It is a beautiful Spanish Colonial Revival style mansion once owned by Marion Koogler McNay, an oil heiress, art patron and artist. 
Raised in small town Kansas and educated
at the Chicago Art Institue, she had a tragic love life. Her first husband died after they had been married just 10 months, and none of her other three marriages worked out. Regardless, she kept her personal fortune, art collection and mansion.
The McNay has an impressive exhibit currently:
Off the Pedestal: New Women in the Art of Homer, Chase, and Sargent
Intelligent, confident, professional, and athletic—all common descriptions for today’s modern woman. However, a century ago, the liberated ladies of the late 1800s embraced the same defining traits as their 21st century great-granddaughters. Off the Pedestal examines their newly emancipated lifestyles through the works of American masters. This extraordinary exhibition offers over 90 compelling paintings, drawings, photographs, and engravings, showcasing a generation of feminists a hundred years before their time.
Selected from museums and private collections throughout the country, the works depict women enjoying the rigors of outdoors sporting activities such as hiking in the mountains and bathing on deserted beaches. Cigarettes, riding whips and tennis rackets quickly replaced the flowers, fruits, and infants associated with ideal womanhood. Photographic portraits of African American women, the first generation of black women to gain an education after the Civil War, offer an insight to education and careers, including the fine arts, previously reserved for men.
By the 1890s, the new woman exudes confidence, vitality, and intelligence in the compelling personalities portrayed by the leading artists of the day. These artists were in the forefront of fashioning powerful and positive interpretations of emancipated women who attended college, had careers outside the home and engaged in sports.
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