Inventor and Industrialist Lewis Miller was co-founder of Chautauqua Institution and served as its first president. This cottage was designed by Miller and erected in 1875 to house Miller’s family as well as to receive United States President Ulysses S. Grant that same year.

 

Mina Miller, daughter of Lewis Miller, married Thomas A. Edison in 1886 and they spent summers at Chautauqua. Mina was a founding member of the Bird and Tree Club in 1913 and served as club president from 1930 through 1943.

 

Mina renovated the cottage installing the double staircase at the back with French doors and a garden view and adding the two-story wing that extends north. The walls are painted canvas over wood.

 

Miller is said to have pre-cut and fabricated portions of the cottage near his home in Akron, Ohio and transported the parts to Chautauqua by train for assembly, thus making this one of the first prefabricated homes. The style of the cottage expresses an offshoot of the Carpenter Gothic tradition, sometimes referred to as the Swiss Chalet Style. The front, second floor porch and roof are both bracketed and supported off the body of the main house. The exterior walls are two boards thick with cross or “X” bracing, a detail that not only provides structural support, but is also incorporated as part of the exterior aesthetic. The original colors of the cottage were white with raspberry colored trim.

 

Chautauqua received a generous gift from philanthropist Tom Hagen to purchase the National Historic Landmark Registered Miller Edison Cottage in 2015 from the Miller descendants. Thanks to a major fundraising effort, the gardens have been restored to the original vision of renowned landscape architect Ellen Biddle Shipman who was hired by Mina Miller Edison in the early 1920’s.