Glen Echo Park, Chautauqua Tower, 7300 McArthur Boulevard, Glen Echo, Montgomery County, MD

Significance: The substantial, three-story tower is the only intact structure remaining from the late nineteenth-century Chautauqua community based at Glen Echo, Maryland. The stonework reinforces the tower's significance as it alone conveys the massive scale of the Chautauqua building campaign and the picturesque quality of the site overall. The Chautauqua Tower, known during the period as one of the gate towers, was constructed of stone in 1891 shortly after Edward and Edmund Baltzley deeded part of their land holdings to the National Chautauqua of Glen Echo. The Baltzley brothers also hired a well-established architect from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Theophilus Parsons Chandler, to design several of the earliest Glen Echo Chautauqua structures, including the Amphitheater. In addition, Chandler drew up plans for a hotel that was never realized. However, it was a local architect named Victor E. Mindeleff who was responsible for the gate tower and for some of the other buildings on the Glen Echo Chautauqua grounds. Mindeleff was remembered as someone with a reputation for creating rustic stone structures and so his milieu fit in well with the Baltzleys's desire to capitalize on the "rugged grandeur of the glen."
Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N696
Survey number: HABS MD-1080-D
Building/structure dates: 1891 Initial Construction
Building/structure dates: 1914 Subsequent Work
Building/structure dates: after 1970 Subsequent Work
National Register of Historic Places NRIS Number: 84001850