
add to its elegance.
It was in this dining room that weekend guests of the Alba Kents were entertained
to menus, it is said of up to 17 courses. These noted guests were such as
Mrs. Frederick Watris, a member of New York’s 400, and actresses Lillian
Russell, Ethel Barrymore to name a few. However, the most famous of all visitors
to though mansion was the President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant,
who stopped on his way to the Chautauqua Institution on August 14, 1875, where
he had been invited to give a speech. It is here that the President once sat
with his retinue to partake of a “collation consisting of 12 courses”
which was enjoyed by Governor Reuben E. Fenton, Governor Washburn, the Honorable
Walter L. Sessions, Judge Marvin, the oldest member of the lower House of
Congress, and General Babcock.
Orsino E. Jones is credited with the way in which the streets of Jamestown
were decorated for the arrival of President Grant, who for most people was
not only President, but also a great general and war hero worshipped by the
populace. Jamestown’s streets were arched with evergreens and from all
the buildings hung flags and bunting, and across Main Street was a banner
inscribed with the words “Welcome to President U.S. Grant.”
When the President left the Kent Mansion (by the way, he was wearing a pale
gray coat), Mr. Kent took him in his private carriage drawn by two large black
horses which the President remarked were “fine looking but too fat for
speed.” Crowds of people and carriages followed the President and wished
him God Speed as he boarded the yacht “Josie Bell” at the Jamestown
Boat Landing and sailed off to Chautauqua flanked by as many boats as would
fit into the Outlet.
At the southeast corner of the mansion is a delightful and almost cozy little
solarium completely enclosed in leaded glass panes. Can you image the pots
of multi-colored flowers, the climbing vines, the hanging baskets of blooms
as Mrs. Alonzo Kent in a long silk dress inspected her kingdom of flowers?
When Mrs. Kent died in 1866 the entire Kent Mansion was full of flowers. Her
husband survived her by only two years.
In 1888 the “Italianate Villa” was bought by Alonzo Kent’s
nephew, Alba Kent, and his wife, Mrs. Rose Eleanor Wetmore Kent. They lived
in the house for 24 years. Through Mrs. Kent’s substantial financial
resources, many agreeable additions and improvements were made to the house.
A third story was added to the buildings at the rear and the beautiful oak
and mahogany paneling throughout the home was inspired by Mrs. Kent’s
son, Charles D. Wetmore, who was a renowned architect of New York City, having
built the Biltmore Hotel and the Grand Central Station.
Mrs. Alba Kent is remembered as a gracious person who entertained beautifully
and who loved flowers. She had rose gardens around her house and even between
her home and the stables. The stables later were converted to be the present
auditorium. Cut flowers were in all the rooms of the house and the solarium
acted as a small greenhouse.
Mrs. Kent was so deeply interested in Christian Science that she built for
that denomination its second church in New York State. It still stands at
the southwesterly corner of Fourth Street and Prendergast Avenue across from
the Jackson Center.
When Mrs. Kent died on July 16,1912, her funeral was one of the largest and
most impressive ever held in Jamestown. Many who attended came in private
railroad coaches. The casket was located in the corner of the mansion hall
directly under the staircase, which was completely banked with orchids, and
the hall was filled with flowers banked to the ceiling. Many of the exotic
flowers came from New York friends of Charles Wetmore, Mrs. Kent’s son
who, because of his prominence as an architect in New York City, was able
to penetrate the New York theatrical and artistic scene and also marry Mrs.
Frederick Watris, one of the wealthiest women of New York society. Charles
Wetmore and is bride lived at the mansion for two years and then moved in
their beautiful house at Long Point on Chautauqua Lake. It was there that
Mrs. Wetmore’s daughter was married to Sir Henry Thorton, president
of the Canadian National Railways. It is noted that eighteen presidents of
railroads of this country and Canada were present at the wedding, and there
were eighteen private cars on the sidings along the JW & NW Railway between
Bemus Point and Mayville.
Adjoining the dining room is the Director’s office; a pleasant room
with lovely leaded windows and paneled with glossy cherry wood. A frieze of
exquisite fluidity is carved in this same cherry wood above the fireplace,
which is lined with a 2” X 3” ceramic tile in Delft Blue. The
room has many built-in shelves, which lead one to believe it might have been
a small library.
An almost square large room is directly at the east of the original entrance
to the house. Its elegant fireplace of white marble is adorned at its center
arch with a large cluster of fruit. Two large windows face what once was a
rose garden. From the center of the highly decorated ceiling hangs an ornate
chandelier. Above the mantle is a large square mirror with a black and gold
“chinoiserie” frame recently incorporated into the room. It probably
served as a reception room leading to the ornate French “Salon,”
which occupies the west corner on Fourth Street and extends along Prendergast
Avenue where great windows faced gardens full of flowers.
This room on the west side is often referred to as the “Gold Room.”
It has a white marble fireplace similar to the one just described and an elegant
chandelier of cut glass and gilded metal. Above the fireplace is a mirror,
which reflects the other sides of the room. The furnishings of the room are
at present completely inadequate. The Decorating Committee has plans to restore
the room to its original Louis XV style. The furniture’s gilded paint
is to be replaced by its original wood and gold leaf, and the upholstery by
some elegant French satin in the Louis XV style. The present wall cloth will
also be removed and substituted with more correct material.
Because the second floor of the mansion is not readily accessible, no descriptions
of the upstairs floor are given here. However, we take you to the addition,
which was created when the Scottish Rite Masonic Bodies bought the mansion
in 1917. In spite of its size, the Masons greatly needed an auditorium and
stage in which to exemplify their degrees. This problem was ingeniously solved
with much work and expense by the conversion of Alonzo Kent’s stables,
which were previously not connected with the mansion on Fourth Street.
Alonzo Kent was a great lover of horses and owned many fine ones as well as
coaches and carriages of different types. To house them he built a large brick
building to the north of the mansion. The Masons removed the roof of this
building and extended it upward 12 feet to create a small auditorium of 240
seats which looks down from a slant onto a well-designed theatrical stage
behind velvet curtains for degree work. Below this auditorium the Masons created
a spacious dining room, running the entire width of the building, and a nicely
equipped kitchen and storage area. This placed the dining area comfortably
accessible to the Masons after their degrees, by means of stairways on both
sides leading up to the hall between the auditorium and the mansion. At one
section of the hall connecting the auditorium and the mansion is a nice area
where there are exhibited a quantity of very interesting and varied photos
of Justice Jackson. Opposite those is a case of Jackson memorabilia and a
case in which there is a figure wearing the elegant black suit that Mr. Jackson
wore at official functions.
In 1917 the Scottish Rite Masonic Bodies acquired the Kent property. Then
in 2001 title to the property passed to its present owner, the Robert H. Jackson
Center.
I have given here a brief history of the Kent Mansion and the Alonzo Kent
family and the Alba Kent family in order to help one visualize the kind of
rich and important people who lived there. It is hard to comprehend the fact
that President of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant, and his retinue ever
visited Jamestown; that he strolled these rooms as we do; that he looked into
the very mirrors of the parlor that we now see.
Without a history of its owners and inhabitants, a house is just a house.
How wonderfully appropriate it is that after the learned Masonic group who
occupied the Kent Mansion, it should now be owned and under the guidance of
an association intent on preserving and promoting the legacy of one of the
world’s greatest jurists, Robert H. Jackson