Exploring the Lower Level Of Glensheen

By Gil Avila

wide shot of the Glensheen billiards room showing the pool table, stained glass lamps

Red upholstered chairs and patterned loveseat with a mounted deer head above a dark wooden mantle

The Billiards Room

The billiards room was the first major space I entered downstairs, and it immediately felt like a retreat: dim lighting, warm woodwork, and touches of quiet refinement. Far from being just a game room, the space communicates status and identity, much like the Medici’s private chambers.

The stained-glass billiard lamps, for instance, echo Arts and Crafts ideals of handcrafted beauty. They weren’t made to impress guests at formal parties—they were made for family. Yet, the craftsmanship still speaks to the Congdons’ wealth and taste.

This dual purpose parallels the Medici Palace’s private rooms, which often functioned as intimate family spaces while still reinforcing the Medici’s cultural influence. The Medici’s use of high-quality decoration, frescoes, and fine materials in private areas wasn’t just for comfort; it subtly conveyed identity and authority even when no ambassadors were watching.

Opposite the billiards table sits a cozy arrangement of chairs, a patterned loveseat, and a dramatic deer mount above dark paneling. This scene reveals another layer of the Congdons personal life one that feels closer to a family den than a public showpiece.

The mix of textures, rich upholstery, carved wood, hunting trophies reminds us of the Medici palace rooms that blended domestic comfort with symbols of power or heritage. The Medici used imagery of hunting, family crests, and classical motifs to shape narratives of lineage and identity inside their private quarters.

At Glensheen, the deer mount and carved furniture echo this same desire to construct a private identity rooted in nature, refinement, and regional pride. It wasn’t made for guests—it was made for themselves.

What Lower Level Indicate to Us

In class, we’ve talked about how architecture reveals social structures. The lower level is an ideal case study: it sits between the purely functional (like servant areas) and the highly symbolic (like formal parlors).Spaces like this express the Congdons values:

Leisure as culture.Billiards, reading, and games were seen as intellectually respectable activities. Refinement without pretension.The materials are beautiful, but not ostentatious.A private sphere separate from public expectations. Just as the Medici separated business spaces from family life.This reminds us that architecture makes privacy visible.

Even though the lower level wasn’t meant for the public eye, it still reflects the family’s aspirations, cultural tastes, and identity.

Glensheen and Medici Palace Connected

The Medici Palace’s private quarters served multiple purposes at once family life, political strategy, and subtle messaging. Though Glensheen is on a completely different scale and from a completely different era, the comparison reveals striking similarities:

Both spaces fuse comfort with identity-building.
The Medici used art; the Congdons used handcrafted furniture and Arts and Crafts design.

Both use private rooms to express cultural values.
For the Medici, it was classical humanism; for the Congdons, it was modern refinement and upper-middle-class leisure.

Both maintain a clear boundary between public and private life.
The layout and design of each building create a transition from formal to intimate spaces.In both cases, private rooms become powerful expressions of who the family wanted to be not just who they were in public.

Why the Lower Levels Make an Impact

Before visiting Glensheen I expected the basement to be more lackluster than it actually was. I envisioned an unfinshed basement much like the one in my house. A basement that contained all of the houses inner workings. I was expecting to see boilers and heaters and maybe a wine rack with ancient wines that will never be opened.

But in many ways, it’s the most honest part of the mansion a space where the Congdons personal tastes, hobbies, and rhythms of daily life are preserved more clearly than in the showier rooms upstairs.

By examining the lower level through the lens of private space and thinking about how you would interact with the space like we did with the Medici Palace's chapel we can see how homes across history reflect the people who lived in them. Public rooms might tell us what families want the world to believe. But private rooms? They tell us who the families really were.

References

Glensheen Mansion. 2025. Official Website. Accessed December 9, 2025. https://glensheen.org.

Paoletti, John T., and Gary M. Radke. 2012. Art in Renaissance Italy. London: Laurence King Publishing.

Kent, Dale. 2000. Cosimo de’ Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron’s Oeuvre. New Haven: Yale University Press

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