I didn't start writing about Allerton until the 1990s after my former landlord Jim Edminster ( inveterate gardener and dancer who won a gold medal in Chicago's 2006 Gay Games ) told me that a tour guide at the former Allerton Gardens on Kauai, Hawaii alluded to the true nature of the relationship of Robert and John, and of other 'gay games' at Lawai-Kai their Hawaii estate. It was Chester who relayed the suggestion that Allerton money and influence might have been behind the change in Illinois adoption laws. In the 1980s, my gay political guru, John Chester, whose avocation is the study of the 'connected' families of the Gilded Age had managed a tour of the manor house at 'The Farms' ( as Allerton's downstate holdings were once called ), and returned replete with stories about the adoption, a butler who had posed naked for a pair of the garden statues, and other 'friends of Dorothy' who had been guests in the old days. I would later learn that this statue of Apollo was 'The Sun Singer' by Swedish artist Carl Milles commissioned by Robert on his 1929 trip to Europe with John.

We parked adjacent a formal garden, hiked through a long woodland trail with arching trees shading the path around a bend we entered a blinding sun-lit circle at the center of which a 15-foot statue of a gilded classic male nude with outstretched arms stood on a huge pedestalВ—a dozen or so gay couples lolled basking around its baseВ—one of those images that etch themselves in memory. Mattachine Midwest News editor David Stienecker and I had gone down by car. I began hearing of Robert Allerton in May, 1972 when a bus load of Chicagoans joined the members of the nascent University of Illinois Gay Liberation group for a bit of a frolic on the grounds of the Allerton Gardens at Monticello, some forty miles outside of Champaign-Urbana. Louis to take advantage of such laws, not then on the books in Illinois. Robert and John had earlier considered moving to St. States in America that were settled under French rule, like Louisiana, preserved adult adoption laws that were used primarily to protect property rights. This was not the first time that gays had used adoption as a means to legalize a relationship. Theirs was the first adult adoption permitted in Illinois under new laws passed by the state legislature in 1959. The men had met at a University of Illinois function in the 1920s when Robert was in his late 40s and John an undergrad of 22.

But in 1960, the 86-year-old bachelor philanthropist, adopted John Wyatt Gregg his 61-year-old companion of almost 40 years. 2009 ) by Martha Burgin and Maureen Holtz, opens with a 1906 Chicago Tribune society feature calling the then 33-year-old Allerton 'The Richest Bachelor in Chicago,' racking up all the characteristics that would make him a flawless husband.

'Robert Allerton: The Private Man and the Public Gifts' ( News-Gazette, Inc. Allerton, scion of the stockyards and banking empire of Chicago tycoon Samuel Waters Allerton, had his generosity acknowledged when the AIC renamed the original Michigan Avenue building in honor of 'his long service as a trustee, officer, and benefactor of the museum.' The screens were but one of dozens of gifts from Robert Allerton ( 1873-1964 ) to the AIC. Last summer's exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, 'Beyond the Golden Clouds,' featured a pair of 17th-century Japanese screens depicting scenes from Lady Murasaki's 11th-century classic 'Tale of the Genji.' This article shared 15239 times since Wed Dec 30, 2009

Allerton club chicago 1930