Stained glass window, Terrace Hill, Des Moines, IA, circa 1950

About this postcard

A tall stained glass window in the Grand Stairway at Terrace Hill, its central light framing an urn of flowers beneath an arched canopy and flanked by side panels of stylized blossoms, scrolling foliage and a blue medallion. The glass is leaded in red, blue, green, gold and purple against clear quarries, with rows of roundels along the top and bottom edges. The caption gives the window's size as 6 by 11 feet. Terrace Hill is the Victorian mansion begun in the 1860s for banker Benjamin F. Allen and later home to the Hubbell family; since 1972 it has served as the Iowa governor's residence. A leaded stair-hall window of this scale fits the house's mid-nineteenth-century interiors, and the card was published by Vern L. Thompson of Cedar Rapids, an Iowa firm.