Life in a Mansion: The Mansion at Elfindale

The three-story, 27,000-square-foot Mansion at Elfindale today houses 13 luxury guest suites in period décor.

“Each of the rooms was done by a different interior designer,” recalls Myra Skiles of Cornerstone Church, the mansion’s current owner. “We kept as much of it original as we could.”

In 1979, the nondenominational charismatic Christian Cornerstone Church bought the 13.5 acres of the Elfindale property and its buildings from developer Howard Stancer. “The mansion is separate from the church and not tax-exempt,” Skiles adds. “We’re like everybody else – we have to pay our taxes.”

Stancer developed the rest of the property with the Elfindale Shopping Center, the Elfindale Place office building, and the Elfindale Retirement Community, which includes Creekside at Elfindale, the Manor, and The Residences and Villas.

Inside the mansion

Burnished wood staircases, railings and wainscoting; antique furniture; hardwood floors; and the original embossed tin ceilings give the house a rich Victorian feel. Much of the wood is the original walnut hewn from trees on the property.

Suites rent for $99, except for the second-floor Veranda Suite at $125, which has a wide outdoor veranda; the $149 John O’Day Suite, named after the mansion’s original owner; and the $149 Tower Suite, which leads to an observatory in the structure’s famed tower.

The mansion also can be used for meetings and other gatherings.

“The Dining Room is Victorian-appointed and will accommodate 60 people,” Skiles says. “The Dolphin Room will accommodate around 50 with linen-covered tables or 70 for a meeting. The Fireside Room is a little smaller. It was actually the main dining room when the O’Days built the place. We can seat 50 in that room with a wedding, and with tables, about 30.”

Matrimonial market

Skiles says that many overnight mansion visitors are honeymooners. Jim and Janell Teters, of Springfield, remember spending their wedding night in the Tower Suite.

“I picked out the room and reserved it before the wedding,” Janell Teters recalls, now 15 years and four children later. “It’s really pretty. It has a main room and a spiral staircase that goes up to the round tower, where you can sit on window seats and look outside.”

Many romantics return for second honeymoons, Skiles says.

“I have one couple who have been married 11 years, and they return every anniversary to spend another honeymoon, and they pick a different room every time,” she says. “They have two more suites to go.”

The mansion also does a brisk business in weddings. “We do about 100 weddings a year,” Skiles said. “Sometimes we do them in the chapel, sometimes in the mansion, depending on the size or what people want. We include a sound tech (and) the music. Cornerstone is on TV, so we have TV equipment here and can also do the wedding videos.”

She adds, “I’ve probably done 1,000 weddings in the 19 or 20 years we’ve been doing them.”

O’Day factor

Skiles says the mansion was built by John O’Day, an Albany, N.Y., lawyer who moved to Springfield in 1865 and was hired by the St. Louis and San Francisco Railway, aka the Frisco railroad.

The mansion’s Web site, www.mansionatelfindale.com, says O’Day, who was instrumental in the decision to move the railroad’s headquarters to Springfield, married Alice Vail in 1888 and bought 400 wooded acres southwest of the city of Springfield for $1.25 an acre. He then imported 50 stonemasons from Germany to quarry native limestone on the site to build the family mansion. When the mansion was finished in 1892, he named it “Park Place.”

In 1901, O’Day and his wife divorced. Alice O’Day was awarded the estate. John O’Day died of kidney disease in a Baltimore hospital later that year.

The Web history notes that Alice O’Day had a lake created for boating, and renamed the estate Elfindale “after she observed that in the early morning, the mist rising from the lake looked as though tiny elves were playing on the dale; hence the name “Elf-in-Dale.”

Most notably

Elfindale is perhaps most remembered as the St. de Chantal Academy. Founded as a boarding school for girls by the Sisters of the Visitation in 1906 after Alice O’Day sold them the mansion and 98 acres for $30,000, the academy ceased boarding students in 1943 and became a day school until 1964, when it was made a retreat center and religious bookstore and library.

In 1978 the sisters sold the property to Iranian businessmen who, it’s said, wanted the mansion as a safe house for the soon-to-be-deposed Shah of Iran. It was never so used, however, and the Iranians sold it the following year to developer Stancer.

Making a Mansion

1888 John O’Day buys 400-acres generally bounded by present-day Sunshine, Fort, Grand and Kansas for $1.25 per acre.

1892 A limestone mansion is completed and named Park Place.

1901 Alice O’Day divorces John O’Day and is awarded the mansion and property, which she names Elfindale.

1906 Alice O’Day sells the property to the Sisters of the Visitation in St. Louis, who open St. de Chantal Academy boarding school.

1964 Elfindale becomes a retreat center, Catholic bookstore and library.

1978 The Sisters of the Visitation sell the property, now only 98 acres, for a reported $1.5 million to Iranian businessmen, reportedly for use as a safe house for the Shah of Iran.

1982 Hustler magazine owner Larry Flynt makes an offer on the property while staying at the Federal Medical Center for tax fraud. The Iranians rejected the bids.

1984 Developer Howard Stancer buys the property from the Iranians for $2.4 million and sells 13.5 acres to Cornerstone Church.

1990 The Mansion is restored and opens as the largest bed and breakfast inn in Missouri.

The Mansion at Elfindale

Founded: 1990

Owner: Cornerstone Church

Address: 1701 S. Fort Ave., Springfield, MO 65807

Phone: (417) 831-5400, (800) 443-0237

Fax: (417) 831-5415

Web site: www.mansionatelfindale.com

Services: Bed-and-breakfast lodging, weddings, banquets and business meetings

Employees: 4 full-time, 7 part-time[[In-content Ad]]