Blees Military Academy

About this property

Blees Military Academy, also known as Still-HiIdreth Osteopathic Sanatorium, was an historic military academy located in Macon, Missouri. The academy operated between 1899 and 1915. The old Academic Hall and Gymnasium of Blees Academy were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Blees Military Academy was founded in September 1899 by Colonel Frederick W. V. Blees. Blees was a Prussian immigrant who arrived in Macon in 1889 to take over as headmaster of St. James Academy, an Episcopalian military school for boys. In 1896, Blees inherited his father's coal and iron mining interests in Germany, and he used his newfound wealth to benefit the City of Macon, including building commercial buildings, the town's first theater and sewage system; a local horseless carriage factory, the First National Bank of Macon, and financing the paving of the town's streets. In 1898–1899, Blees took on the project that he hoped would be his legacy - the construction of the Blees Military Academy. Architecturally, Academic Hall and the Gymnasium are a unique expression of the Romanesque Revival style in their rural locale. As originally constructed, the Academy was provided with 400 acres (1.6 km2) surrounding on which were located orchards, a working farm, extensive gardens and a dairy, the pastoral nature of the surrounding environment survives and acts to enhance, through contrast, the monumental Romanesque Revival architecture of Academic Hall and the Gymnasium. Blees cadets rode Rex McDonald and George Washington, two of the nation's best saddle horses. They played polo and had the most luxurious accommodations of the time. Blees spared no expense with this Academy. Academic Hall and the Gymnasium were both constructed in a variant of the Romanesque Revival style. Decorative features of these buildings include crenellated gables and parapets, distinctive corbel tables and bartizans supported by corbeled culs-de-lampe. Academic Hall was constructed of structural concrete and steel beams supported on iron columns and faced with buff brick and limestone over a concrete foundation. Academic Hall is capped with a hipped roof of red asbestos shingles and a large, gabled skylight because the building was designed to be fireproof, all interior features, window casings, doors and moldings, except for some wooden and cork floors which rest directly on concrete, were clad in molded copper. All walls and ceilings were finished with plaster. The interior of Academic Hall reveals three floors and a basement. High coffered ceilings in the large open areas of the first floor were supported by Tuscan style iron columns and pilasters. A grand, wrought and cast iron staircase led to the second floor sun parlor. Galleried apartments at the second and third floor levels surrounded this grand open space, recessed behind a two-story Tuscan order colonnade. The large skylight above was suspended from 42-foot-span riveted Howe type steel trusses supported by steel columns 14 feet (4.3 m) above the top of the I beams just above the main ceiling. This trusswork also supports the gabled skylight above visible on the building's exterior. Academic Hall originally included 110 individual sleeping rooms of a small size (approximately 8’ X 12’), 12 suites of faculty apartments, 3 large laboratories, a photographic darkroom, a study hall, a hospital, a carpentry shop, a drafting room, a large dining room and a huge kitchen.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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