Tours of The James Dempsey Mansion
Victorian House Museum - one of Manistee's Most Popular Visitor Attractions
House Museum Tours are available year-round!
The historic James Dempsey Mansion is the only 19th Century Victorian lumber-baron House Museum in the Victorian Port City of Manistee, MI. We offer public tours of the interior year-round.
The Dempsey Mansion is the largest remaining Victorian single-family lumber baron residence in the city, and has been preserved and restored to its opulent nineteenth century grandeur.
It contains and exhibits the lifetime collections of James Colburn, B.A., M.A., IATSE, Member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. Genres include antique furniture, paintings, sculpture, historical artifacts, ceramics, handcrafts, and objets d'art.
A registered Michigan non-profit organization, federal 501(c)3 non-profit status is pending.
How To Arrange Your Tour
To reserve your tour, Please call the The Dempsey Manor office at (616) 802-4588. Alternatively, you can make inquiry by emailing us at: DempseyManor@yahoo.com
It is best to give as much advance notice as possible of both your requested date and the size of your party (two weeks is suggested). On occasion, tours may be booked at shorter notice, so please inquire.
Light refreshments are available at an additional $10.50 per person for group tours of six persons or more. Advance arrangements for refreshments are required by calling The Dempsey Manor office at (616) 802-4588 at the time of your Tour Reservation.
ARCHITECTURE and INTERIORS
The James Dempsey Mansion was designed for Mr. Dempsey by the prominent Chicago firm of Holabird & Roche, in construction from 1893 to 1894. The exterior of the three-story mansion is brick and in the French Neo-Renaissance Chateauesque Style, uncommon in the USA and employed for dramatic public and commercial buildings. The use of this Victorian castle-like architectural style is rare for a private residence, no other home of this style exists on the Northwest Coast, and its character has given the mansion its local moniker as "the Queen of Manistee."
The home has over eight thousand square feet of living space -- room for Mr. and Mrs. Dempsey's many children (and staff).
The interior contains: 29 rooms, 29 patterns of wallpaper, 48 interior doors, 5 landings from the 1st to the 3rd floor, and sixty-one windows. The home has original oak and parquet flooring throughout, two original dining rooms, two butler's pantries, two parlors (a ladies' parlor and a gentlemen's parlor), a formal library, a first floor living suite with private entrance, a three-story atrium open to a skylit roof, ten bedrooms, a former billiards parlor (now a suite), an attached glass conservatory, seven and one-half baths, ten original fireplaces, two formal entries and three service entries, in addition to a large finished basement with servant quarters,
Produced by the State of Michigan's
Pure Michigan Tourism Campaign,
Click Here
to enjoy a 1-minute Video Glimpse
inside
The James Dempsey Mansion:
Dempsey Manor
THE COLLECTIONS AND FURNISHINGS
Period furnishings are used throughout, and are an eclectic representation of furniture from the Renaissance Revival, French Revival, Arts and Crafts, Eastlake and early Art Nouveau styles.
Art from the sixteenth to early twentieth century adorns the walls and includes a diverse range of artists from Carl Block to marinescapist Francois Etienne Musin to George Brandriff of the Au Plein Aire school. There are 278 paintings displayed throughout the Mansion.
The Collections of period antiques include over a hundred examples of Chinese Export Porcelain; many examples of nineteenth century English copper-, pink-, silver- and silver-resist lustreware; early Sunderland, Staffordshire (including pieces from George and Martha Washington's Mount Vernon estate), Spode, Minton, Leeds, Bristol, Welsh Gaudy, and American antique ceramics.
The Mansion also houses Collections of antique nineteenth century lace, ornamental tole and metalware, brass and copper domesticware, crystal, fine oil and whale-oil lamps and lighting, and hybrid Edwardian period gas-electric fixtures and chandeliers.
In concert with the 19th century tastes of the wealthy, the Mansion reflects their pension for collecting ethnic exotica; especially Chinese, African, Native American, South Pacific, Australian, Middle Eastern and artifacts from Asian and other Oriental locales
A TOUR of The James Dempsey Manor Victorian House Museum is a must-see for any visitor to Michigan's beautiful Northwest.
Open-air GUIDED TOURS of Historic Manistee by covered Surrey will be offered in the near future.
