The stately Rollins Mansion was built a century ago at 2801 Fleur Drive. Photo: Rollins Mansion
Writer: Dave Elbert
Like their Pilgrim forebears, Richard Rollins and his family arrived in 19th-century Des Moines with little to their name. But they built a fortune from scratch, reinventing themselves time and again, and by the early 1900s their hard work paid off.
The success of their Rollins Hosiery Mill enabled Richard’s grandson Ralph to dream big enough to build one of Des Moines’ most famous homes. Completed in 1927, the Rollins Mansion on Fleur Drive is one of the city’s three most famous homes, alongside the governor’s mansion at Terrace Hill and Salisbury House.
Like Salisbury House, the Rollins Mansion was inspired by 16th-century Tudor England, but it has its own colorful history, shaped by the original and subsequent owners. What follows is the story of how the Rollins family arrived with the pioneers and eventually built a small palace.
According to a family history, Richard Rollins was born in Maine in 1801, five generations removed from James Rollins, a 20-year-old Pilgrim who arrived in New England in 1631, barely a decade after the first English immigrants landed at Plymouth Rock.
In 1855, Richard Rollins and sons Alonzo, 23, and John, 16, headed out west and settled in Fort Dodge, where Alonzo had established a brickyard the previous summer. They worked together and helped build several projects, including the city’s first brick schoolhouse.
Richard’s other son, Henry, and daughter, Sarah, moved to Iowa in 1856, and his wife, Elizabeth, arrived the following year.
Meanwhile, Alonzo and John had floated down the Des Moines River with a load of logs to Fort Des Moines. Their motivations weren’t recorded, but it’s likely the young men figured the newly designated state capital would need some bricks. They set up a new brickyard on Ninth Street. “Sarah was cook for Father Rollins and the three boys,” according to the family history.
It’s worth noting that the mid-1850s marked a turning point for Des Moines and Iowa. In 1855, the Legislature, in Iowa City, decided to locate a new state capitol in the city of 1,500 near Fort Des Moines. A three-story brick statehouse was built in 1857 immediately south of the current one, and the state government moved in a year later.
During these early years, it must have seemed like the Rollins brothers were everywhere. After they closed the brickyard in 1860, they ran a drugstore at the corner of Second Street and Court Avenue, and then a paper mill on South Sixth Street near the Raccoon River.
Alonzo eventually moved to Chicago to run a dry-goods business, while Henry bounced between Des Moines, Chicago and Maine, where he helped the oldest brother, George, run a vest factory.
Henry eventually settled in Des Moines, got into the real estate business, and teamed up with James Callanan, a lawyer and businessman, to relocate a sewing-machine manufacturer from Chicago to a parcel of land near the Iowa State Fairgrounds. When it opened in 1894, they called it the Des Moines Hosiery Mill.
Henry had learned a lot from his older brothers, and his skills were well-suited to making stockings for women, men and children. He’d helped manufacture bricks, paper and clothing. He’d worked in retail at the drugstore on Court Avenue and in wholesale sales in Chicago.
He also understood the value of branding, and it wasn’t long before the Des Moines Hosiery Mill was selling durable “Armor Plate Stockings” made with a “harms-not dye.” Advertisements touted “the only dye in existence that does not rot, ‘burn’ or weaken yarn.”
The business grew quickly, adding new buildings and more employees every few years. It became one of the city’s largest factories and expanded to an auxiliary plant in Boone in 1909.
When Henry died, in 1915, his sons Harry and Ralph took over. Harry had an engineering degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and oversaw the technical operations, while Ralph was in charge of sales. He’d been a popular athlete at Des Moines West High School and Amherst College, and was known for his size 14 shoes.
In 1922, the brothers changed the company’s name to the Rollins Hosiery Mills and employed more than 900 workers at its peak. It went public and became the first Des Moines business to be traded on the Chicago Stock Exchange in August 1929 — two months before the market crashed.
Rollins Hosiery Mills survived the Great Depression but struggled during World War II. The company was sold in 1940 and again in 1945 to Munsingwear, which shut down local operations in 1953, selling the buildings to Armstrong Tire and Rubber.
Ralph built his mansion during the boom years, but lived there only a few years. He and Harry retired in the early 1930s and moved to La Jolla, California. Ralph died in 1959 at 75, and Harry died six years later, at 85.
The mansion was sold in 1934 to Edna Meredith, the widow of magazine publisher Edwin “E.T.” Meredith. She passed the property to her daughter, Mildred, and son-in-law, Fred Bohen, who’d taken over the publishing business after E.T. died in 1929.
Bohen sold the house for $280,000 in 1977 to the lawyer Lex Hawkins, who spent as much as $1 million for renovations that added the contents of two entire rooms from English castles.
Hawkins sold the mansion in 1992 to the Des Moines builder Dick Walters. Around the same time, Clarke Cos. bought 6 acres of adjacent land to develop the Druid Hill Townhomes and bought the Rollins Mansion three years later to use as a corporate headquarters. From there, the deed passed in 2009 to Hubbell Realty and then in 2012 to the current owners with the Winvestment Network, who have rented out the space for weddings and other events over the past decade.
Today, the Rollins Mansion remains a testament to the family’s legacy, built on ambition, resilience and a touch of grandeur.
In the ballroom, an ornate cabinet once concealed a bar and an entrance to the elevator.
Hydrangeas frame the fountain in the garden behind the house.
To spite his accountant, Ralph Rollins commissioned a woodworker — at extra expense — to carve a bean-counting monster above a doorway in the library.
A pair of ship mastheads keeps watch over the solarium.
Photos: Duane Tinkey. Pictured above:
1. Gothic stained glass brightens up many of the windows.
2. Ornate plasterwork adorns the ballroom ceiling.
3. A painting of the mansion hangs above the library fireplace.
4. A trio of pirates scowls over the library. They’re caricatures of Ralph Rollins and the mansion’s two architects, Byron Boyd and Herbert Moore.
5. Ralph Rollins’ initials enhance the entryway.
6. Wooden beams from an English inn where Shakespeare performed now support the ceiling above the Rollins Mansion’s main staircase.
7. A coat of arms nods to the mansion’s Tudor inspiration.
8. All sorts of colorful characters come out of the woodwork.
A portrait of Ralph Rollins out in the garden sits inside on a shelf in the library. Photo: Duane Tinkey
Ralph Rollins’ wife, Margaret Clemens Rollins, and their children, Mary Louise, right, and Ralph Jr. (known as “Buddy”) pose for a photo in the late 1920s, shortly after the mansion was built. Photo: Rollins Mansion
An influential family
Education
George and Alonzo Rollins spent winters in Florida and founded a Christian school called Rollins College in Winter Park in 1885. The private, liberal arts college is the state’s fourth-oldest postsecondary school and currently enrolls about 3,000 students.
Religion
Several Rollins family members belonged to Plymouth Congregational Church, which was organized in 1857, a year after the family arrived in Des Moines. Alonzo contributed $20 to Plymouth’s first fund drive in 1858. Henry was chair of the church’s board of trustees for many years. He died in 1915, and when the congregation moved to its current location, at 42nd Street and Ingersoll Avenue, they named the new building’s 82-foot brick and limestone tower the Henry Martyn Rollins Tower in his honor.
Politics
Henry Rollins, Ralph’s father, served three terms on the Des Moines City Council during the 1890s and was twice elected president pro tempore. In 1900, he was encouraged to run against incumbent Mayor John MacVicar but dropped out when a third candidate smeared Rollins by misrepresenting his position on labor issues. Henry’s brother John served on the Des Moines Park Commission from 1892 to 1898.
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