FEATURE image: 822 Bryant, Winnetka, 1901. A grand example of the Shingle style working its way through the Arts and Crafts movement and influenced by the recent Prairie School’s horizontality and openness. Author’s photograph. 8/2014 99% 6.92mb.
Test & Photographs John P. Walsh.
11-844 Prospect, Winnetka, 1885 with later additions. The central section with the steeply pitched roof with a prominent flare is the oldest part of the house. It is the American Queen Anne style in vogue in the 1880s and Classical Revival style that emerged following the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. The sunporch abuts a two-story porch whose corner columns are the Ionic order. 8/2014 7.79mb 95% 11-844 Prospect, Winnetka, 1885 with later additions.The south-facing façade has a tall chimney that rises from the ground to above the roof peak. The main entrance is under a shouldered segmental arch held up by columns of the relatively uncommon Roman Doric order. The beige-colored metal siding is a modern addition. 8/2014 6.04mb9 – 824 Prospect Avenue, Winnetka, c. 1900. There is a prominent cornice with a garland frieze below a tiled hipped roof that has a central dormer with a Palladian window. The porch, supported by Ionic order expanded columns, wraps around the front to embrace a two-story bay facing south. Originally this offered a second -floor open sunporch. 8/2014 6.76mb8 – 800 Lloyd Place, Winnetka, 1901. A traditional cube structure which is half stucco and half shingled is covered by a hipped roof that is slightly flared at the eaves. The main roof’s central dormer as well as the main entrance have their own hipped roofs. There is a slight polygonal bay seen on the east side. 8/2014 6.15mbSheridan Road, Winnetka, Illinois. 8/2014 3.01mbSacred Heart Church, 1077 Tower Road, Winnetka. In July 2018 Sacred Heart Church in Winnetka and St. Philip the Apostle in Northfield consolidated into one (Divine Mercy Parish) as declining participation and increasing reliance on government funds and private donor largesse to operate make it impossible to sustain a presence and footprint in the local community otherwise. When this photograph was taken in 2014 Sacred Heart was still its own parish with a vestibule wall filled with photographic portraits of past pastors indicating a long and proud history. The trends in modern Catholic parish life and Catholic institutions in general are, and have been since the 1960’s, on a downward spiral. The Archdiocese itself cites these troubling statistics – less than 1 in 5 of Catholic Millennials (17%) go to weekly Mass; more than a third of the same Millennials (those born after 1986) identify with no religion at all; more than 8 in 10 (85%) of all public and private school 8th graders stop practicing the Catholic faith by early adulthood (23 years old). In the last 20 years Mass attendance has lost over 1 in 4 filling the pews. A significant number of “cradle Catholics,” that is, baptized children, do not receive 1st communion (20%) or the sacrament of confirmation (40%). See – https://www.renewmychurch.org/mission – retrieved November 21, 2023. 8/2014 4.58mbThirty-five-year old Augustus Barker Higginson, an architect located in Los Angeles, California, built the impressive Shingle style house (below) at 822 Bryant Avenue Winnetka in 1901. Public Domain. 7 – 822 Bryant, Winnetka, 1901. A grand example of the Shingle style working its way through the Arts and Crafts movement and influenced by the recent Prairie School’s horizontality and openness. The domicile was built by progressive American architect Augustus Barker Higginson (1866-1915) then with architects Myron Hunt & Elmer Grey in Los Angeles, later locating his own firm in Santa Barbara, California. See – https://pcad.lib.washington.edu/person/7142/ – retrieved November 21, 2023. The house is an L-shaped plan with broad sloping pitches roofs. The window groupings have plain surrounds that fit elegantly into shingle walls that, when they reach the ground, flare slightly. Christ Church and Garland Cemetery, 784 Sheridan Road, Winnetka, 1870’s. The church was established in 1869 and the cemetery grounds was begun in 1876. 8/2014 6.60mbChrist Church, 784 Sheridan Road, Winnetka. Gothic revival: Charles J. Connick Studio (1912-1945). Harriet Leonard, born Albany, NY, Nov. 17, 1875 – died Winnetka, Feb. 28, 1923. Connick’s work in stained glass is noted for its brilliant colors, rich symbolism and abundant use of scripture passages. 8/2014 7.66mbDedicated in 1905, Christ Church (also known as Church on the Hill) is a traditional stone church that was the gift of the William Hoyt family. It was built as a memorial to their daughter and three grandchildren who were tragically killed in the 1903 Iroquois Theater fire in Chicago and buried in the adjacent cemetery. 8/2014 7.77mbnewspaper headline, 1903.
Sources:
A Guide to Chicago’s Historic Suburbs on Wheels and on Foot, Ira J. Bach, Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 1981, pp. 565-74.
FEATURE image: Detail of 804 Forest Avenue, Wilmette, Illinois. The Prairie style house was built in 1906 by architect George Washington Maher (1864-1926) whose influence on the Midwest was profound and prolonged and, in its time, as great as Frank Lloyd Wright’s. Author’s photograph. 6/2014 3.95mb
5 – 1231 Forest Avenue, 1898. A two-story clapboard with a flared hipped roof with three dormers, one each in the front and on the sides. The façade-length porch also has a hipped roof. The first floor has a projecting polygonal bay window and a front door and separate square vestibule window. 6/2014 4.76mb6 – 1215 Forest Avenue, c. 1909. The two-story home is built of finely dressed (cut, worked) ashlar stone. The home has a hipped roof and steep pitched pediment with a broken cornice and a false balcony with rounded attic window. In a rigidly centralized composition, there is a slight projecting bay above the entrance that is sheltered by a large porch with a massive projecting pediment held by a masonry pier with short bulging columns. 6/2014 5.67mb 11 – 1041 Forest Avenue, 1873. Masked by later additions, this house was originally Italianate whose hooded windows and small square attic window remain on the façade. 6/2014 4.20mb12- 1020 Forest Avenue, Community Church of Wilmette, 1920, has massing of large rubble ashlar walls with broad arches and a porch. 6/2014 3.57mb12- 1020 Forest Avenue, Community Church of Wilmette, 1920, was a pioneer for a large building tucked unobtrusively onto a residential street that in terms of stance was replicated by other churches that were built later in the suburb. 6/2014 6.05mb
13 – 932 Forest Avenue, 1890s. A grand two-story Classical Revival house with a high hipped roof and ionic pilasters at the corners as well as sides and pediment of the projecting entrance. Ionic columns also support the porch. 6/2014 4.86mb14 – 922 Forest Avenue pre-1873 and c. 1900. The house was originally built in the Italianate style evident in the cornice with double brackets in the front and single brackets on the side of the house along with pedimented windows. The third-floor gables were added around 1900 as well as the broad bow façade. These changes worked to add space and mask the original style. The front porch is even more recent. 6/2014 5.61mbGeorge Washington Maher (1864-1926), born in West Virginia, was an American architect in the Prairie School style who was known for blending with the Arts& Crafts style. According to H. Allen Brooks in The Prairie School – Frank Lloyd Wright and his Midwest Contemporaries (1972) “[Maher’s] influence on the Midwest was profound and prolonged and, in its time, was certainly as great as was [Frank Lloyd] Wright’s. Compared with the conventional architecture of the day, his work showed considerable freedom and originality, and his interiors were notable for their open and flowing…space.” By the time of his death, G.W. Maher had designed over 270 projects; from houses to parks to public buildings. Public Domain. 15 – 804 Forest Avenue, 1906. The Prairie style house was built in 1906. The architect was George Washington Maher (1864-1926). 6/2014 3.95mb15 – 804 Forest Avenue, 1906, by G.W. Maher is a solid 4-square house that is modest compared to a similar-styled project the Prairie-school architect completed in 1899 in Oak Park, IL , known as Pleasant Home. 6/2014 4.85mb
Sources:
A Guide to Chicago’s Historic Suburbs on Wheels and on Foot, Ira J. Bach, Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 1981, pp. 534-547.
The Prairie School – Frank Lloyd Wright and his Midwest Contemporaries. Brooks, H. Allen New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1972, p. 330.
