Feature image: Frank J. Baker House, Frank Lloyd Wright, 1909, Wilmette, Illinois. Frank J. Baker (1864–1922) was a driving force in Wilmette’s early growth — a sharp‑minded engineer and influential executive with the North Shore Electric Company and Commonwealth Edison who helped bring electricity to the North Shore. He is most remembered for the remarkable 1909 Frank J. Baker House, a Prairie‑style landmark designed for him by Frank Lloyd Wright. A civic leader as well as an innovator, Baker co‑founded the First National Bank of Wilmette. He died in his Wright‑designed home just a week before Christmas in 1922 at 58 years old. December 2017. 99% 7.20mb DSC_0560. Author’s photograph.
The Frank J. Baker House is a beautiful Frank Lloyd Wright residence and represents a critical moment in Wright’s architectural evolution, when the architect was pushing Prairie School design beyond earlier single-story compositions and experimenting with new approaches to space, volume, and the relationship between horizontality and verticality
The Frank J. Baker House, situated at 507 Lake Avenue in Wilmette, Illinois, is a 4,800‑square‑foot residence that stands as a significant example of Frank Lloyd Wright’s evolving Prairie School vocabulary. Designed in 1909, the house incorporates five bedrooms, three and a half bathrooms, and three fireplaces, yet its architectural importance lies less in its programmatic elements than in its role within Wright’s broader experimentation with spatial organization and structural expression during this period.
By the first decade of the twentieth century, Wright had begun to move beyond the predominantly single‑story Prairie houses of the late 1890s, exploring the potential of vertically layered two-story domestic space. The Baker House reflects this transitional moment through its T‑shaped floor plan—a configuration Wright employed in several contemporaneous works, including the Isabel Roberts House (below) built the previous year in River Forest, Illinois.
The Frank J. Baker House illustrates a pivotal stage in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie School development, where experimentation with the T-shaped plan, two-story living spaces, and environmental continuity produced one of the architect’s most significant domestic designs of 1909
Isabel Roberts House, 603 Edgewood Place, River Forest, Illinois, 1908, Frank Lloyd Wright. It was remodeled in the 1950s. 69% 7.99 mb Author’s photograph.
The T‑plan allowed Wright to choreograph circulation along a dominant longitudinal axis while creating subsidiary wings that modulated privacy, light, and spatial hierarchy. In the Baker House, this plan form becomes a mechanism for integrating interior volumes with the surrounding landscape, reinforcing the Prairie School’s emphasis on horizontality and environmental continuity.
The exterior composition demonstrates Wright’s mature command of Prairie Style principles: a pronounced horizontal orientation, low‑pitched rooflines, and deeply cantilevered overhangs that visually anchor the structure to its site. These elements work in concert to diminish the building’s vertical massing, producing the characteristic “sheltering” effect that Wright associated with Midwestern domestic architecture.
The Frank J. Baker House (1909) and the Isabel Roberts House (1908) are closely related works that belong to Frank Lloyd Wright’s transitional Prairie period. Both employ a T-shaped plan that allowed Wright to organize circulation along a dominant central axis while projecting subsidiary wings outward into the landscape, strengthening the Prairie School ideal of spatial openness and environmental continuity.The Isabel Roberts House can be viewed as a direct precursor to the Frank J. Baker House, with Wright developing it into a more sophisticated architectural statement through greater spatial complexity, a monumental two-story living room, and a richer interplay between horizontality and volume.
Frank Lloyd Wright in 1903, likely a self-portrait. Public Domain.In 1909 42-year-old Frank Lloyd Wright reportedly personally brought the plans to Baker in Wilmette by horseback. Public domain. see – New owners to breathe life into 1909 Wright home – Wednesday Journal – retrieved March 30, 2026.
The two‑story living room is the spatial and symbolic core of the house. Its brick fireplace—an archetypal Wrightian hearth—functions as both a literal and conceptual center, organizing the surrounding spaces and reinforcing Wright’s belief in the fireplace as the spiritual heart of the home. The sloped ceiling and continuous band of leaded‑glass windows along the north wall create a dynamic interplay of light and volume, while the vertical expansion of the room contrasts deliberately with the home’s otherwise horizontal emphasis. Few surviving Wright houses retain this particular combination of a T‑shaped plan and a two‑story principal interior, making the Baker House an important artifact in understanding Wright’s spatial experimentation.
The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 8, 1974, acknowledging its architectural significance. A comprehensive restoration initiated in 2020 under new ownership has sought to preserve both the material integrity and the spatial logic of Wright’s original design.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie‑style design features strong horizontal porches framing a two‑story diamond‑leaded glass window wall in the living room. The home includes five large bedrooms, three‑and‑a‑half bathrooms, and three fireplaces. The second level offers a primary suite with en‑suite bath, fireplace, and private porch, plus two additional en‑suite bedrooms, two more bedrooms, and a sitting room. The kitchen and breakfast room overlook the expansive yard. Wright designed the home’s 1922 addition. Public Domain.
Through a deliberate sequence of compression and release, Wright choreographed movement through the Baker House so that ordinary domestic spaces culminate in a soaring central living room that serves as the spiritual and architectural heart of the home.
Interior Analysis.
Upon entry, the visitor encounters a twenty‑two‑foot dining room articulated with diamond‑patterned leaded‑glass windows, a pitched ceiling, and extensive wood trim. This space exemplifies Wright’s strategy of compressing and releasing volume: the relatively intimate proportions of the dining room heighten the dramatic expansion experienced upon entering the adjacent living room.
The main‑floor kitchen, accompanied by a modest breakfast nook, reflects Wright’s early efforts to modernize domestic workspaces by integrating them more fluidly into the overall plan. The living room, by contrast, adopts a quasi‑ecclesiastical spatial character. Its cantilevered ceiling, which extends into a loft above, creates a sense of upward movement unusual in Prairie houses. The continuous horizontal and vertical window bands dissolve the boundary between interior and exterior, a hallmark of Wright’s belief that architecture should mediate rather than separate human habitation from the natural environment.
At the center of the home stands the principal brick fireplace, accompanied by an overhead balcony that provides an elevated vantage point and reinforces the vertical layering of the space. On the second floor, the master bedroom includes one of the home’s three fireplaces and a private enclosed balcony, further demonstrating Wright’s interest in creating intimate, retreat‑like upper‑level spaces within an otherwise horizontally oriented composition.
FEATURE Image: 143 First Street, c. 1863. Since the 19th century Batavia, Illinois, 40 miles west of Chicago, was a railroad and manufacturing center in addition to its farmsteads. This mid-19th century limestone factory building is testament to Batavia’s industrial heritage. After the U.S. Civil War, Batavia was a major manufacturer of Conestoga wagons used in the country’s westward expansion. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 7.52 mb_6360.
Batavia, Illinois, reveals how a small Fox River community evolved from a frontier settlement and manufacturing center into a town rich with architectural diversity, where industrial buildings, churches, houses, and civic landmarks collectively preserve the story of nineteenth and early twentieth century Illinois.
Text & Photographs John P. Walsh.
143 First Street, c. 1863.
The limestone factory building’s square-shaped south façade’s stone cut is more grandiose than the longer west side indicating that it is the front face of the building. The tower at the north end likely held the building’s water tank and added more room and height for pulleys and other equipment. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 7.52 mb_6360.
Batavia’s architectural heritage reflects its origins as a Fox River settlement established in the 1830s and its later development as a railroad and manufacturing center.
Batavia is one of the towns along the Fox River settled in the 1830’s between Geneva and St. Charles to the north and larger Aurora to the south. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 95% 7.75 mb DSC_6350.
Batavia’s history intersects with larger national stories, including the life of Mary Todd Lincoln, westward expansion, and nearby Fermilab’s scientific legacy.
Fermilab is adjacent and to the east of Batavia. Since 1969 it has housed a herd of bison when Fermilab’s first director, Robert Wilson, established the herd as a symbol of the history of the Midwestern prairie and the laboratory’s pioneering research at the frontiers of particle physics. Each spring new calves are born signaling the herd’s rejuvenation. July 2016. Author’s photograph. 4.70mb _0577 see – https://www.fnal.gov/pub/about/bisoncam/ – retrieved 1.24.25.
Campana Sales Company Factory, Batavia, Illinois, East Elevation, 1936-1937.
The Campana Factory was built in the International Style to manufacture cosmetics for The Campana Company. At the time Campana’s “Italian Balm,” heavily promoted on the radio, was the nation’s best-selling hand lotion. The building was designed by Frank D. Chase & Company (founded in 1913) with Childs and Smith in Chicago. Frank David Chase (1877-1937) built newspaper plants in St. Louis, Milwaukee and Oklahoma City and a number of important buildings in Chicago including hospitals and office buildings. The central tower reflects the 19th-century heritage of Batavia’s limestone factories. The far one-story wings were added in the late 1940’s. The factory was purchased by the laundry detergent brand Purex who later closed Campana operations in 1982. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 77% 7.72mb _6437.
Limestone industrial buildings and former factories testify to the town’s important manufacturing history, including wagon production and later consumer industries such as Campana and Purex.
The main entrance is stainless steel set into black polished marble at the bottom of the tower. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 7.48mb _6446.
Religious institutions played a central role in Batavia’s civic development, with churches tied to abolitionist causes and community building.
The Congregational Church, 21 S. Batavia Avenue, 1856.
The locally quarried limestone central section dates to September 1856. The church displays the eclecticism of New England Colonial and Classical styles. Though the building’s classical detailing of capitals and pilasters is today mostly missing, the precisely cut and laid stone are original. These cut ashlar blocks include neatly finished arches, sills, and entablatures. The church’s design is attributed to architect Elijah Shumway Town (1804-1890) who built Batavia’s Bellevue Place Sanitarium in 1853 where Mary Todd Lincoln was committed for four months in 1875. When the original steeple was knocked down in a storm in 1877 it wasn’t replaced until 97 years later in 1974 and is the tallest steeple in Kane County. There have been additions to the church in the last 60 years. Established in Thompson Paxton’s cabin in 1835 as “Church of the Big and Little Woods” and affiliated with the Presbyterians, the church relocated to Batavia Avenue in 1841. Sharing a common belief in the anti-slavery doctrine, the church was supported by church members and the community-at-large so that the church changed its name to “Congregational Church and Society of Bavaria” in 1843. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 89% 7.73mb _6372.
Methodist church, 355 First Street, 1852.
Batavia’s first Methodist church was built in the Greek Revival. The pilasters are Doric order that meet the main beam resting across the tops of columns (architrave), blank frieze, cornice, and classical pediment. After 1886 the building was used as a schoolhouse in the Batavia school system. Today it is law offices. In 1836 a group meeting in William Van Nortwick’s home in Batavia organized the “First Methodist Class” which marked the establishment of the Methodist church in Batavia. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 96% 7.83mb DSC_6389.
West wall stonework and window of former Methodist Church built in 1852. July 2013. Author’s photograph. 7.02mb _0004
Born in Maine, Elijah Gammon (1819-1891) was a spiritual and business powerhouse in Batavia. After he moved to Illinois, he was the Methodist church’s first preacher in 1854. Having to give up preaching because of health in 1858, he changed careers to the manufacture of harvesting machinery. As he substantially contributed to the industry’s development and earned a fortune, his business responsibilities and success in no way limited his spiritual vision.https://aaregistry.org/story/elijah-gammon-supported-black-ministry/ – retrieved January 23, 2025.
United Methodist Church of Batavia, 8 N. Batavia, 1887.
United Methodist Church of Batavia was built in 1887. The rugged eclectic Richardsonian Romanesque-type building was designed by Solon Spencer Beman (1853 –1914) and inspired by a church in France that its donors had admired. The structure was almost entirely the gift of abolitionist Elijah J. Gammon (1819-1891), the church’s first preacher and local businessman, and Captain Don Carlos Newton (1832-1893), an active local businessman who had a house investment property right across the street.
Noted architect Beman designed the planned Pullman community and Pullman Company factory complex in Chicago as well as Chicago’s Fine Arts Building (1884) on Michigan Avenue. At the top of the church tower is a Palladian window under a pyramidal roof while in the back are hipped roofs. The building’s boulders were taken from the contractor’s farm about one mile south from the building site. The new church building replaced the first Methodist church in Batavia built in 1852 in Greek Revival and which still stands today. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 87%7.91mb _6498.
Chicago-based architect Solon Spencer Beman designed the United Methodist Church of Batavia in 1887. Several of his largest commissions, including the Pullman Office Building, Pabst Building in Milwaukee (1891), and the Romanesque Revival Grand Central Station (1890) in Chicago, have been demolished.A number of architects trained with Beman, including Prairie School architect William L. Steele (1875-1949), church architect Charles Draper Faulkner (1890-1979) and Spencer Solon Beman (1887-1952).
Born in New York, Captain Newton was a very active businessman and described as ”a persevering, self-made man.” He died unexpectedly at his home in Batavia after attending the Chicago World’s Fair for a week with his family in 1893. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/16849480/don-carlos-newton – retrieved January 23, 2025.
Batavia contains an unusually broad range of architectural styles, including Greek Revival, Italianate, Richardsonian Romanesque, Gothic Revival, Classical influences, and International Style design.
415 Main Street, 1860.
Eclectic Gothic Revival with Italianate features including scroll-cut square brackets tailored to the pitched roof line, segmental arches above the windows, and the heavy outlines of the door entrance. A polygonal bay and wings are informal features found in the Italianate that balances a formal façade. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 89% 7.87mb.
415 Main Street (1860). The door is larger than the windows and offset by the small ventilating window at the top in the gable. July 2011. Author’s photograph. 2.54mb100_3328 (1)
360 Main Street, 1855.
The house is an example of the evolving transition from Greek Revival to Gothic Revival to Italianate. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 74% 7.72mb DSC_6409.
33 S. Lincoln Street, 1850.
The lengthy 1850 Greek Revival is formal and simple. It has corner pilasters and there are four pairs of windows with an architrave, frieze and cornice characteristic of its type. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 73% 7.85mb DSC_6520.
505 Main Street, 1858.
The house is in the Swiss style and has a peacock feather spread motif above the second-floor balcony. There are also trifoils set in circles in the gable. The brick sunroom was added to the east around 1910. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 92% 7.81mb DSC_6426 (1)
505 Main Street. in-vogue late 1850’s peacock feather motif was made by scroll cut boards nailed to a backing and long tubes made by a lathe. To the left under the roof extension there is incised ornamentation with a tall thistle plant motif. July 2011. Author’s photograph. 1.54mb 100_3331 (1)
The Prairie style house was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) in 1906. It is frame and stucco with massive chimneys. With its horizontals, low pitched roof, casement windows and thin eaves, it is the Prairie style fully developed. May 2024. Author’s photograph.
Frank Lloyd Wright in 1903, likely a self-portrait. Public Domain.
Fabyan Villa was the home of George and Nelle Fabyan from 1908 to 1939. A mid-19th century farmhouse was acquired by the Fabyans in 1905 and extensively remodeled by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1907. The house, on a hilltop looking east to the Fox River was the centerpiece of the Fabyans country estate called “Riverbank.” In 1914, the Fabyans purchased a windmill (photo below) that was located on a farm near Oakbrook, Illinois, and had it relocated opposite Riverbank on acreage that they acquired that same year. July 2013. Author’s phtograph.
The Fabyan Windmill, 1850s.
Between Batavia and Geneva, Illinois, The Fabyan Windmill is an authentic, working Dutch windmill dating from the 1850s. It was built by a German craftsman, Louis Blackhaus, and moved to this location in July 1915 next to the Fox River from its original site near Oakbrook, Illinois. July 2011. 2 mb 100_3357
111 S. Lincoln Street, c. 1850.
Though obscured by modern adaptations, the severe cube of the structure indicates its Greek Revival roots. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 92% 7.84mb DSC_6396.
125 S. Lincoln, 1852.
The Greek Revival design centers on a temple-like main block, where paired pilasters ascend to a pediment. The composition is subtly unconventional, however, as the entablature is only partially realized, one side implied by modest returns above the pilasters. Extending from the central section are a one-story entrance wing and a two-story addition featuring a pronounced cornice, dormers, arched windows, and tiny pitched roofs. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 88% 7.78 mb DSC_6400
432 Main Street, c. 1850.
The front porch may or may not be original but befits the broad formal mid-19th century Greek Revival structure. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 93% 7.82mb DSC_6431 (1)
Batavia’s historic buildings remain visible markers of changing economic, cultural, and social priorities across nearly two centuries.
333 S. Jefferson Street, Batavia Institute, Bellevue Mental Hospital, 1853.
Following the assassination of her husband, President Abraham Lincoln, Bellevue became the residence of Mary Todd Lincoln briefly in 1875. July 2011. Author’s photograph. 2.87mb 100_3332
Mary Todd Lincoln in 1846. Mary Todd was 23 years old when she married 33-year-old Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois on November 4, 1842. Their four sons were all born in Springfield. In 1875 Robert Todd Lincoln (1843-1926), her eldest son, had her institutionalized following a jury trial. She was committed to this private asylum in Batavia on May 20, 1875. Estranged from her finances and her son, she fell into a deep depression in the mental institution. Making contact with her lawyer and the press, the former First Lady got the wheels of justice and public opinion on her side. The resulting bad publicity for Robert Lincoln prompted the asylum director to pre-emptively change his opinion of Mary’s mental fitness so that in September 1875 she was released into the care of her sister Elizabeth Todd Edwards (1813-1888) with whom she was close and moved to Springfield. Following a second jury trial on June 19, 1876 that declared Mary “restored to reason,” Mary Todd Lincoln was back in charge of her money and freedom and promptly fled the country. She lived in France for the next four years. When she returned to Springfield in poor health in 1880, she lived again with her sister in Springfield. On July 16, 1882. Mary Todd Lincoln died of a stroke in Elizabeth’s home. Mary was 63 years old. Before her burial in Oak Ridge Cemetery next to her slain husband, her funeral was held at First Presbyterian Church in Springfield. Just steps from the Lincoln home, this was the church Abraham Lincoln started attending in 1850 after the death of their second son, four-year-old Eddie. The present church building was dedicated in 1868 and remains standing at 7th Street and Capitol Avenue today. see – https://www.nps.gov/features/liho/25/25.htm – retrieved January 23, 2025.
333 S. Jefferson Street, Batavia Institute, Bellevue Mental Hospital, 1853.
The monumental Italianate structure was designed by Elijah Shumway Town (1804-1890), who also built Batavia’s Congregational Church. The projecting two-story wings, capped by a Mansard roof containing a third story of dormers, were constructed of slightly cruder stone and added before 1870. July 2013.
419 Union Street, 1863.
The exuberance of the Italianate style is evident in the soaring polygonal bay anchoring one side of the façade and the cupola rising from the other. Large windows and multiple curved brackets are characteristic features of the style. Contrasting textures of stucco and heavy stone add visual interest while creating the impression of more costly materials and construction than were actually employed. The house served as the residence of one of the physicians associated with the Batavia Institute across the street. July 2013. Author’s photograph. 4.77mb _0092 (1)
Calvary Episcopal Church (222 Main Street), 1880.
Designed in the American Gothic style, the church reflects the mid-to-late nineteenth-century revival of medieval Gothic forms that arose in English Protestant architecture as a reaction against the prevailing Neoclassicism of the previous two centuries. American influences are evident in the building’s overall massiveness, particularly in its square tower, which is crowned by a double-pitched roof. Between the tower’s stages is an unusual sheet-metal band ornamented with bosses and discs and encircling the dormers of the steeple. April 2016. Author’s photograph. 2.82 mb DSC_0476 (1)
Through its factories, churches, houses, and landmarks, Batavia offers a remarkably intact architectural record of how industry, religion, transportation, and community shaped a growing Midwestern town from the nineteenth century into the modern era.
Details:
July 2013.
July 2013. 5.11mb 0479
Sources:
A Guide to Chicago’s Historic Suburbs on Wheels and on Foot, Ira J. Bach, Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 1981, pp. 304-319.
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 (see below for more details). Author’s photograph. 8/2014 99% 6.92mb.
Winnetka’s architectural identity was shaped during a formative period from the 1880s to the early twentieth century, and its houses, churches, and streetscapes continue to reveal the evolution of America’s most influential architectural styles within one of Chicago’s most distinctive suburban communities.
Text & photographs by John P. Walsh.
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. August 2014. Author’s photograph. 7.79mb 95%
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. August 2014. Author’s photograph. 6.04mb
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. August 2014. Author’s photograph. 6.76mb
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. August 2014. Author’s photograph. 6.15mb
Winnetka showcases a variety of styles, including Queen Anne, Shingle Style, Arts & Crafts, Classical Revival, and Gothic Revival. Residential architecture demonstrates the transition from Victorian complexity to the broader, more horizontal forms associated with the Prairie School era.
Sheridan Road, Winnetka, Illinois. August 2014. Author’s photograph. 3.01mb
Sacred Heart Church, exterior. August 2014. Author’s photograph. 4.58 mb
The grand Neo-Gothic building that stands as Sacred Heart Church in Winnetka was built in 1928. While the parish itself was originally founded in 1897, the first wood-frame church structure was razed in 1908 to accommodate a larger building. Following a three-year fundraising campaign, construction on the current stone structure began and was finalized in 1928. The church later underwent major interior renovations in 1957 and 1994, updating its sanctuary layout and lighting while retaining its historic architecture.
In July 2018, Sacred Heart Church in Winnetka and St. Philip the Apostle in Northfield officially consolidated to form Divine Mercy Parish. This merger was born of modern necessity. A steep decline in active participation, paired with an ever-increasing reliance on private donor largesse and supplementary funding, had made it mathematically impossible for either church to independently sustain its physical footprint within the local community. When a photograph of the interior was captured in 2014, Sacred Heart still stood as its own distinct parish. At that time, its vestibule wall was proudly lined with the portraits of past pastors—a quiet testament to a long, deeply rooted history.
Yet, the structural reality facing Sacred Heart reflects a broader macro-trend. Across the United States, modern Catholic parish life and its foundational institutions have been locked in a severe downward trajectory since the 1960s. The Archdiocese of Chicago’s own data frames this cultural erosion through stark statistical realities.
Less than 17% of Catholic Millennials attend Mass on a weekly basis, while more than one-third of that same millennial demographic—those born after 1986—now claim no religious affiliation whatsoever. This detachment deepens as young people grow, resulting in an overwhelming 85% of eighth graders, across both public and private schooling, completely walking away from the practice of the Catholic faith by the time they reach early adulthood at age 23.
Over the course of just the last two decades, overall Mass attendance has plummeted by more than 25%, leaving more and more pews empty. This institutional attrition begins early in life, fracturing the traditional pipeline of the faith before adulthood even arrives. Today, a significant portion of “cradle Catholics” never complete their foundational sacraments; approximately 20% of baptized children never receive their First Holy Communion, and 40% never move on to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation. What remains on the North Shore is a consolidated, leaner presence—a community adapting to preserve its legacy in an era of rapid secularization. See – https://www.renewmychurch.org/mission – retrieved November 21, 2023.
Sacred Heart Church, interior, looking to the main entrance from altar. Under the overarching “Renew My Church” initiative launched by Cardinal Blase Cupich, the Archdiocese of Chicago targeted approximately 15 to 20 parishes for formal closure or consolidation structures across its multi-phase regional planning waves in 2018.Then-121-year-old Sacred Heart Churchparish could no longer survive on its own and was consolidated with another parish in Northfield that year. August 2014. Author’s photograph. 5.06mb DSC_0227 (1)
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 associated with architects Myron Hunt & Elmer Grey in Los Angeles. Higginson later located his own firm to Santa Barbara, California. The Winnetka house is an L-shaped plan with broad sloping pitches roofs. The window groupings have plain surrounds that fit elegantly into shingle walls which flare slightly when they reach the ground. See – https://pcad.lib.washington.edu/person/7142/ – retrieved November 21, 2023.
Thirty-five-year old Augustus Barker Higginson, an architect located in Los Angeles, California, built the impressive Shingle style house at 822 Bryant Avenue Winnetka in 1901. Public Domain.
Christ Church, 784 Sheridan Road, Winnetka, 1905.
Christ Church, exterior and main entrance. August 2014. Author’s photograph. 6.60mb
The church was established in 1869 with its adjacent Garland Cemetery (Christ Church Churchyard) grounds begun in 1876. The stone church was dedicated in 1905.
Religious buildings such as Christ Church contribute significantly to Winnetka’s historic character and cultural memory.
Christ Church (also known as Church on the Hill) was the gift of the William Hoyt family. It was built as a memorial to the Hoyts’ daughter and three grandchildren who were tragically killed in the 1903 Iroquois Theater fire in Chicago and buried in church’s adjacent cemetery. August 2014. Author’s photograph. 7.77mb
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. August 2014. Author’s photograph. 7.66mb
About the deadly December 1903 Iroquois Theatre fire:
newspaper headline, 1903. Public Domain.
The Iroquois Theatre fire remains the deadliest single-building fire in United States history. It occurred on Wednesday, December 30, 1903, at the theater located at 69-73 Randolph Street (known today as 24-28 W. Randolph Street) in downtown Chicago, Illinois. That afternoon, the venue was packed to the brim with teachers, mothers, and young children enjoying their holiday school break.
During a performance of the musical Mr. Bluebeard, an electric arc light short-circuited and sparked a fire in the stage scenery. As the blaze grew, the theater’s “asbestos” safety curtain snagged and failed to lower. When performers fled out the large rear stage doors, the sudden influx of air created a massive cold draft, generating a ferocious fireball that shot out into the auditorium catching the ceiling on fire and trapping many hundreds of people in fiery darkness and thick, toxic smoke.
Out of an estimated crowd of roughly 2,100 to 2,200 attendees, approximately 1,500 to 1,600 people successfully escaped to survive, while more than 600 lost their lives in a span of just fifteen minutes. The vast majority of the victims were young women and children who died from asphyxiation and suffocation or were trampled by panicked crowds and crushed to death against exit doors that were locked or opened inward.
This profound tragedy fundamentally revolutionized public building safety codes globally. It led directly to the invention of the panic crash bar, which allows doors to open instantly under body pressure. It also established mandatory ordinances requiring functional outward-opening exit doors, automatic fire sprinklers, non-flammable stage curtains, and clearly illuminated, standardized exit signs. Through these permanent changes, their deaths were not in vain.
Following the fire, the heavily damaged interior of the original building was thoroughly rebuilt with strict new fire safety features and reopened in late 1904 as the Colonial Theatre. The Colonial operated for 20 years before it was demolished in 1925 to make way for a grander, completely new structure: the Oriental Theatre opened in 1926 and served as a cinema, a vaudeville house, and a live theater venue. In February 2019, the Oriental was officially renamed the James M. Nederlander Theatre.
Christ Church, Winnetka. August 2014. Author’s photograph. 2.75mb DSC_0388 (1)
The saint in the central medallion is Saint Matthias, the apostle chosen by the remaining eleven disciples to replace Judas Iscariot after the crucifixion of Jesus. He is traditionally depicted holding a book or a halberd (axe). This Gothic Revival stained-glass window was also created by the Charles J. Connick Studio of Boston. Looking past the glass, the gravestones visible outside the window belong to the historic Christ Church Churchyard. Often referred to locally as the Garland Plot, it stands as the oldest cemetery on the North Shore, established in 1836. In 1876, John Garland donated the land to the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago to build Christ Church, with the strict legal condition that the churchyard remain a permanent family and pioneer burial lot. Visible just through the window are some of the historic graveyard’s headstones.
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. June 2014. Author’s photograph. 3.95mb
Wilmette’s architectural character reflects the evolution of Chicago’s North Shore from nineteenth-century village to premier suburban community, where distinguished residential, civic, religious, and commercial architecture created an environment of exceptional design quality that remains remarkably intact today.
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. June 2014. Author’s photograph. 4.76mb
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. June 2014. Author’s photograph. 5.67mb
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. June 2014. Author’s photograph. 4.20mb
1020 Forest Avenue, Community Church of Wilmette, 1920.
A pioneer large church building tucked unobtrusively onto a residential street whose type of subdued stance was replicated by other churches built in its wake in the suburb. June 2014. Author’s photograph. 6.05mb
1020 Forest Avenue, Community Church of Wilmette, 1920. The building has massing of large rubble ashlar walls with broad arches and a porch. June 2014. Author’s photograph. 3.57mb
A grand two-story Classical Revival house has a high hipped roof and ionic pilasters at the corners and sides and pediment of the projecting entrance. Ionic columns support the porch. June 2014. Author’s photograph. 4.86mb
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 along with the broad bow façade. These changes worked to add space and mask the original style. The front porch is more recent. June 2014. Author’s photograph. 5.61mb
George Washington Maher (1864-1926).
Born in West Virginia, Maher 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 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.” At the time of his death, G.W. Maher had designed over 270 projects; from houses to parks to public buildings. Public Domain.
804 Forest Avenue, 1906, G.W. Maher.
A solid 4-square house that is modest compared to a similar-styled project the Prairie-school architect completed in 1899 in Oak Park known as Pleasant Home.June 2014. Author’s photograph. 4.85mb
Wilmette combines architectural distinction, affluent residential design, civic beauty, and lakefront suburban development into one of Chicago’s most visually cohesive communities.
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.
FEATURE image: Architect Louis Bourgeois incorporated a variety of religious architecture and symbols including for Hindus, Buddhists, Native Americans, Jews, Christians and Muslims, to convey the Baháʼí principle of the unity of religion. Author’s photograph.
The Baháʼí Temple in Wilmette is one of America’s most distinctive religious monuments, where architect Louis Bourgeois fused spiritual ideals, innovative design, and intricate ornament into a landmark that took more than forty years to complete and remains a singular achievement in twentieth-century sacred architecture.
Text & Photographs by John P. Walsh.
The temple was designed by French-Canadian architect Louis Bourgeois (1856–1930). By 1906 Bourgeois and his wife joined the Baháʼí faith. Photo c. 1922. Public Domain.
The Chicago Baháʼí Temple House of Worship is the second such house of worship constructed and the oldest one that is still standing. The popular destination along Lake Michigan on Chicago’s Northshore attracts visitors from around the world today for its amazing architecture, beautiful gardens, and message of religious unity in prayer and for peace.
The temple was designed by French-Canadian architect Louis Bourgeois (1856–1930). After studying and traveling in Paris, Italy, Greece, Egypt, and Iran, Bourgeois settled in Chicago in 1896 where he worked with Louis Sullivan. Bourgeois moved to Southern California and, in 1898, designed in Hollywood a landmark Mission Revival style house for painter Paul de Longpré (1855-1911) whose architecture and gardens became a tourist attraction.
The building serves as the North American Baháʼí House of Worship. Located in Wilmette, Illinois, it has become one of Chicagoland’s most recognizable landmarks.
The nine sides of the building represent the largest single digit number which stands fortheBaháʼí belief in the unity and oneness of humankind. June 2014. Author’s photograph. 6.55mb
The idea for the construction of the first Baháʼí Temple in the Western world began in Chicago in 1903. When there was a call for designs, Louis Bourgeois’ plans were the most promising. He worked on the complex design from 1909 to 1917. Before that time, Louis Bourgeois and his wife had joined the Baháʼí faith after having come into association with the Baha’i Faith through Boston’s Baháʼí community. In that time Bourgeois constructed a plaster model of his completed vision and in the 1920’s until his death in 1930 worked on the temple’s construction in Wilmette, Illinois.
While building activity was delayed though the Great Depression of the 1930’s and into World War II, temple construction began again in earnest in 1947 and the temple was dedicated in 1953.
Designed by French-Canadian architect Louis Bourgeois, its more than 40-year construction history reflects the determination of the Baháʼí community to realize Bourgeois’s ambitious vision.
Abdu’l-Bahá (1844-1921), eldest son of Baháʼu’lláh (1817-1892), the founder of the Baháʼí Faith, participated in the ground-breaking ceremony in 1912 of Baháʼí Temple. Construction began in earnest in the 1920s. It is four stories of reinforced concrete. June 2014. Author’s photograph. 4.11mb
Baháʼu’lláh (1817-1892) was an Iranian religious leader who founded the Baháʼí Faith. Public Domain.
Money for the building was raised entirely by the temple congregants as their gift to the people of the world. June 2014. Author’s photograph. 6.30mb
The temple blends influences from Gothic, Islamic, Byzantine, Renaissance, and other world architectural traditions into a unified design. Its lace-like concrete ornamentation creates one of the most elaborate exterior surfaces in American architecture.
The temple rises 191 feet from its base to its ribbed dome’s peak. The main story pylons are 45 feet high each. The building’s surfaces are teeming with carved lacelike ornamentation. June 2013. Author’s photograph. 4.50mb
The Baháʼí Temple has a highly traditional appearance whose architectural reputation—in an age of orthodox modernism and postmodernism—has grown only more positive with the years. June 2013. Author’s photograph. 4.85 mb
Interior of the auditorium inside the Baháʼí House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois. The entire surface—from the towering walls to the massive dome ceiling—is covered in highly detailed, openwork ornamental lattice patterns that filter natural light.
The Grand Dome: A central, monumental circular dome rises high above the space, featuring a gilded calligraphic emblem at its center. Molded seamlessly into the pillars and lace-like quartz masonry are major global religious symbols layered chronologically from bottom to top—including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism—symbolizing the fraternity and evolution of mankind.
Soaring Arches and Pillars: Nine main pillars and towering arched window bays flank the multi-layered walls, drawing the eye upward. The number nine is the highest single-digit number, mathematically representing oneness, perfection, and the ultimate completion of God’s revelation.
Concentric Seating Layout: Curved rows of rich, red velvet-cushioned wooden seating wrap around a highly polished, reflective floor that mirrors the warm lighting from above. PHOTO: “The forbidden temple.” by kern.justin is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
The room is strictly dedicated to prayer, quiet contemplation, and meditation. There are no sermons, rigid ritualism, or set religious dogmas permitted here. Because the faith emphasizes that all major world religions originate from the same Creator, the devotional readings regularly feature sacred scriptures from different faiths. In alignment with Baháʼí principles, the room features no professional clergy, religious imagery, or musical instruments. Any music performed during devotionals comes strictly from a cappella choirs or soloists.
The temple occupies a unique place in American religious architecture because it is unlike any traditional church, synagogue, mosque, or cathedral.
The temple’s main prayer room seats 1,200 people. In the Baháʼí faith there are no clergy, no sermons and no rituals. Scriptures are read from many different faith traditions and music by soloists or a cappella choir. June 2013. Author’s photograph. 5.31mb
The Baha’i House of Worship Choir, under the direction of Van Gilmer, performs “This is the Day”—featuring words by Báha’u’lláh and arranged by Stanford E. Scriven—at the 17th Annual Choral Festival in Wilmette, Illinois.
“The Source of All Learning is the Knowledge of God – Exalted Be His Glory.” There are an equal number of entrances each with a quotation above it by Baháʼu’lláh (1817-1892), founder of the Baháʼí faith. June 2013. Author’s photograph. 5.94mb
The Baháʼí temple is open year-round presenting its unique beauty through the seasons. February 2021. Author’s photograph.7.97mb
The nine-sided plan reflects Baháʼí religious symbolism and the principle of unity. The structure demonstrates how architecture can express universal spiritual ideals through light, geometry, and decoration.
The building is on the National Register of Historic Places and situated on a broad, landscaped site that looks towards Lake Michigan. PHOTO: “Wilmette, 2015” by gregorywass is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
SOURCES:
Chicago Churches and Synagogues: An Architectural Pilgrimage, George Lane, S.J., and Algimantas Kezys, Loyola University Press, Chicago, 1981, pp. 160-161.
Chicago’s Famous Buildings, Fifth Edition, Franz Schulze and Kevin Harrington, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003, pp. 267-269.
A Guide to Chicago’s Historic Suburbs on Wheels and on Foot, Ira J. Bach, Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 1981, p. 535.
FEATURE image: 946 N. Sheridan Road, Waukegan, Illinois 1876.
Waukegan’s surviving architecture serves as a visual record of the city’s transformation from frontier trading post to prosperous Great Lakes industrial center, preserving nearly a century of changing architectural tastes and civic ambitions.
Text & photographs by author.
INTRODUCTION
Waukegan, Illinois, is an historic community on Lake Michigan about 40 miles north of downtown Chicago. It is one of the oldest settlements in Illinois. The site of the city was visited by French explorers Louis Jolliet (1645-1700) and Père Jacques Marquette, S.J. (1637-1675) in 1673 where Waukegan began as a French trading post and Potawatomie village.
Inside the Kiva (c.1905-1912), oil on canvas. 20 in. x 30.25 in., Kate Cory (1861-1958), Waukegan Historical Society. Waukegan photographer, sculptor, painter and muralist Kate Cory moved to Newark, New Jersey, with her family as a child. Between 1905 and 1912 she lived among the Hopi of the Oraibi Mesa in Arizona where this painting was made. Public Domain.
Waukegan’s origins as “Little Fort.”
“Little Fort” was the first name for the environs of Waukegan. It started around 1700 as a log building overlooking the Waukegan River on its southwestern shore as it drained into Lake Michigan. This point marked the portage from the Lake to the Des Plaines River as it traveled west. The state of Illinois was established in 1818. Over the next quarter century, the Illinois volunteer army fought local native American tribes and forced them to sign treaties and migrate west of the Mississippi. The Potawatomie left Waukegan by 1829 as they ceded their land in this area and throughout northeastern Illinois to the U.S. Government. The 1830s brought vast changes to the area with opportunities for development. In addition to the land transfer, the building of the Erie Canal in 1830 brought boatloads of settlers from New England and New York State into the Illinois and the Midwest region.
Along with other communities which developed on Chicago portage routes, the history of Waukegan’s founding and development shares a similar time frame as well as personalities and activities. In 1835 Thomas Jenkins was the first settler at “Little Fort.” Jenkins was followed in quick succession by other enterprising and hard-working New Englanders who settled much of northern Illinois in the 1830s which was the edge of the Western wilderness. Like Marquette and Jolliet in the 17th century, these newcomers recognized the potential monumental impact that access to Lake Michigan had for transport of goods in and out of the region and what that commercial activity and subsequent settlement would have on the surrounding real estate. As more people arrived, the creation of a village emerged. The area was platted and streets designated, and in a contested election in 1841, “Little Fort,” became the governmental center for a recently formed Lake County.
Little Fort Becomes Waukegan
Between 1844 and 1846 the town’s population multiplied from 150 to 750 persons. In 1849 the community changed its name from “Little Fort” to Waukegan. By 1859, when the town was incorporated as a city, Waukegan boasted a population of 2,500 people. Chicago, by comparison, had a population of 112,172 denizens in the 1860 census. Waukegan is an English alliteration that closely approximated the word for “fort” or “trading post” in the Algonquin language. In the 2020 census Waukegan reported a population of 89,321 people.
Growing population in the port city. Coming of the railroad
Waukegan had a natural deep harbor and was a port city. This feature attracted merchants and farmers who could readily ship their goods, produce, and grain from Lake and McHenry County businesses and farms to Chicago –- and, from that point, to the Midwest and the world. Waukegan soon became one of the busiest ports on the lake. When the railroad came to Waukegan in 1855 (today’s Chicago and North Western Railway), it stimulated interest in Waukegan as a manufacturing town that included ship and wagon building, flour milling, sheep raising, pork packing, beer brewing and dairy farming (Hawthorne-Melody Farms). The railroads made it feasible for the establishment of larger industries which appeared in Waukegan at the end of the 19th century such as U.S. Sugar Refinery, Washburn and Moen Wire Mill (U.S. Steel Corporation), U.S. Starch Works, and Thomas Brass and Iron Works, among others. This mercantile and agricultural activity generated sufficient wealth for its citizens to build big houses along Waukegan’s main streets. These residences expressed the current tastes in residential styles from Greek revival and Italianate styles to the Victorian and Prairie School.
1890-1930: Population boom fueled by immigration
Between 1890 and 1930 Waukegan experienced a population boom fueled by European immigrants and, in the 1920’s, Black Americans during the Great Migration. Waukegan thrived though by the end of the 20th century, the city suffered from an exodus of its population to farther west suburbs. This was accompanied by a shuttering of industries as management sought cheaper labor in other countries. At the same time, Waukegan was welcoming a new influx of immigrants from Latin America.
Famous residents
A few of Waukegan’s most famous residents in history include comedian Jack Benny (1894-1974), science fiction writer Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), World War II combat photographer under Colonel Darryl F. Zanuck (Twentieth Century Fox) Albert Klein, the aforementioned fine artist Kate Cory and NFL quarterback for the Cleveland Browns Otto Graham (1921-2003).
When he became famous, Jack Benny never forgot his hometown of Waukegan.
Science Fiction writer Ray Bradbury said he had a sign over his typewriter for 25 years as advice to himself and other writers: “DON’T THINK.”
When Otto Graham played for the Cleveland Browns the team played in 10 consecutive title games, 4 all-American Conference and 3 NFL championships. In Waukegan, Otto Graham’s father was a music teacher who taught Jack Benny to play the violin.
THE HOUSES:
408 N. Sheridan Road, 1875. Built in the Italianate style in 1875. The set of four symmetrical bay windows on the first and second floors have 12 tall thin windows. The moldings have scroll cut, incised, and cut out brackets with heavy decorative surrounds with keystones. In the center above the canopied main entrance are a second floor and gable windows with heavy shoulders for its surrounds. Above the gable window is punched out, playfully decorative bargeboard. The two story porch to the south (left) while integrated to the Italianate building is a later turn-of-the-century addition.
414 N. Sheridan Road, 1847. The strict Greek Revival-style modest building dates from 1847. Built by John H. Swartout, the frame house has a portico with a perfect classical pediment with Doric columns holding up a blank entablature. The façade hosts three identical openings – two being windows with shouldered moldings and a door with a transom. It is a simple and relatively small building that was in need of repair in 2014 when this photograph was taken by the author.
438 N. Sheridan Road, 1840s. The house was built up around a small 1840s Greek revival Style house. The Italian Villa style with its tall central tower, porch and columns, double brackets under the eaves and pediments above the windows, dates from the middle 1850s. the central door starts with the rope molding around the double doors and ascends to double arched windows on the second and third floors.
438 N. Sheridan Road, 1840s. Same house as above, southern exposure. The tower’s windows are replicated on each side at the same level as the front view.
505 N. Sheridan Road, 1850s. A central tower with a double window and a peaked arched pediment and a steep pitched roof marks this house from the 1850s as Greek Revival style. The door has heavy shoulders for its surrounds.
526 N. Sheridan, late 1840s. A Greek revival style house prevalent in the state of Ohio. The Greek Revival gable has short returns with the second-floor windows extending into the gable area. This is a construction short cut for these upper story rooms. The porch with its octagonal columns and front door entry with its heavily bracketed canopy are later additions although no later than the mid1870s.
619 N. Sheridan Road, 1840s. The present house was built around an earlier house erected in the 1840s. It is in the Victorian Gothic style. There are steep gables for the central tower and dormers. The central doors and windows have simple and neat surrounds.
Detail of same house above, 619 N. Sheridan Road, 1840s.
Waukegan’s historic houses and neighborhoods reveal the story of a city shaped by lake commerce, railroads, industry, immigration, and economic growth, with its architecture preserving the ambitions and cultural aspirations of successive generations from the 1840s through the early twentieth century.
710 N. Sheridan Road, 1872. A restored Second Empire and Italianate Victorian mansion. The frame house features a double door entrance with glass panes and a veranda-like columnar front porch. A square-shaped second-floor porch is above the front entrance in the central section of the house and below its double bracketed cornice and Mansard roof.
Detail of double bracketed cornice of restored 1872 Second Empire and Italianate Victorian mansion at 710 N. Sheridan Road in Waukegan, Illinois.
Waukegan preserves a remarkable range of architectural styles including Greek Revival, Italianate, Italian Villa, Victorian Gothic, Second Empire, and Tudor Revival.
837 N. Sheridan Road, 1858. The front porch and polygonal bay window were added to this late-1850s Italianate brick house more than 60 years later, around 1910.
907 N. Sheridan Road, early 1930s. Made of Lannon stone from Wisconsin, the buff-colored, blocky, sedimentary dolomite rock house is designed in the English Tudor style. It has a slate roof. The tall wide chimney is integrated into the façade of the solid stone wall building flanked by casement windows in gabled wall dormers.
Another view of same house above, 907 N. Sheridan Road, early 1930s. The well-designed monolithic stone and slate fortress was erected during the Great Depression.
Individual houses illustrate changing architectural fashions across nearly a century of development. Waukegan’s built environment reflects both nineteenth-century optimism and twentieth-century prosperity before later industrial decline and demographic change.
946 N. Sheridan Road, 1876. An Italianate house has a central tower with notable openings – a ground floor heavy doorway; above that, a pair of windows under a semi-circular pediment; and finally, at the top, a triplet of windows under a triangle pediment. The second floor carries the semi-circular pediment design across three more of its windows and there are double brackets under the eaves. The porch is likely an early 20th century addition.
1004 N. Sheridan Road, late 1890s.
Sources:
Bach, Ira J. 1981. A Guide to Chicago’s Historic Suburbs on Wheels and on Foot. Chicago: Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, pp. 97-111.
FEATURE Image: 124 Scottswood Road, Riverside, Illinois, 1871, by William LeBaron Jenney (1832-1907). A full description of this house is in the post. June 2022. Author’s photograph.
Riverside, Illinois, is not simply an early suburb of Chicago but one of America’s most significant planned communities, where the visionary landscape design of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux created a setting that attracted generations of distinguished architects, producing an extraordinary architectural legacy that spans Gothic Revival, High Victorian Gothic, Queen Anne, Richardsonian Romanesque, Prairie School, and other styles.
John P. Walsh, 2022-23. All rights reserved. All text and photos are the property of the author, except for materials explicitly credited as public domain or licensed content.
INTRODUCTION.
The location of today’s Riverside, Illinois, has been an active and important historical area since before the 17th century. It was part of an active trading route and the center for Native American Indian settlements – The Green Bay, Barry Point, Portage Trails, and numerous smaller Indian trails, all passed through the area. It was only a couple of miles from the so-called Chicago Portage which connected Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River centuries prior to the building of the I&M Canal before 1850. French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet passed by Riverside in 1673 when they were shown the portage by Native Americans. The Chicago Portage is a National Historic Site because it opened the western continent to trade and settlement as well as became the key to the founding and development of Chicago, just 11 miles away.
Riverside was originally inhabited by the Illinois and Miami Indians. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries the Potawatomi became the dominant tribe together with the Chippewa and Ottawa and formed an alliance called the “Council of Three Fires.” These tribes lived on wild game and roots, but later adapted to farming, with fields of corn, beans, and squash.
During these many centuries, Indian burial grounds and encampments were located in Riverside on grounds besides the Des Plaines River and towards the east to today’s Fairbank Road.
The state of Illinois was founded in 1818. For the next 24 years, the Illinois volunteer army fought local native American tribes and forced them to sign treaties and migrate west of the Mississippi.
After the Indians were first forced off their land by treaty in the early 1800’s, brothers David and Barney Lawton (or Laughton) came to the area from Michigan and established an outpost in Riverside in 1827 or 1828. Into the 1840s Illinois was the edge of the wilderness. These fur traders chose the area for similar reasons that the Native Americans had – its proximity to the Chicago Portage and the convergence of established trails whose traffic made it conducive to a thriving trading business.
Riverside grew from an important Native American and transportation corridor into one of America’s earliest planned suburban communities.
The Scout Cabin on the Des Plaines River in Riverside, Illinois, is situated in an historic area of Native American and pioneer settlements. February 2023. Author’s photograph.
In July 1832 the U.S. Government sent General Winfield Scott (1786-1866) to help with the Black Hawk War that started in April of that year and ended in August. That short war also involved a young 23-year-old captain from New Salem, Illinois, named Abraham Lincoln. Upon leaving Chicago, Scott and his army camped in Riverside along the Des Plaines River for several days and then marched further west. Scottswood Road, one of Riverside’s primary residential arteries, is named after the general.
In 1831, the first white permanent settlers came to Lawtons’ Tavern in Aux Plaines (the name for Riverside then) and settled in the first houses west of Chicago. Once Gen. Scott’s military campaign was over, he returned to Chicago and dispersed the volunteers. Federal law required the state to have a standing army, so the state legislature passed a law requiring counties to form militia. In 1834, Cook County formed the first militia when Stephen Forbes, Cook County’s first sheriff, called up volunteers to Laughton Tavern. Over 1000 enterprising men assembled in Riverside and elected Jean Baptiste Beaubien (1787-1864) the first colonel of the Cook County Militia.
The first stage of modern transit development was the Southwest Plank Road (later Route 66) completed from Chicago to Riverside in 1849. The road, called Ogden Avenue today, was eventually extended to Naperville, Illinois. It was operated as a toll road whose proceeds went to the private concerns that built it. Toll amounts depended on whether the traveler was a four-horse vehicle or a single horse and rider. Since its installation, the plank road has been a successful endeavor as it was the only road through areas that were often inaccessible.
Commercial enterprises in this period included additional taverns that offered lodging and board for travelers and their horses. There was also a brewery and distillery.
A bend of the Des Plaines River in Riverside, Illinois. February 2023. Author’s photograph.
Riverside was mostly wooded tracts and farmland until the Civil War when the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad built a rail line through the area in 1863. With the rail a group of businessmen in 1869 formed the Riverside Improvement Company and set out to develop “a perfect village in a perfect setting.”
These Riverside businessmen hired landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) and Calvert Vaux (1824-1895), who had previously designed Manhattan’s Central Park, to design one of America’s first planned suburban communities. Their innovative plan set a template for suburban community planning such as curvilinear streets and modern amenities. Their vision was to design a mostly rural community with the conveniences of urban life such as utilities and broad streets. Whereas these curvilinear streets were utilized to fit an expansive community into limited open space it was also inspired by the community’s relationship to its natural environment, particularly the curves of the abutting Des Plaines River.
In addition to its legendary landscape architects (like Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux) and world-renowned residential architects (such as Frank Lloyd Wright), the development of Riverside, Illinois relied heavily on civil engineers, sanitation and drainage planners, and bridge/infrastructure architects.
Portrait of Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903). Public Domain.
Calvert Vaux (1824-1895). Public Domain.
The 1869 plan by Olmsted and Vaux established curving streets, parks, and a design philosophy that integrated architecture with the natural landscape of the Des Plaines River.
The design of Riverside included important public spaces including a central square and park system that contained several large parks and scores of small triangular parks scattered through the village.
General Plan of Riverside · Olmsted, Vaux & Co. Landscape Architects 1869. Public Domain.
By 1871, Riverside had several larger homes, the water tower, and one of the country’s first multi-shop arcade buildings. There was a church, train depot, and grand hotel. Following the Chicago Fire in October 1871 there was a time of regional financial panic accompanied by frenzied renewed building. In the wake of Riverside Improvement Company going out of business, local Riverside residents came together to see Olmsted and Vaux’s design plan completed and built upon.
The Wesencraft residence is Riverside’s oldest home. It is located at 78 Pine Avenue on the north side of the railroad tracks. Public Domain.
Riverside grew slowly in its first decades but by the 1920s and 1930s had doubled and tripled its population of mostly middle class and upper middle Chicago commuters. This bedroom community grew steadily until its peak in 1970 (10,357 residents). Since then, Riverside’s population has dropped slightly and leveled off to a lower growth number so that by 2020 there were nearly 9,300 residents. (See – https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census.html – retrieved 3.3.23)
Since its incorporation as a village in 1875, Riverside also attracted increasing numbers of eminent architects to contribute to the diversity of Riverside’s historic architecture. These include Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), William Le Baron Jenney (1832-1907), Charles Frederick Whittlesey (1867-1941), Joseph Lyman Silsbee (1848-1913), R. Harold Zook (1889-1949), Frederick Clarke Withers (1828-1901), Howard Van Doren Shaw (1869-1926), and William Eugene Drummond (1876-1948). Much of their work remains today evident in scores of historic landmark structures in Riverside.
Riverside became a showcase for the work of major architects including Frank Lloyd Wright, William Le Baron Jenney, Frederick C. Withers, Howard Van Doren Shaw, R. Harold Zook, Joseph Lyman Silsbee, and William Drummond.
Frank Lloyd Wright in 1903, likely a self-portrait. Public Domain.
William Le Baron Jenney (1832-1907). Public Domain.
Charles Frederick Whittlesey (1867-1941). Public Domain.
Frederick Clarke Withers (1828-1901). Public Domain.
William Eugene Drummond (1876-1948). Public Domain.
Howard Van Doren Shaw (1869-1926). Public Domain.
Public buildings such as the Water Tower, Arcade Building, train depot, Town Hall, and churches are as significant as the residential architecture.
OLD WATER TOWER, 1869, 10 Pine Avenue. Designed and built by William Le Baron Jenney of Jenney, Schermerhor & Bogart, Architects and Engineers.
The original Water Tower had a Gothic Revival wooden tank. The tower is accompanied by two round stone well houses built in 1898 and designed by George William Ashby. When the original tank was destroyed by fire in 1913, a steel tank was installed and the tower was raised 20 feet. It was topped by a canopy designed by William Mann.
Riverside Railroad Depot, c. 1901, 90 Bloomingbank Road and 15 Pine Avenue. Designed and built by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad.
A railroad through Riverside came in 1863, 6 years before the Olmsted/Vaux plan and 12 years before the village’s incorporation. William Le Baron Jenney designed the first depot in 1871. This main depot with open covered extensions on the south side of the tracks was connected by a tunnel to the north platform.
The view above shows the expansive tile roof-covered main entrance. The two large columns with variegated brick gives columns design and texture. There are many windows to allow natural light from its south exposure and a view of the tracks to the north.
Looking east, the orange-brick-colored main depot has open covered extensions for commuters to be protected from the elements during their wait outdoors for a train connection.
Looking west, a view of the train depot with one of its open covered extensions and peaked snow-covered tile roof. The northern platform is visible across the railroad tracks on the right. Author’s photograph taken in February 2023.
The same view as above over 100 years ago. Riverside Train Depot, 1919. Public Domain.
Interior, Riverside Train Depot, c. 1901, includes a waiting room and, at right, ticket agent window. The ceiling has wainscotting and there are period light fixtures to accent the natural light pouring in from the series of encased large rectangular windows.
On the brick-paved platform, another of the train depot’s open covered extensions.
The Lake House, a 2006 fantasy romance film from Warner Brothers, was shot in Riverside, Illinois. A doctor (Sandra Bullock) who occupied a lakeside home exchanges letters with its newest resident, an architect (Keanu Reeves). When they discover that they’re actually living two years apart, they must try to unravel the mystery behind their romance before it’s lost in the midst of time.
While several scenes in the movie were shot in Riverside, Illinois—including at the local train station and the bridge on Riverside Road—the lake house was built from scratch for the movie and its scenes were filmed on the shores of Maple Lake within the Palos Forest Preserve in nearby Willow Springs.
Riverside Town Hall, 27 Riverside Road, Riverside, Illinois, 1895, designed by George Ashby.
In 1891, the Village of Riverside and Riverside Township reached an agreement so that the village donated the land for a town hall and the township paid for its construction.
In 1893 the township authorized $15,000 for construction (about $500,000 today) and this picturesque and stately building, designed by George Ashby, was completed in 1895. The clock was added to the main tower in 1941.
The building is Richardsonian Romanesque at a time when that style, very popular in the 1880’s, had begun to wane among contemporary architects in preference for the Beaux-Arts.
There is a steeply pitched hipped roof with brick for the top floor and rough faced stone for the ground floor. The turret is polygonal and the windows are of various sizes on all three floors. There are many delicate design elements such as copper cornices, colonettes, stringcourses and dressed stone.
Arcade Building, 1 Riverside Road, Designed and built c. 1871, Frederick C. Withers.
The Arcade Building is the first commercial building built in Riverside following Olmsted and Vaux’s plan and is associated with the village’s original developers, the Riverside Improvement Company.
The Arcade Building – a multi-color brick and limestone building with pointed arches and projecting cornices and stringcourses – is High Victorian Gothic. It was designed by architect Fredrick C. Withers, an associate of Olmsted and Vaux. With its mansard windows between tower pavilions, the simple building references the elaborate and decorative Second Empire architecture.
Riverside Presbyterian Church, 116 Barrypoint, 1872, Frederick C. Withers.
The church building was designed by Fredrick C. Withers who designed the Arcade Building at around the same time. Like that early commercial building the church is an amalgam of styles and forms, including Gothic Revival and Italianate.
The stone building has a series of pitched gable roofs that cover and form the transepts and chancel. The corner tower rises to a timber belfry with moldings and pointed arch openings whose original manual pull bell as well as modern chimes still mark the hours. Extensions to the left and right are mid-20th century additions done in harmony with the original design.
100 Fairbank Road, 1869, by Calvert Vaux.
This clapboard Carpenter Gothic style house was designed as a model home for the Riverside Plan by that plan’s designer, Calvert Vaux. It is an example of East Coast architecture transplanted into the heart of the Midwest. The ground floor is higher than the second floor. The low-pitched roof is punctuated by a projecting porch with Gothic Revival carpentry supported by struts and a gabled roof.
Two other second floor porches are on the short sides of the building extending across that width above a ground-floor projecting bay. The clapboard sheathings are meticulously and variedly cut for decorative effects throughout the building’s exterior.
Curved sidewalks follow their own direction and along a mostly wooded landscape.
107 Bloomingbank Road and 111 Bloomingbank Road, both c. 1890.
This neighboring pair of Queen Anne style homes are variations of the same building design. The buildings’ design shares a porch across the entire front, arched enclosed second floor porch, and front-facing attic windows. Both share the same kind of clapboard and shingle sheathing.
Houses on Bloomingbank Road face the Des Plaines River.
The Des Plaines River has flooded Riverside repeatedly, causing major damage at least seven to ten times in modern history. Record-setting floods struck in April 2013, August 1987, September 1986, and September 2008. Additional significant flood crests reached major or moderate flood stages in 2007, 2017, and 2020. As suburban development and impervious surfaces such as concrete have expanded throughout the surrounding region, flood risks and impacts within the village have generally increased over time. February 2023. Author’s photograph.
143 Bloomingbank Road, c. 1869.
This house is set back from the road and built in 1869 which was the year that Olmsted and Vaux were commissioned to design the suburb. The Italianate-style house has tall windows and large brackets with feet and shoulders for their jambs and segmental points. The second-floor windows are met by a first-floor transomed window. A steeped pitched roof and complex massing is Gothic Revival. A subdued color palette blends into the natural surroundings. The porch veranda is original.
201 Bloomingbank Road at Scottswood, c. 1870.
The above 1870 house is a T-shaped Gothic revival with the stem of the “T” facing the street. The stem is surrounded by a veranda whose porch columns are Italianate with Gothic style “carpenter” capitals. The tall windows and lintels are Italianate. The façade’s windows are under a hood molding and the attic has a small window with a pointed lintel. The T-stem’s pitched roof in the Gothic Revival style is slightly lower than the T-cross’s pitched roof behind it.
213 Bloomingbank Road, c. 1905.
A frame clapboard and shingled 4-square cube from 1905. There is a front porch held up by four huge piers with ornamental moldings that cover expansive first-floor polygonal bay windows. Below the hipped roof are two center windows with round heads. The painted dark green and yellow mix is stately and blends into the nature setting.
253 Bloomingbank Road, c.1890.
The Queen Anne house from 1890 has a lot of windows. It is a basic cube with a gambrel roof with a wing that also has a gambrel roof. The front porch is covered on one side with a flared roof and on the other side with a pitched gable roof. The second floor has an open porch that looks over the Des Plaines River. The original clapboard and shingles have been covered on the first floor by later stucco.
Bloomingbank Road, Riverside, Illinois.
Riverside’s architecture remains inseparable from its landscape setting, fulfilling the original vision of a “perfect village in a perfect setting.”
Riverside, Illinois. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 6.21mb.
Avery Coonley Estate, 1909, Frank Lloyd Wright.
Avery Coonley House, 300 Scottswood Road, 281 Bloomingbank Road, Riverside (Cook County, Illinois), 1910. Public Domain.
281 Bloomingbank Road, 1909.
281 Bloomingbank Road, 1909. From the street.
What became the nationally-recognized Avery Coonley School was founded in 1906 to promote the progressive education theories of John Dewey (1859-1952). It was founded as The Cottage School by Queene Ferry Coonley (1874-1958) on her estate in Riverside, Illinois, for her 4-year-old daughter.
The school, which continues to thrive today, has occupied several structures in its history. This included a literal small cottage on the Coonley Estate in Riverside to larger buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1909. The school moved to Downers Grove in 1916 and, on a 11-acre campus there designed by landscape architect Jens Jensen (1860-1951), became the Avery Coonley School in 1929.
This section of Wright’s 1909 design is set back well off the street and mostly hidden by trees. Behind an iron fence, it is difficult for the public to perceive the full extent of the estate. Wright’s design begins at the street with a low stone urn.
On June 11, 1978, the courtyard’s swimming pool heater exploded and started a fire. The fire destroyed the main house’s living room and a bedroom. The exterior was later meticulously restored to its original appearance which included the school’s stucco walls, simple board trim and multi-color tile façade, all beneath a broad, tiled, hipped roof. At the time of the restoration the swimming pool was re-converted to its original function as a lily pond.
The Avery Coonley Estate represents one of the finest Prairie School expressions in suburban America.
336 Coonley Road, 1909, is another major section of the Coonley estate.
290 Scottswood Road, after 1909.
A free-standing L-shaped domestic structure with a broad hipped roof, the house was added sometime after 1909. Within its setting in the highly-designed suburb of Riverside, this Prairie style house sets a template and direction for much of what would be 20th century suburban development across the country.
300 Scottswood Road, 1909.
This is the main block of the Avery Coonley estate. The house is the epitome of the Prairie School style of broad horizontals, here using stucco boards, tile and glass beneath a low hipped roof. Wright’s design starts at the street with the low stone urn.
Avery Coonley Playhouse, 350 Fairbank Road, Riverside, Illinois, 1909, by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Avery Coonley Playhouse, 350 Fairbank Road, 1909, by F. L. Wright.
Basic plan of the playhouse (above) is a T-shaped building with higher T-stem to the street. A simple stucco structure, the playhouse’s flat roof and lower wings provide the Prairie style’s broad horizontality. Flat roof of the T-stem extends over three elongated windows while lower wings have clerestory windows.
William E. Drummond (1876–1948). Public Domain.
308 Fairbank Road, Riverside, Illinois, c. 1910, Guenzel and Drummond.
Drummond began his career working for architect Louis Sullivan (1856-1924). Later, working for Frank Lloyd Wright, Drummond became the chief draftsman for many of Wright’s well-known commissions. In 1912 Drummond went into partnership with Louis Guenzel who had been a draftsman for Dankmar Adler (1844-1900) and Louis Sullivan (1856-1924).
The house is a one story hipped roofed cube or block with a broad brow of stucco soffits with eaves. The original casement windows include three in the front for the living room with geometric Prairie patterns. The lower portion of the façade is board siding and the top section is stucco.
314 Scottswood Road, Riverside, Illinois.
322 Scottswood Road, 1897.
The simple stone house in an English country cottage style was built in 1897. It has diamond-patterned casement windows and a single half-timbered gable poking out of a gambrel roof. The timber entrance porch that abuts stone achieves an overall craftsman effect.
144 Scottswood Road, c. 1870, William LeBaron Jenney.
Attributed to William LeBaron Jenney, the house is an early building in Riverside. It is a fusion of two styles – the Stick Style and Gothic Revival. The carpentry is solidly masterful. The roof has a low pitch and is punctuated with a massive chimney, dormers and gables with filets, spars and kingposts. The spurs or brackets supporting the overhanging eaves rest on boards intersecting with the clapboard. There is a broad veranda with turned posts supporting a lintel that supports small pointed arches with struts. The porch railing has tightly aligned balusters extending to a below-porch skirt with complementary cut-out patterns. The veranda roof extends over the angled main entrance to become a porte-cochère for the driveway.
124 Scottswood Road, 1871, William LeBaron Jenney.
In the Gothic Revival style, the design and board-and-batten construction of the house is grand and appealing. With steeply pitched roofs, there are several gabled wings of varying distances and directional faces from the building’s core. Windows include long tabernacle windows and others with more elaborate extending jerkinhead roofs that are supported by boards incised with decorative cuts. There are pointed head windows on the second floor over the main entrance while the veranda stretches across two sides of the house supported by slope cut square posts with milled brackets. These and other rare trim and other details, including two massive chimneys, have survived in this house that is today over 150 years old.
118 Scottswood Road, 1880s.
112 Scottswood Road, 1870s.
SOURCES:
Book (with Page Range)
Bach, Ira J. A Guide to Chicago’s Historic Suburbs on Wheels and on Foot. Athens, OH: Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 1981, 664–679.
FEATURE image: 562 Keystone Avenue, River Forest, Illinois, is a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1909 and an excellent example of Wright’s mature Prairie style including its original Prairie-style glass. June 2022. Author’s photograph.
River Forest, Illinois, preserves an exceptional cross-section of American residential architecture, where Prairie School masterpieces by Frank Lloyd Wright, William Drummond, and Robert Spencer coexist with earlier nineteenth-century homes, revealing the suburb’s evolution into one of the Chicago area’s most significant architectural environments.
Architectural Heritage
River Forest, Illinois, is a suburb of Chicago in Cook County, best known for its remarkable collection of 19th- and early 20th-century American residential architecture. Its streets feature homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) and other architects associated with the influential Prairie School, making the community a significant destination for students of American architectural history.
Setting and Early History
Situated near the Des Plaines River, River Forest occupies lands that were once part of the traditional homelands of the Menominee, Chippewa, and later Potowatomi peoples. The suburb developed into a prosperous residential community while retaining close connections to both its natural setting and its historical roots.
Neighboring Oak Park
Today, River Forest is an affluent suburb closely linked to its adjacent eastern neighbor, Oak Park. The two communities share a number of institutions and civic ties, most notably Oak Park and River Forest High School, located in Oak Park and founded in 1871. This longstanding partnership has helped unite the identities of both suburbs for generations.
Higher Education
With a population approaching 12,000 residents, River Forest is also home to two respected institutions of higher learning—Dominican University, founded in 1848, and Concordia University Chicago, founded in 1864— that contribute to the suburb’s educational and cultural life.
Transportation and Access
River Forest is served by a station on Metra’s Union Pacific/West Line, providing convenient rail access to downtown Chicago, approximately 12 miles eastbound. This connection has long reinforced the suburb’s role as a residential community with strong ties to the city while maintaining its own distinctive character and architectural heritage.
Prairie School
603 Edgewood Place, River Forest, Illinois, 1908, Frank Lloyd Wright.
Known as the Isabel Roberts House, it was remodeled in the 1950s. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 69% 7.99 mb
The community contains important works by Frank Lloyd Wright, including the Isabel Roberts House (1908), the William H. Winslow House (1893), and the Keystone Avenue residence (1909).
Frank Lloyd Wright in 1903, likely a self-portrait. Public Domain.
559 Edgewood Place, River Forest, Illinois, 1911, William Drummond.
William Drummond (1876-1948) began his career working for architect Louis Sullivan (1856-1924). Working for Frank Lloyd Wright, Drummond became the chief draftsman for many of Wright’s well-known commissions. 89% 7.92mb
559 Edgewood Place, River Forest, Illinois, 1911, William Drummond.
William Drummond, Wright’s former chief draftsman, is strongly represented, illustrating the spread and development of Prairie School ideas beyond Wright’s own practice.
Public Domain.
William Drummond about 1901. Drummond was born in New Jersey into a family in the building trades. He moved to Chicago as a boy and later studied architecture at the University of Illinois but didn’t finish. At 23 years old he joined Frank Lloyd Wright’s studio and became his chief draftsman. Drummond obtained his architect’s license in 1901 and, while working part time for Wright, worked full time for Richard E. Schmidt (1865-1958) in 1901 and 1902 and for Daniel H. Burnham (1846-1912) in 1903 to 1905. In 1905 Drummond returned to working full-time for Wright until 1909 when Drummond went into private practice.
June 2022. Author’s photograph. 98% 7.89 mb
560 Edgewood Place, River Forest, Illinois, 1910, William Drummond.
515 Auvergne Place, River Forest, Illinois, 1893, Frank Lloyd Wright.
Known as the William H. Winslow House, this residence for an important industrialist is one of Wright’s earliest mature expressions of the Prairie style. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 66% 7.90 mb
517 Keystone Avenue, River Forest, Illinois, 1915, William Drummond.
A simplified version of the expansive basic square house with a pitched roof and elaborated in the Prairie style. June 2022. Author’s photograph.
Robert Spencer (1864-1953). Unlike his slightly younger competitor, Frank Lloyd Wright, Spencer was a trained mechanical engineer and architect. Public Domain.
530 Keystone Avenue, River Forest, Illinois, 1915, Robert Spencer (1864-1953).
Robert Spencer was born in Milwaukee, studied engineering at the University of Wisconsin and architecture at M.I.T. He practiced in Boston, married, and studied in Europe. At his return he relocated to Chicago through Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge. In 1895 Spencer established his own firm and located in the Schiller Building next to Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1905 Spencer partnered with Chicagoan Horace S. Powers, who studied at today’s I.I.T. The partnership built this house in River Forest which is a fine brick example of the Prairie School within a traditional framework. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 97% 7.85 mb
Houses by Robert Spencer demonstrate how Prairie School architecture was adapted within more traditional residential forms.
Frank Lloyd Wright. Public Domain.
562 Keystone Avenue, River Forest, Illinois, 1909, Frank Lloyd Wright.
The house’s projecting second-floor balcony and Prairie glass in a stucco surface is in evidence. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 83% 7.93 mb.
562 Keystone Avenue, River Forest, Illinois, 1909, Frank Lloyd Wright. The house’s prominent hipped roof with its simple fascia and stucco soffits are evident. Wright’s house design is characterized by the early, mature restraint and discipline of the Prairie School. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 75% 7.91 mb.
OTHER PERIOD HOMES
511 Edgewood Place, River Forest, Illinois, 1858, architect unknown.
This early Italianate house was moved to its present location in1880 from a few blocks away. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 77% 7.86 mb
344 Keystone Avenue, River Forest, Illinois, 1870, architect unknown.
Fine and grandiose example of the Italianate style. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 95% 7.85 mb
306 Keystone Avenue, River Forest, Illinois.
A smaller second floor porch is fitted above the main ground entrance. June 2022. Author’s photograph.70% 7.90 mb.
236 Keystone Avenue, River Forest, Illinois.
Corner tower, multi-level wrap-around front porch. June 2022. Author’s photograph.73% 7.92 mb
Row of late 19th/early 20th century houses, River Forest, Illinois. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 78% 7.78 mb
Earlier homes, such as the 1858 Italianate residence, places Prairie architecture within a broader historical continuum in this Western suburb of Chicago.
136 Keystone Avenue, River Forest, Illinois.
The facade’s design elements are complex with intricate details. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 90% 7.80 mb
146 Keystone Avenue, River Forest, Illinois.
Two big chimneys and a front porch swing make a timeless scene on a nice day. June 2022. Author’s photograph.90% 7.83 mb
558 Keystone Avenue, River Forest, Illinois, 1860, architect unknown.
This is an excellent example of a large Victorian Gothic cottage. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 82% 7.62 mb
River Forest is distinguished by its concentration of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century residential architecture and serves as a living architectural museum rather than a collection of isolated landmarks.
SOURCES:
Bach, Ira J. A Guide to Chicago’s Historic Suburbs on Wheels and on Foot. Chicago: Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 1981.
“Robert Spencer.” Prairie Styles. Accessed February 1, 2023. prairiestyles.com.
“William Drummond.” Prairie Styles. Accessed February 1, 2023. prairiestyles.com.
FEATURE Image: Row Houses, c. 1873, 802-812 N. Dearborn Street, Chicago. June 2014. Author’s photograph.
The row houses at 802-812 N. Dearborn Street stand as rare survivors of post-Fire Chicago, illustrating how nineteenth-century urban residential architecture helped shape the city’s transformation from a rebuilding frontier metropolis into a sophisticated national center of commerce, culture, and residential life.
These early row houses were developed in Chicago’s Gold Coast/River North neighborhood in the early 1870s immediately following the Great Chicago Fire.
That tw-day conflagration began on October 8, 1871 at 137 DeKoven Street (around 1100 South) and blew its destruction north through Downtown and into the Gold Coast area. The fire petered out to the north of Fullerton Avenue (2400 North). The area of devastation was a swath of over four miles (see map below).
The fire’s aftermath sparked an intense period of rebuilding, especially in Downtown Chicago, less than one mile to the south of these row houses. This flurry of building activity, particularly of needed housing, may be partly why the architect is unknown for these three- and four-story Italianate buildings, all of which are well preserved.
The three-story row houses to the south have neo-Grec ornament which was in vogue by 1872. It included incised carved detail on window ledges and door frames.
Among the oldest surviving residential buildings in downtown Chicago, the 1873 Dearborn Street row houses offer a remarkable glimpse into the city’s resilience after the Great Chicago Fire and the architectural character of the emerging Near North Side.
The four-story row houses to the north (partially pictured) have more lavish Second Empire exterior decoration.
Like the Italianate style, the Neo-Grec–style row houses have a smooth brownstone front with a pronounced deep cornice, heavy entryway and window details. The contrast was in their ornamentation: Neo-Grec’s simple, precise lines and geometric Greek influence varied from Italianate ornamentation of curved and organic lines and forms.
Italianate curved window and door frames are replaced by Neo-Grec’s right-angles. Lintels are replaced by rectangular blocks. Entryway steps had baluster cast-iron railings that ended in squared-off linear and geometric incised ornament.
Constructed in 1873, shortly after the Great Chicago Fire, these rare surviving examples of nineteenth-century Chicago row-house architecture demonstrate the city’s rapid physical and economic recovery after the Great Fire.
Vintage map of Chicago Great Fire (detail).
CHICAGO POPULATION GROWTH 1860-1980
Chicago’s Explosive Growth Before the Great Fire Chicago was growing exponentially by 1870. In 1860 the city had a little over 112,000 residents and ranked 9th on the list of largest U.S. cities. By the time of the Great Fire in 1871, Chicago had grown to nearly 300,000 and ranked 5th on the largest U.S. cities list.
Equally significant is that the city’s size also doubled in those same ten years from 17,492 square miles in 1860 to 35,172 square miles in 1870. Busy with rebuilding, the city did not expand again in square miles until the 1880’s, though its population continued to soar. When these Italianate row houses were built, Chicago was growing towards becoming the 4th largest U.S. city with a population of over 500,000.
Housing a Booming Metropolis In the early 1870’s with rebuilding and augmenting population density the demand for housing was high. Chicago’s population would continue to grow with each decade until 1980.
The North Dearborn Street row houses were among the residential buildings constructed to meet that demand, reflecting both the city’s remarkable recovery after the Great Fire and its emergence as one of America’s great urban centers.
OCCUPANTS TODAY INCLUDE A CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY AND THE ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE DE CHICAGO FOUNDED IN 1897
Today, at 806 N. Dearborn is Alan Koppel Gallery which has, for over two decades, introduced contemporary international artists to Chicago audiences.
At 810 N. Dearborn is the main entrance to the Alliance Française de Chicago. Founded in Paris in 1883. the Alliance Française de Chicago is part of an international network of over 1,100 Alliances around the world which promotes French language and francophone culture. Chicago’s Alliance Française was founded in 1897. Offering French language classes and a full range of cultural events, the Alliance Française de Chicago is the second oldest Alliance in the U.S. and the second largest in the U.S. after the French Institute Alliance Française in New York City. The Alliance Française de Chicago is headquartered in two renovated architecturally historic buildings, including the 1870’s row house on Dearborn Street and, connected by an interior garden, a building on Chicago Avenue.
Pridmore, Jay, and George A. Larson. Chicago Architecture and Design. New York: Abrams, 2018, p. 42.
Randall, Frank A. History of the Development of Building Construction in Chicago. 2nd ed. Chicago and Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999, p. 5.
Sinkevitch, Alice, ed. AIA Guide to Chicago. 2nd ed. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 2004, p. 134.
FEATURE image: Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mill Run, Pennsylvania. March 2010. Author’s photograph.
Fallingwater was designed in 1935 as a weekend retreat for the Kaufmann family of Pittsburgh and completed in 1937.Fallingwater represents Frank Lloyd Wright’s most celebrated achievement in organic architecture, uniting modern design, engineering, and the natural landscape so completely that the house becomes part of the waterfall, forest, and rock ledge upon which it is built.
The video and photographs emphasize the drama of the cantilevered concrete terraces and their extraordinary relationship to the waterfall below.
Fallingwater is a house designed in 1935 by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959). It is in the Laurel Highlands of southwest Pennsylvania, about 70 miles away from downtown Pittsburgh.
The house was intended as a weekend retreat for the Edgar J. Kaufmann and family, owners of a Pittsburgh department store. The area of land had been a summer camp for the department store employees. Wright’s house, completed in 1937, is built partly over a waterfall on Bear Run, a tributary of the Youghiogheny River, in the Appalachians.
Rather than merely overlooking nature, the house is built directly over a waterfall on Bear Run in the Appalachian Highlands of southwestern Pennsylvania.
Approach to the house.
Perched above Bear Run in rural Pennsylvania, Fallingwater transformed a private weekend retreat into the world’s most celebrated expression of Frank Lloyd Wright’s belief that architecture and nature should exist as one.
Bear Run is a tributary of the Youghiogheny River, in the Appalachians.
Fallingwater remained in the Kaufmann family until 1963. Inherited by Edgar Kaufmann Jr. in 1955 following his father’s death, he donated the home and its nearly 2,000 acres of surrounding natural habitat to a nonprofit trust called the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. Since 1964, around 5 million visitors have made the pilgrimage to Fallingwater, one of America’s most famous modern homes. The house and grounds receive over 160,000 visitors each year.
The residence is a landmark of modern architecture and one of America’s most recognized houses.
Fallingwater. The post’s photographs and videos were taken in March 2010.
Fallingwater is over 5000 square feet. The walls are constructed from local sandstone. The rocky landscape is incorporated into the home itself such as its main fireplace. Each bedroom has an individual terrace and there are a sea of windows that open outwards to nature. A glass hatch on the main level finds a short stairway that descends to Bear Run below.
Wright incorporated native stone, expansive terraces, abundant glazing, and natural rock formations into the design to blur the boundary between indoors and outdoors.
Wright designed Fallingwater’s furnishings, much of it built into the house. In 2002, Fallingwater’s foundation was reinforced to support the first floor’s concrete skeleton that began to sag. The 21st century reconstruction process prevented further collapse but the house had its first level’s original stone floor and built-in furniture taken out.
This explanatory article may be periodically updated.
