The House That Was Built By Gum

00:00:10
Speaker 1: This is Our American Stories, and our next story, well, it’s about the Wrigley Mansion. It was built by William Wrigley Junior, the man who invented, as you can probably guess, Wrigley’s Chewing Gum. Judy Pearson is here to tell us the story of the building, the man who built it. Take it away, Judy.

00:00:32
Speaker 2: In 1891, thirty-year-old William Wrigley arrived in Chicago from Philadelphia with thirty-two dollars, the only money he had to his name—about nine hundred dollars today. He started the Wrigley Scouring Soap Company. To entice housewives to try his soap, he included a box of baking powder with every purchase. Wrigley was soon shocked to discover that his baking powder was more popular than soap, so he went into the baking soda business, adding two packages of chewing gum to each can. Again, his gift with purchase was more popular than his primary product, and Wrigley’s Chewing Gum was born, producing Spearmint, Juicy Fruit, and Doublemint. The business grew, and so did Wrigley’s fortune. In 1915, he spent two and a half million dollars telling people that chewing gum aided the digestion and that chewing it was a pleasurable experience. Remember, “Double your pleasure, double your fun” with Doublemint Gum. Wrigley was a whirlwind of ideas. He never stopped innovating and reinventing himself, always ready for the next adventure. He bought a minority stake in the Chicago Cubs in 1916 and became the majority owner in 1921. Six years later, he changed the name of the team’s ballpark to Wrigley Field. Wondering about the feasibility of shipping his chewing gum via the relatively new airplanes, in 1919, Wrigley got the idea to drop packages connected to parachutes. Dealers across the Midwest would then travel to the drop points, taking delivery of their merchandise. That same year, Wrigley bought the Santa Catalina Island Company. As had been the case with Wrigley’s own ventures, the company came with a gift with purchase: the entire island, located off the coast of Los Angeles. With the dream of creating an enterprise that would help employ local residents. Wrigley improved the island with public utilities, new steamships, a hotel, a casino, and extensive plantings of trees, shrubs, and flowers. By that time, Wrigley had ownership—full or partial—in fifteen different companies around the country. It was Arizona that next captured his heart. He bought a few mines in the state, but real estate held a special interest. Wrigley created a syndicate with three other men to purchase one hundred fifty acres along famed Camelback Road. The purchase price was one hundred thousand dollars—a million and a half today—although today it’s worth many times more than that. The land was adjacent to the newly opened Biltmore Hotel, in which Wrigley was also heavily invested. The Tsar of Chewing Gum owned four very palatial homes, but in 1930 he began building something special on the 100-foot-high La Colina Solana, “the Sunny Hill.” It would be an anniversary gift for Wrigley’s wife, Ada, and oh, what a home it was to be! The Mission Revival mansion would be nearly 17,000 square feet, set on 10 acres. It would have a 360-degree view of the Valley of the Sun below. The thirty-foot-high foyer rotunda would be adorned with gold leaf and a hand-painted ceiling, and the floor below was laid with tiles made in Wrigley’s Catalina Island, a state kiln. The rest of the home had pegged oak floors covered in beautiful hand-woven Spanish rugs. The oak Steinway Grand piano to be placed in the living room was one of only two in existence, doubling as a player piano, and all of the chairs throughout the mansion were carefully crafted lower than normal to accommodate Ada’s petite frame. Every doorknob, hinge, window fixture, and switch plate in the mansion would be brass, with the exception of those in the family bedrooms: they were sterling silver. The mansion took three years to reach its splendor. It was Wrigley’s plan to spend the early months of 1932 there, but a few weeks after arriving in January, he was stricken with acute indigestion and died at the age of seventy in his bedroom atop the Sunny Hill. The Wrigley Mansion, as the locals called the home, remained a much-loved family destination. Ada suffered a stroke there, dying in 1957, and then in 1973, the beautiful mansion was sold. Like a stray dog, she passed from one ill-fated owner to another: a developer who died of a heart attack, a savings and loan caught up in the 1980s scandal, another developer who filed for bankruptcy. But prior to each failed ownership, her lovely rooms and grounds welcomed business conferences, dozens of brides and grooms, and celebrity parties. And then the end of the line arrived for the Wrigley Mansion. In 1992, rumors reported that this graceful landmark would be demolished for condo construction. Enter another intriguing millionaire capitalist with a love of beautiful things: Geordie Hormel’s family had founded Hormel Foods, based in Austin, Minnesota. The company’s most famous product was the canned meat Spam. Geordie loved music, owning a music studio in Los Angeles and playing multiple instruments. As a composer, he had written a number of well-known television theme songs and once recorded with his buddy Frank Zappa. Like William Wrigley, Geordie eventually found his way to Phoenix, where he bought the largest home in the state of Arizona, and not long after that purchase, he heard about the proposed fate of the mansion on the Sunny Hill. He called a friend and requested a showing. In the first few minutes of his Wrigley Mansion tour, Geordie was transported back to his childhood, and the Wrigley’s home reminded him of his own childhood home. Having turned that into a supper club where he entertained guests with his accomplished piano playing, he knew he could do the same thing with this mansion. The beautiful “stray dog” won Geordie Hormel’s heart. He bought it immediately. Geordie and his wife Jamie began restoring the mansion and opened it as a private club. Geordie entertained Sunday brunch guests on the Steinway Grand, still in the living room. He played ‘Happy Birthday’ every Sunday, because, as Geordie used to say, ‘every day is someone’s birthday.’ The family enjoyed the mansion as much as the public did. The Hormel children would sneak napkins out of the dining room and slide down the hill on them, and the pastry chefs could always be charmed into giving them treats. They celebrated birthdays and holidays at the mansion, and the Hormels even renewed their wedding vows there. When Geordie died in 2006, Jamie became the mansion’s proprietor. Continuing what her husband had begun, she has made it a world-class destination. She’s brought the kitchen into the twenty-first century while lovingly updating rooms to former grandeur. The spectacular wine cellar is well-stocked, and an outstanding Phoenix chef is at the helm in the kitchen, and the national awards keep rolling in. The Wrigley Mansion and the Wrigleys in general hold a special place in my heart. My mother was a die-hard and life-long Chicago Cubs fan, the baseball team William Wrigley bought in 1921. Living in Phoenix, I discovered the magical charm of the Wrigley Mansion shortly after the Hormels reopened it as a private club and restaurant. I took my father there for dinner when he came to Phoenix on a business trip. He was so taken with the history and the views that when he returned home, he and my mother hatched the idea of a surprise fortieth birthday party for me to be held in the mansion on the Sunny Hill. Every time I walk into that majestic foyer, I’m reminded of that magical night in 1993 when ‘Happy Birthday’ was played for me on that famed Steinway in the living room. My mother died just a few weeks after my memorable Wrigley Birthday Gala and was never able to visit the Tsar of Chewing Gum’s beautiful Phoenix mansion. But I know she would chuckle at one particular detail. Through all the owners and renovations, one room remained just as William Wrigley created it. To the left of the hand-carved double front doors is a tiny closet with a small table and a telephone switchboard, vintage, of course. Today it’s assumed the butler used the room to call family members when visitors arrived. It has a unique silver sheen on the walls and the faint odor of mint. It is the Gum Room. It is wallpapered with foil from my favorite Wrigley chewing gum, Doublemint.

00:10:26
Speaker 1: And what a beautiful story by a beautiful storyteller. And we’re talking about Judy Pearson, the Wrigley Mansion’s story, here on Our American Stories.