A new pub in my west-side neighborhood is a sign that recent renovations are nearing an end at Wesley Acres, the 76-year-old retirement community at 3520 Grand Ave. 

An official ribbon-cutting takes place June 29 from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., but the new Chamberlain Mansion Pub, along with a five-room bed and breakfast operation, is already open to the public in the refurbished 120-year-old mansion.

The mansion – West Chester is its formal name – was acquired in 1947 by the Methodist Church and converted into one of the city’s early retirement centers. 

It wasn’t much at the start, just a handful of residents. But since then, Wesley Acres has grown substantially, and current leaders hope the reinvigorated mansion will attract a new generation of aging baby boomers. 

Janet Simpson, vice president of network services, believes a comfortable neighborhood pub and other public amenities, including a fitness center with swimming pool and underwater treadmills, will attract older adults who don’t already live on the Wesley campus.

Wesley Acres today serves 275 residents and clients. Its parent organization, Wesley Life, employs more than 2,000 people working with nearly 9,000 seniors, providing residential and adult day care options, along with hospice and memory care at 12 locations in Iowa and western Illinois. 

Four Wesley Life facilities are located in the metro area, including the original 14-acre site at 3520 Grand Ave.

For most of the first half of the 20th century, that Grand Avenue address was home to the family of Davis Sydney “D.S.” Chamberlain, co-founder with his younger brother Lowell of a patent medicine business. When D.S. died in 1933, Chamberlain Laboratories was one of the largest pharmaceutical and toiletry manufacturers in the county, best known for its cough syrup, liniments and hand lotions.

D.S. also had a hand in 1903 in building Des Moines’ Chamberlain Hotel, a seven-story building at the corner of Locust and Seventh streets where the Ruan Center now stands. A divorce decree in 1904 ceded his hotel ownership to his ex-wife.

Today, the Chamberlain name is mostly associated with West Chester, the mansion D.S. also built in 1903. Until his death in 1933, he shared the elaborate living space with his unmarried sister, Izanna. 

Chamberlain’s stately house is located midway between two well-known west-side landmarks. Terrace Hill, Iowa’s governor’s mansion, completed in 1869 by pioneer banker B.F. Allen, is eight blocks east at 2300 Grand Ave., and eight blocks west and south is Salisbury House, a 1920s reproduction of the king’s house in Salisbury, England, built by Carl Weeks, another Des Moines drug and cosmetics maker and a shirttail relative of Chamberlain. 

Like Terrace Hill and Salisbury House, West Chester is on the National Register of Historic Places, where it is described as “an excellent example of Jacobethan Revival,” created by Boston architect William George Rantoul. 

Years ago, one family member said the name West Chester was coined because the house is styled after the half-timbered homes of Chester, England, and “Iowa is about 6,000 miles west of Chester.”

Wesley Acres has made several changes to the mansion over the years to accommodate various uses, including as a headquarters for Wesley Life. 

The most recent improvements aim at returning the original house to what the Chamberlain family knew. 

Today, five B&B rooms and suites on the second floor are named for family members, including Izanna Chamberlain, who was a significant force in 1920s Des Moines society.  

Izanna was a founder of the Des Moines Garden Club and instrumental in 1929 in creating the rose garden at Greenwood Park. A 2002 reminiscence in the Des Moines Register credited her with “planning and planting the original rose bushes herself. She also developed distinctive wrought iron panels for climbing roses,” the article said.

If you visit the Chamberlain mansion on June 29 — or anytime, really — you can admire the B&B suites and stop for a drink in the pub from 4 to 8 p.m. I’m partial to the “South of Grander,” a mixture of scotch, bitters and St. Germain.