The Congdon estate originally included 22 acres of lakeshore property. At the time, the area was heavily wooded and the shoreline was rugged, yet Mr and Mrs Congdon saw the potential for a gracious, formal estate and practical home for a busy family with six children.
Charles Wellford Leavitt, Jr. was a civil and landscape engineer with offices in New York City. As the landscape architect of Glensheen, Charles was directed by Mr and Mrs Congdon to preserve as much of the natural beauty of the property as possible. He was also charged with making the estate self-sufficient, which required plans for a large vegetable garden, a greenhouse, an orchard, a cow barn, and a water reservoir.
Some facts about the Glensheen’s grounds are as follows:
- So that the landscaping would not be marred, all utilities came into the mansion, the carriage house, the boat house, and the gardener’s cottage underground. The water, gas, and power lines were in a tunnel from London Road.
- Water used for the grounds was diverted from Tischer Creek into a 60,000 gallon reservoir located between Superior Street and London Road, which is still in use today.
- Because the home, stables, and greenhouses used up to 100 tons of coal each year, manholes were created along London Road into which the coal was delivered and auger-fed into the coal bins. This eliminated the need for the large trucks to rumble into the estate for deliveries.
- The pier on the estate was the largest private pier on Lake Superior and the only one shown on navigational maps of the lake.
