Glessner House

This guide to Glessner House in Chicago opens with a single week in 1902, when John Glessner shuttled paperwork between five locked hotel rooms to broker what became International Harvester. It then turns to the mansion itself, designed by architect Henry Hobson Richardson with blank granite walls facing the street and a hidden courtyard behind them, and to the reaction of Glessner's neighbor, sleeping-car magnate George Pullman. Listen for how a mild-mannered machinery partner ended up brokering one of the era's largest corporate mergers.