(gentle piano music) (bright music) (birds chirping) - [Narrator] Located along the Mississippi River, at the mouth of Plum River, sits Savanna, Illinois.

Originally settled by four families as a frontier outpost in 1828, Savanna received its city charter from the state of Illinois in 1875.

The river town provided a stopping point for traders, steamboats, and railroads.

Among the early residents was the Greenleaf family.

Simon and his wife purchased a large parcel of land known as Greenleaf Hill, gifting a portion of the property to the Episcopalian church.

Their son, Francis, finished his formal education in 1878.

Before becoming the publisher of the newspaper "The Savanna Times" that his father started, he was an apprentice at a drugstore, a bookkeeper, and he served as a township supervisor on the Board of Education.

He married his wife, Margaret, a former school teacher, in 1886, and they had four children.

They lived at Hillside, with his parents, for several years before moving into their Queen Anne-inspired home.

- They started in 1899, and they finished in 1901, so I say it's literally Victorian-Edwardian.

It was a pretty simple house, not for its time, simple compared to what we did with it, but we had this kind of philosophy of...

Sort of our mission statement, I guess you could say, was to create a house and a lifestyle that would be like the American aristocracy, or at least the version we could afford.

The Greenleafs were very hardworking people.

He was a typical Victorian workaholic.

So he would come home and walk up this many, many steps to get up the hill, and then, in the wintertime, we would stoke all the coal fireplaces and the furnace and then have his lunch, go back to the bank, and then after work, come and work on something else.

- [Narrator] The Greenleafs spent over four decades at Hillcrest, and, in 1944, both Francis and Margaret died.

Between 1944 and the mid-1970s, seven different owners came and went.

Then, in 1976, Hillcrest became the canvas for the life's work of artist Alan St. George and his wife, Adrianne, a uniquely gifted woman whose vision for her home transformed Hillcrest into Havencrest Castle.

Adrianne loved the grandeur of large and ornate homes, like Chicago's Dewes' Mansion or Alva Vanderbilt's Marble House.

She had been raised in such a house, and she and Alan found their perfect home not long after they married.

- Savanna was perfect because if you've seen the architecture, there are period homes, and that's what we wanted.

We wanted an old house in a small town.

So we looked at four different states, and this was the house that drew us.

It had the parquet floors, the sliding doors, the leaded glass, all the things we wanted, high ceilings, and it was kind of a blank canvas ready for us to do our creative work with.

May 1st, 1976.

We got here on that day, and the truck with all of our stuff didn't come until the next day.

We spent the first night in our new home sleeping on the floor of the dining room without a blanket, a pillow, nothing, but when you're young, it's not too difficult.

- [Narrator] Alan St. George was born and raised in the Chicago land area and seemed destined to be an artist.

Though, his path wasn't originally found on canvas or in clay.

- I started, very early, studying.

The earliest was under the tutelage of a nun at the Nazareth Academy in LaGrange.

I would go in Saturdays.

I think it was $3, and she was a wonderful painter and taught us watercolor and drawing.

So we would draw from plaster cast, you know, and also from life.

We had a model to do our paintings of, and then after that, I studied, at about age 12-13, under an Italian painter and a portrait painter, so I learned to oils for the first time, but I had to learn all the anatomy of the face.

And he showed us, you know, starting with the skull and then naming everything, all the muscles that overlay the skull, in Latin, the Latin names.

It's kind of like learning to be a doctor.

And then with India ink and a dip pen, you had to ink all of this.

And then, finally, you get to the oil painting, and we learned how to do an underpainting and how to stretch a canvas, how to hang a picture when it's done.

He taught everything.

There was only one other person in the class, and she dropped out after two times.

And I paid for my lessons by working because it was $5 a lesson, which was kind of a lot back in those days.

And I came from a big family, and so this was...

There wasn't money for this kind of thing.

So I would clean his studio.

He had an art supply store in the front.

I would take care of that, and it worked out.

After that, it was the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, and I was only there a short time, and then I left to start my company, Facemakers, Facemakers is a mascot company, and we've been in business for 47 years, and we ship all over the world.

And one of our great claims to fame is that we make Smokey Bear.

We're one of two companies in the world that do this.

But also just thousands of mascots for high schools and colleges.

As a kid, I liked to do the "Famous Monsters of Filmland" kind of horror makeups, which are very elaborate and take a lot of time, sculpting all of the...

Starting with a life mask and sculpting all the pieces.

You know, when I was at that age, "Planet of the Apes," the first one came out, with Charlton Heston.

So it's that type of makeup, where these rubber prosthetics are glued to the face.

And then hair is added, you know, wigs are made.

It would just take weeks and weeks.

So I entered a costume contest, downtown Chicago, for the opening of a movie called "Tales From the Crypt."

It was at midnight, and it took six hours to put this werewolf makeup on.

And then I went there, and the newspaper reporter from the "Chicago Daily News" took a photo of me next to this coffin that they had in the lobby, and that appeared in the newspaper with the headline "Monster on Loose in Loop."

And so from that, I got a job with American International Pictures, promoting a movie called "Frogs."

This was walking up and down State Street, with a big sign that said "See the movie 'Frogs,'" dressed as a frog.

I'd never been in a costume shop before, didn't know anything about costumes, but this frog had that they were renting for me from this rental shop in Chicago, looked to be...

I had too much pride to wear that.

It looked like a fly or something.

So having sculpture classes at the Chicago Academy, I knew how to do papier mache over a wire structure, so I made my own head.

And then after the stunt was over, I thought, "What am I gonna do with this?"

So I went to the costume shops on Hubbard Street.

The president of the company came out, looked at this frog head, and said, "Not only would I buy this, but I'd like to have you make more, and we'll sell them to costume shops all over the country."

That's how Facemakers started.

And then, within six months, I bought him out because he wasn't quite doing what he was going to do.

I was 19 years old.

- [Narrator] Not only did his business start at a young age, but he found love very early as well.

- I met her very young.

I was just 13 years old, and she was two years older.

And actually, she's from Connecticut, and I've lived in Illinois my whole life, but she was visiting her cousin, Sarah Jane.

And they gave a party for her when she was returning back to Connecticut, and I was hired as part of this entertainment for the party, a magician and his assistant.

I was a 13 year old assistant.

But prior to the party...

Here's where that heavens come in, you know?

I saw Adrianne from a bus.

I was coming home from school, and I looked out the window, and I saw this person.

It looked like she was just floating down the street, such poise and self-confidence, and it's like a light was shining on her.

And I had no way to meet her; I'm on a bus.

So then, I'm hired to do this party, it's for her, and after the party, it was very democratic.

The entertainers got to mingle with the guests.

So I went up to her, and I had thought...

When I was on the bus and I saw her, I thought to myself, "Now, there is a very special person."

So I told her this.

I said, "I saw you from a bus, and I thought, 'There's a very special person.'"

And she was a head taller than I, from the east.

Here's this riff-raff from the Midwest.

She kind of put her hands on her hips, looked down her nose, and said, "Oh, really," like that, you know, kind of thing.

And then I immediately said, "But I could have been wrong," you know?

And then we were off and running, like this kind of tension.

So finally, when she wrote her book... She wrote an autobiography when she was 33, I believe.

She entitled it "A Very Special Person."

- [Narrator] Though Adrianne's mother had plans for her to marry well, Adrianne had other plans for herself.

She moved to Chicago's Oak Park, which Ernest Hemingway had described as "a village of broad lawns and narrow minds," to pursue her passions.

No matter how much time they were apart, their bond was unbreakable.

Alan turned to Adrianne when his brother Jimmy, a returning Vietnam veteran, committed suicide, and their attachment grew stronger.

They were married March 21st, 1975, in Wilmette, Illinois, at the Baha'i Temple.

- I proposed to her at the Abbey in Fontana, Wisconsin, one of our little excursions, you know, and it was New Year's Eve, and I had arranged to have the ring put into a big tray of fruits and vegetables that were carved like animals and flowers.

And in the middle was this porcelain cherub that I have with...

It was holding the ring.

And so they brought this to the table, and, meanwhile, there was a strolling violinist playing one of her favorite Strauss waltzes.

And so now she sees this come, and she always said later, she wished she could have just said, "Let me think about it," but she's just started bursting into tears, says, "Yes, yes," you know?

And so it was a beautiful thing.

We got married at the Baha'i Temple in Wilmette.

It's such a beautiful building.

We weren't Baha'i, but we liked the philosophy, so we were married in the Ninth Garden, which is the ultimate of three.

Everything was around the number three.

We thought of that as our lucky number.

So we were married on the third month, March, 24 is two and one of three, and 75, 75 of one, two, and three.

I had a lucky six pence in my shoe the date added to a three, and it's... That's an English tradition.

And then it was three o'clock in the afternoon, so everything was three.

I knew she was an artist, and she always loved art history.

And that was really more of her focus.

When we got Havencrest, she decided early on that I would be the artist of the family.

I think it's really because she had these long, beautiful fingernails, and she didn't want to get them into clay.

But that is how it worked out.

And she had the... She was always the inspiration.

So when people walk through this home, there's...

It's like walking through Adrianne's imagination.

I like sculpting the best; that's my favorite.

I think I feel more comfortable.

I don't think I'm a great painter.

I don't think I'm a great sculptor.

I always tell people it's a...

It's not fine art; it's decorative art.

So I'm not trying to say this is fine art, but Adrianne was always able to come up with things where I could stretch myself and realize my capacities.

She always was collecting cherubs, and you'll see lots of cherubs here.

There's hundreds here.

By the time we were married, she already had a couple hundred cherubs.

And one of my biggest sculptures is a bronze cherub from the Titanic, and it's a replica of the one that was on the grand staircase.

So when I'm wheeling that 135 pound bronze to pack it into a crate to ship to Europe for one of my collectors, I know she's up there giggling because, you know, it turns out that the cherub is so successful, and she probably had something to do with that.

- [Narrator] Though Havencrest was the largest beneficiary of their combined artistic gifts, there are other locations that benefited from their vision.

- We renovated a little theater, which we thought of as our sandbox.

So that ceiling above the audience is Adrianne's stained glass.

Yeah, she would do it in the basement studio.

She had a big table with a light built into it, and she would work there.

Meanwhile, I'd be sculpting or painting something.

We would do shows for charities, you know, like to help the hospital at that time and the fire department and whatever animal organizations.

- [Narrator] But their biggest stage was Havencrest itself.

- The first thing we actually added to the house, you know, was the... What we call the Crystal Tower, and that's a five story tower.

The house was three stories, but we added two more stories, and it's a kind of an observatory.

You can see the river; you can see Sabula across the river.

That was our first big project.

And then we built a gazebo.

We turned the front porch from wood to stone.

We put the pool in the basement.

That had all had to be hand dug, and the buckets of dirt were passed out through the window well.

And then, what I call the grand project; that was 1993.

So, you know, we bought it in '76, and now we're all the way to '93.

That was really quadrupling the size of the house.

Just before that, Adrianne was saying, "Well, Alan, we're starting to run out of canvases."

That's how she put it.

And so then we started designing.

You know, that was a very wet summer, so we couldn't start until, I think, it was September.

So while all of these months are going by, I'm building a model of the plans, and I built it three times 'cause we kept making it bigger.

I was always trying to figure out about the watershed with these different roofs we were putting together, like, "How is this gonna work in the wintertime, ice jams, everything?"

So my solution was just, "Well, we just go higher here.

This will solve the problem."

And I always say we weren't practical people.

This is the result of a very non-practical people, but it all worked out in the end.

- [Narrator] Each room, from the Florentine entrance hall with its embossed leather panels from Germany that span the ceiling beams and Gothic reception room that features an oil painting of Adrianne as Queen Elizabeth I, to the front parlor, which is dedicated to love and marriage and the Russian Rococo library, all of the paintings, sculptures, and moldings were hand crafted especially for the room.

One depicts Adrianne holding the torch of light while the cherub of winter tries to blow it out.

In the Flemish Renaissance dining room, the oak mantle piece beneath their portrait was moved from the library, and all of the wooden surfaces are carved with fruits and vegetables to signify the purpose of the room.

(gentle wind chimes) (upbeat music) - So Adrianne designed those two Chinese rooms to compliment each other, and the first one is called the Chinese tea room, and everything's from China.

So some of it is from, you know, the Xing dynasty, and some of it's, you know, just from 1995.

She was thinking the 20th anniversary, our wedding anniversary, would be china with a small C. She wanted to do China with a big C. So that was 1995.

We opened that suite of rooms, had a big dinner party there.

The Tsinghua study is through that moon gate, and it's done in the kind of European style of Chinese, with a little desk.

If you look closely, on that desk, there's a little dome with a miniature of the desk and the chandelier above it, so she duplicated all that.

For this room, she wanted me to paint Chinese cherubs on the ceiling gathering the tea service.

So it just happened that our Chinese importer had a little boy, just the perfect age.

She supplied the photographs.

And so I painted the four cherubs, one with the tea, one with the water, one with a torch to heat it, and one with the teapot.

It's the Chinese garden.

Adrianne arranged it according to the principles of feng shui.

And so there's a temple in the distance with three incarnations of Guanyin, the goddess of mercy, and then behind the goddesses, on the wall, are Chinese characters that write out a poem from...

I think it's the sixth century.

And it says, "In my right hand, a glass of wine.

In my left hand, a crab claw.

I float along on a sea of love.

Ah, my life is totally satisfied."

The first one is the Kali Ma Room, and there's a statue of the Kali Ma, the Black Mother.

And I used Adrianne's countenance for that.

And she's holding, in her hands, the many pleasures of life.

And that's the family room.

She used it as her dressing room in her last years.

It's where her jewelry collection is, her tiara collection is.

She loved to wear tiaras.

So yes, it has the vintage saris on the ceiling, which are all pastel colors.

And all of the carved wood is gilded and has little mother of pearl stones and things on it.

Then, you go through the doorway to the male version of this, which is the Maharajah Room.

In that room, all the rosewood is left as rosewood.

It's not painted, you know.

And then all of the saris are like jewel tones, dark colors.

You never know, like, with Adrianne, what would be the next project, what ideas she'd have.

And so it was a wonderful way, over the years, to try that really tap into whatever potential I have to try to paint in the Chinese style or paint something in the Rococo style or work in sculpture with the painting.

I just feel blessed because of that.

Those paintings, the murals, are all after Fragonard's series of paintings called "The Progress of Love."

And they're now in the Frick Collection in New York.

So what I did was ordered from their gift shop, online, the posters of those paintings.

And then I had to change the compositions a little to fit our space.

And then I added our dogs in there.

It was great fun, for a year, just painting.

You know, I used oils, I painted all that, and just listening to my favorite music while I'm doing it, and it was Adrianne's favorite room 'cause that was her favorite... That's her favorite art, in the whole world history of art, was that series.

So she was... She loved it and all the textiles she picked out, and she designed the...

In the niches of the corner of the room, you'll see silk arrangements, and she was inspired by 16th century Dutch still lives.

And she used those color schemes and those arrangements for, like, the flowers.

(classical music) - [Narrator] One artistic difference occurred debating the painting of the birds' eye maple in the older part of the house.

- I didn't want the wood painted 'cause I love wood, and that is birds' eye maple, which is a rare wood, and it's just beautiful wood.

So a carpenter who was putting up our crystal sconces, he passed by the room, and we're having this heated discussion about the wood.

And he says, "Oh, birds' eye maple parlor?

Only one like it in the county."

And then Adrianne was like, "No, we're not gonna paint that," so that was a lucky thing.

The Medieval Hall, it's an 80-foot long hallway.

It's the longest hall and the biggest staircase in the house.

This was more my idea because, as a child, I loved the Arthurian tales.

So those were used as inspiration for the over doors and over window sculptures.

And they are illustrating the five knightly virtues of love, loyalty, temperance, courage, and courtesy.

The rose window is the biggest fan glass that she did.

It's really art glass, technically.

So in the center, you have the king and the queen.

And so we put ourselves in the center, and then all around about are the astrological signs and the fortunes and misfortunes of life.

- [Narrator] The ballroom was completed after Adrianne's death, but her vision for the ceiling, the textiles she picked out, and the furniture she had refinished all add to the beauty she left behind.

- And this was really a Beaux-art style.

So we're taking all, you know...

Some of the most beautiful periods and putting them in one room, mostly Rococo and Baroque.

But as far as some of the things, you know, Adrianne and I worked it out together, but then she passed, and so I've been working on it for 13 years now, since that time.

When she passed, it was just stud walls, and there were no sculptures, it was just like a big garage, basically, but she left enough ideas.

And then I took a couple of trips to Europe and did some research at the Louvre, and the Napoleon III rooms there really helped a lot with the color scheme.

Also, the wonderful Paris Opera House, and so you don't need any more inspiration than Adrianne and Paris, I guess.

The ceiling in this room was done by a lyric opera scenic painter to our design, but she just did a fantastic job.

I was actually in Paris at the time she was working on it.

It was summer.

So I came home and she had come down off the scaffolding covered in paint, covered in sweat.

It was like "The Agony and the Ecstasy."

And I just thought, "I'm so glad I didn't do that myself," but it's a beautiful rendition of Adrianne's idea, which was to combine all the times of day.

So you have the sunrise on one end the night sky with the stars and the moon in the middle of this, and it all morphs, then, into the sunset on the other end.

- [Narrator] Also located in the ballroom is a painting of the St. Georges surrounded by their many pets, a passion of Adrianne's.

- Adrianne started a humane society, the Caroll County Humane Society, many years ago, and she even answered the phones.

You know, she was kind of a one-woman operation in those days.

So we would do fundraisers right here in the house and in other places around town.

And then, years later, well after she passed, another one was named after her, and that's called Adrianne's Angels.

That's mostly a cat rescue, and that's in Mount Carroll.

- [Narrator] Continuing through the house and just outside the Grand Ballroom is Memorial Hall.

- The Memorial Hall memorializes the RMS Titanic.

So there is the full-sized clock, just as it was on the ship, and that took about two years to make.

It's historically accurate; it's exactly to size.

And then, opposite from the clock, you have the cherub lamp from the Grand Staircase.

And there's actually two because I did the forward staircase and the aft staircase, and they flank an urn, and the urn will be our final resting place.

And the urn, it symbolizes all the things that are kind of unique that we like, Adrianne's favorite flower, the gardenia, my favorite tree, the oak tree.

The urn is shaped like a big acorn, and then crowning it is a statue of a cherub that's holding a heart, so the most important thing is love.

Up above the urn you see our initials intertwined, A and A, against a malachite backdrop.

- [Narrator] Finally, you come to the garden.

- [Alan] This was an idea of Adrianne's, to do this forced perspective.

So as you go along this winding path, it gets smaller and smaller.

So it sort of gives the illusion of being farther than it is.

And we call it the Promenade Amoureaux, or romantic walk.

And as you take the walk, on your left side, you'll see the Musicians' Terrace, and that's where Adrianne imagined having a violinist playing while... She wanted to do weddings here; that was her dream.

So the ballroom would have been for the reception, and the marriage would have taken place at the very end of that walkway.

- [Narrator] Though Havencrest is a home, Alan St. George has made it available for anyone to visit and tour.

- Visitors can come the weekends of May and October.

The tours are self-guided; there's signage, but we also have an app that people can download onto their phones, and that is going to give them an audio of me taking them through the house.

I love it when people come to visit because we have the lights and the music on, people are smiling, having a good time, and it's reminiscent of the old days, when Adrianne would give a party and there'd just be lots of activity and lots of happy times, you know?

And people come from far and wide, from little towns, from big cities, and they seem to appreciate it.

They're always thanking me for opening it.

And I love it.

And I love meeting them and greeting them.

I'm working with the third generation of people that worked for us, and the future is the young people.

So I just hope that one of them will... Or all of them will love it as much as we did and take care of it because St. Georges come and go, but buildings can stay if people love them.

(heartfelt music)