David Davis Mansion
house museum in Bloomington, Illinois
The David Davis Mansion, also known as Clover Lawn, is a Gilded Age home in Bloomington, Illinois that was the residence of David Davis, Supreme Court justice (1862–1877) and U.S. Senator from Illinois. The mansion has been a state museum since 1960. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1975.
Set in a residential neighborhood on Bloomington's near-south-side, the three-story yellow brick mansion comprises 36 rooms in an Italianate villa style.
The mansion's lot includes an 1872 wood house, a barn and stable, privies, a foaling shed, carriage barn, and a flower and ornamental cutting garden."Sarah's Garden", the Victorian cut flower garden, with original heirloom roses and perennials began restoration in 2001.
History
Clover Lawn was built between 1870 and 1872 and is where Justice Davis lived until his death in 1886. Davis commissioned French-born architect Alfred H. Piquenard to design the mansion, which combines Italianate and Second Empire architectural features and is a model of Gilded Age style and taste. Piquenard was a prominent Midwest architect who designed the State Capitol in Springfield. The home was meant as a residence for Davis' wife, Sarah. David spent most of his time there after retiring from the U.S. Senate in 1883.
“David Davis Mansion” enters the record as house museum in Bloomington, Illinois. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what David, Davis and Mansion can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5232864. Authority coordinates are 40.482, -88.980. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1862, 1877, 1960 and 1972.
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This entry incorporates text from “David Davis Mansion” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.