Ellen White: Woman of Vision

Chapter 28—Elmshaven: Not A Rest Home

Perhaps the beautiful home known as Elmshaven originally served as a single family residence, but in the years when Ellen White lived there (19001915) it became not only the residence for Mrs. White and an enlarging staff of helpers, but a center drawing people from home and abroad for counsel, interviews, and even conventions. WV 404.1

Changes involving the physical plant were necessary to accommodate a large number of visitors and improve working conditions not only for the staff but for Ellen White herself. WV 404.2

The house and surroundings of Elmshaven today are not the same as they were in 1900. When she purchased the home, the three upstairs rooms and a low attic room over the kitchen served as bedrooms. Soon arrangements were made to replace the attic room with a spacious writing room over the kitchen and back entryway. WV 404.3

This room extended across the complete east end of the home, over the kitchen and service porch. Even though it had been specified that old materials would be used as far as possible, the alterations, with the painting inside and outside, cost $1,000. But she felt she was justified in making this investment even though she thought she should defend it. She had to have working conditions that were conducive to efficiency and health. To an acquaintance she wrote: WV 404.4

The building of this room took money. I held back for a year before consenting to have this room built; for I know how many places there were in which money was needed. But I saw that it was necessary, for the preservation of my life, that something be done. It would be wrong for me to shorten my life, for this would take me from the Lord's work (Letter 165, 1902). WV 404.5

There was a bright bay-window arrangement on the southeast corner, with windows opening in all four directions, but principally east and south. Artistic shingles set off the tower on the outside. The room was fitted with a fireplace on the east side and with cabinets along the west wall, where her manuscripts, books, and papers could be kept. From the window on the north end of the room, between the cabinets and the door to the steep hidden stairway to the service porch, she could look up to the sanitarium on the hill above, and at the nearby office building when it was built shortly thereafter. WV 404.6

There were three features about this newly constructed writing room that especially pleased Ellen White: its roominess, its bay window with light and sunshine, and its fireplace. She was to spend a large part of her time here during the next 12 years, writing, writing. She would often come to the room at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, sometimes at midnight, sometimes earlier, to start her day of writing. WV 405.1