[1][2][3][4] Throughout her long career Wheeler contributed to the Colonial Revival, the Aesthetic Movement and the Arts and Crafts Movement, She was considered a national authority on home decoration, and gained widespread recognition for designing the interior of the Women's Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, IL.

[23][24][25] Wheeler's first professional activity was writing for the American Grocer, a trade publication owned by her wholesale-grocer brothers, when edited by her husband Tom in 1874.

The following year she created the "Home Department" for that journal, a pull-out section for grocers' wives and children, which she edited and to which she continued to contribute articles and semi-fiction based on her experiences to date.

[30][31] She hired the recently widowed Elizabeth Bacon (Mrs. General George Armstrong) Custer as secretary: the two women became fast, life-long friends.

Wheeler called on prominent New York society matrons to support a shop in which the high-quality, custom-made goods could be sold to produce income; they had five hundred subscribers within three years.

[30][32][23] Leading artists were hired to teach or judge exhibits at the Society in New York, including Louis Comfort Tiffany and John LaFarge.

Wheeler helped to start branches in Chicago, St. Louis, Hartford, Detroit, Troy, New York and Charleston, South Carolina.

Their work included replacing furnishings, applying decorative paint patterns, and installing wallpaper with intricate designs.

[40] The Associated Artists was particularly well known for its "changeable" silks, their iridescence produced by interweaving differently colored threads seen in varying angles and lights.

[7][42] Between 1884 and 1894, the Cheney Brothers mills of Manchester, CT, turned out more than 500 silk fabrics designed by The Associated Artists in a range of prices that were sold throughout the United States.

[30][40][44] The Associated Artists' signature needle-woven tapestry was a combination of loom weaving and handwork that Wheeler had invented and patented in 1881.

In 1883 she and her wealthy brother Frank (Francis Beattie Thurber) selected elevated land with extensive views near Tannersville, NY, on which to build two summer houses for their respective families.

Thurber (herself acclaimed for advancing music training and performance in America during this period), decided to expand and develop their property as a vacation community of like-minded people dedicated to the arts.

[47] Wheeler commissioned her son Dunham, then a fledgling architect, to design several of the early buildings (thereby launching a modest career specializing in summer homes).

[50] In 1893, at the age of 66, Wheeler agreed to take charge of the interior of the Woman's Building at the Chicago World's Fair, and to organize the State of New York's applied arts exhibition there.

[51] The building was filled with exhibitions of women's fine arts, crafts, industrial products and regional and ethnic specialties from around the world, which were discussed in some of Wheeler's subsequent writings.

Wheeler spent much of her later life, mainly there and at Onteora, writing books and articles on decorating and the textile arts, as well as fiction and poetry.