NEWS
from Chattanooga’s Houston Museum of Decorative Arts
201 High Street, Chattanooga, Tennessee 37405

THE STORY OF CHATTANOOGA’S HOUSTON MUSEUM:
ANTIQUE ANNIE’S DREAM HAS FINALLY COME TRUE

CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee -- What do the members of a city’s governing body do when an eccentric old woman known far and wide as a town character and an insatiable collector of ancient junk announces that she wants to give her entire “collection” to the city, to be housed in a museum she wants the city to build in her memory?

The witnesses to that confrontation, which took place in the late 1940s, are no longer available. But reports are that there was laughter and a lot of political doubletalk from the city fathers about how the taxpayers could not afford such a thing or the liability that would go with it.

Little did they know that the people of their city, Chattanooga, Tennessee, were being offered what is now considered one of the finest collections of antique glass in the world -- a collection worth so many millions that the trustees who have custody of it will not even discuss a dollar value for publication.

A part of that collection is now on display in Chattanooga’s Anna Safley Houston Museum of Decorative Arts, a beautifully renovated century-old house in Chattanooga’s downtown Arts District, overlooking the Tennessee River.

The story of how the Houston Museum came to be is a story of determination -- inspired, undoubtedly, by the determination of Anna Safley Houston herself to acquire the thousands upon thousands of rare pieces in her collection.

She came to Chattanooga in 1904, collecting what antiques she could while operating a successful hat and ladies’ ready-to-wear shop, and in 1920 went into business dealing in antiques. When the depression came, she refused to sell any of her collection to bail herself out of debt and lost her place of business downtown to foreclosure.

Undaunted, she moved her collection to a huge, ramshackle barn-like building she built with her own hands on the outskirts of the city and lived out her life there in a state of virtual poverty, with no indoor plumbing, only a wood stove for heat in the winter and little food except what was sent by friends who worried about her.

She walked to and from downtown -- about 15 miles -- in old, dirty clothing and was referred to, behind her back, as “Antique Annie.”

Among the huge assortment of antiques packed in the old building so thick one could hardly walk around were known to be many choice items. But only people she knew and liked were allowed in to shop; and even to them, she would not sell the items she was saving for the museum she was determined would one day exist.

Among her clientele were wives of a number of the city’s business and civic leaders, who bought things for a few dollars down and the rest on easy terms. It is obvious that their influence had a lot to do with a meeting at the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce in 1949 to plan a way for the museum Anna dreamed of to become a reality.

But even all this was not enough to make the city commissioners change their minds. It became clear that the museum, if there was to be one, would have to be a private effort.

At Mrs. Houston’s request steps were taken to set up a non-profit corporation, to which she would give the collection. This sounds easy, but Mrs. Houston was a woman who had collected 15,000 antique pitchers and thousands upon thousands of other antiques, not to mention nine or 10 husbands.

She wanted a corporation with a record-breaking collection of good, solid citizens of Chattanooga as incorporators -- 100 of them. When the application for the charter was sent to the state capitol in Nashville, with 102 signatures, eyebrows went up. Such applications usually had only five signatures, and somebody vaguely remembered one with as many as 12. A corporation with 102 incorporators was a new record, and one not likely to be broken.

This was in 1949. But things dragged out, and Mrs. Houston’s death in 1951 came before the collection was ever transferred to the corporation. Her will, however, provided for everything she owned in the world to go to six designated trustees.

The trustees were to establish and maintain in her memory a museum devoted exclusively to “historical and educational purposes and encouragement of art and the preservation of collections of antiques and rare pieces.”

“I am mindful,” Mrs. Houston stated in the will, “that relatives and friends will survive me, and to them I give my best wishes.”

Though nobody counted them, it was generally conceded that she did have 15,000 pitchers. They were valued at $1 apiece. Today some individual pitchers in the collection are alone worth more than the price tag set on the entire 15,000.

A gun collection was valued at $75 -- the entire collection. Today one Kentucky rifle alone has been valued at $35,000.

Some of those entrusted with Mrs. Houston’s dream of a museum entered the old barn-like building and removed the choicer pieces. But over the next seven or eight years, until the entire collection was removed and inventoried, many fine pieces known to have existed disappeared. Others were broken by roof cave-ins, pigeons, freezing weather and an assortment of other problems.

Public sales and auctions of some of the pieces were held to raise money to build a museum, mostly with little thought of the value of what was being sold. Items went for a dollar or two dollars. A shop was set up and other pieces sold.

Efforts were made to protect what was left. A fence was put around the building, two locks were put on the door and a dog was stationed inside the fence.

In the late 1950s several dedicated women undertook the task of going in, cleaning, sorting and inventorying the collection. And serious efforts got under way to find the museum a home.

In 1958 arrangements were made for displaying the collection, or as much as would fit, in an old house near downtown next to Chattanooga’s Hunter Museum of Art, overlooking the Tennessee River. But it was not until 1961 that the museum was actually able to open and allow the public to see the collection for the first time.

What the public -- and antiques experts from all over the country -- found in the museum was breathtaking. Original estimates of the value of the collection had been in the neighborhood of $100,000. By the late 1960s, the estimates ranged up to $3,000,000, and by the seventies $6,000,000 and beyond.

Today no estimates of the value of the collection are made public.

In the late 1960s, the Hunter Museum decided it needed the house occupied by the Houston, and the Houston had to move again. In 1969 a house across the street from the Hunter was acquired by donation of one of its owners and a gift to purchase the interests of the other owners.

By 1993, consideration was being given to moving the museum again. But the trustees made a decision to keep it where it was, a location near Chattanooga’s burgeoning riverfront development and the newly built Tennessee Aquarium.

And today, the museum which was the dream of Antique Annie welcomes visitors from all over the nation and the world who come to this major tourist city.

They won’t be disappointed, and if they come again in future years, they’ll find new and different displays, including parts of the collection still in storage.

Information about the museum and photographs may be obtained by writing to the director, Amy H. Frierson, 201 High Street, Chattanooga, TN 37403, or calling (423) 267-7176, or e-mailing to houston@chattanooga.net.