FEATURE Image: 1432 Forest Avenue, Evanston, IL, 1885. Stylish single family home, nearly 5,000 square feet, has 6 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms. Author’s photograph. 6/2022 7.7.mb 53%
Test & Photographs John P. Walsh.
1032 and 1034 Michigan Avenue, 1899. Double house designed by Myron Hunt (1868-1952) shortly before he relocated his practice to Los Angeles, CA. Each shingled dwelling is given a distinctive design. The northern side has a projecting porch and two-story polygonal bay. The southern side has a recessed porch. The house is tied together by a single gable with a quartet of double-hung windows and a cornice part of which is integrated to the polygonal bay. 6/2022. 7.84mb 70%Myron Hunt (1868-1952) in February 1905. The American architect did numerous projects which are noted landmarks in Southern California and Evanston, Illinois. Born in Massachusetts he moved to Chicago and attended Northwestern University and later MIT where he graduated in 1893. Traveling and studying in Europe, he returned to Evanston where he worked as a draftsman in the local office of the Boston firm of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge. In 1903 Hunt moved to Los Angeles, where he entered into a partnership with architect Elmer Grey (1871–1963). Opening an office in Pasadena, the firm of Hunt and Grey built houses for the wealthy. These included the summer ranch house for cereal magnate Will Keith Kellogg (1860-1951) in Pomona, CA, nearby to Los Angeles. Hunt and Grey also built hospitals, schools, churches and hotels. Public Domain.1026 Michigan Avenue, 1915. Prairie style house designed by John Van Bergen (1885-1969) in 1915. The Oak Park, IL-born American architect did numerous such stylish house projects from DeKalb, IL, to Winnetka, IL in the 1910’s. 6/2022 7.78mb 79%Architect John Van Bergen (above in c. 1927) was born and grew up in Oak Park, IL. He began his career as an apprentice draftsman working with Walter Burley Griffin (1867-1937) and for Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) at his Oak Park Studio. Van Bergen’s early projects, mostly in Oak Park, were predominantly residential and largely in the Prairie School style, which he learned in Griffin’s and Wright’s studios. See- https://highlandparkhistory.com/highland-park-legends-program/john-van-bergen/ – retrieved December 5, 2023. Public Domain.1049 Michigan Avenue, 1910. The Prairie-style house was designed and built by C.H. Thompson, a local developer. It is a basic block with a hipped roof, albeit on a grand scale and with dormers and porch projects that emphasize horizontality along with typical Prairie hoods. There is stucco façade with brick detailing of varying geometric design patterns. 6/2022 7.95 mb 88%1010 Michigan Avenue, 1911. The Tudor style brick mansion was designed by Ernest Mayo (1864-1946). Once sitting on an even more expansive corner lot, Mayo designed the house and garden together. 6/2022. 7.91mb 65%Another view of 1010 Michigan Avenue. Built in 1911, it is one of Evanston’s most formal examples of the popular Tudor Revival style whose design takes inspiration from Elizabeth I manor houses and is imposing. It is a symmetrical and complex design of porches, bows, gables, chimneys and window groupings. Architect Ernest Mayo was born in Birmingham, England in 1864 and began his career in South Africa. Mayo immigrated to Chicago in 1891 where he established the firm of Mayo and Curry. The Chicago firm designed factories, hotels, and office buildings, and Mayo worked on administrative buildings for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Mayo split with Curry and worked independently until he partnered with his 24-year-old son Peter Mayo in 1919 to form Mayo and Mayo. While Ernest Mayo received his architectural apprentice training in England, Peter received his degree from Yale University and further design education at The Art Institute of Chicago. See – https://www.winnetkahistory.org/gazette/140-sheridan-road-2/ and https://prabook.com/web/ernest.mayo/1717173 – retrieved December 5, 2023. 6/2022. 7.63mb 66%Interior room, Dawes Mansion, 225 Greenwood Street, 1894. Designed by New York architect Henry Edwards Ficken (1852-1929), the house sits on a large lot overlooking Lake Michigan. The basic square block building is met by round tourelles on each corner with conical roofs that meet the same height of the main block’s hipped roof. The Châteauesque-style house was bought by Charles Gates Dawes (1865-1951) who was vice-president under Calvin Coolidge and, with its stunning cherry paneling, is furnished much as it was during Dawes’ residency. 10/2015 4.20mb“Charles Gates Dawes House, Evanston, Illinois” by StevenM_61 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.1037 Michigan Ave, Evanston, IL, 1895. 6/2022 7.52mb 99%940-950 Michigan Avenue, 1927. Michigan-Lee apartment building was erected by N.J Lareau and associates and sits on a 20,000 square foot lot on the southwest corner of Michigan and Lee. Georgian Colonial is the style of architecture for the new structure which is made of red brick and Bedford stone. The structure was built to house 24 total apartments: three 7-room, three 6-room, fifteen 5-room, and three 4-room apartments. https://www.archinform.net/arch/202206.htm and http://www.michiganleecondoassociation.com/history.html – retrieved November 28, 2023. The swanky apartment complex was designed by Frank William Cauley (1898-1984) architect and lawyer. 6/2022. 7.68mb 66% Frank Cauley, architect of the Michigan-Lee building (above) in 1927, graduated from the Armour Institute of Technology in 1922. Before he received his license to practice architecture, he designed the $2,000,000 three-hundred room (each with its own bath) Orrington Hotel in 1923 in Evanston, Illinois, for local developer Victor Ca[r]landrie Carlson. Carlson built the Carlson Building on Church Street in downtown Evanston as well as two landmark hotels, including The Library Plaza Hotel in 1922. Cauley went into business on his own, practicing until the 1929 crash. In the depression years he went to law school in Chicago and received his L.L.B. in 1938. In April 1969, the Illinois Institute of Technology awarded him a J.D. https://undereverytombstone.blogspot.com/2015/10/he-left-his-mark-on-downtown-evanston.html – retrieved November 28, 2023“The Hotel Orrington” by Mark Blevis is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.Evanston front porches. 6/2022 7.80mb 79%1210 Michigan Avenue, 1880. Started as a simple clapboard farmhouse one block from Lake Michigan. there have been several expansive additions since that time The front exterior is marked by a simple veranda with grouped struts in the lintel which is supported by turned posts.6/2022 7.68mb 75%1332 Forest Avenue Evanston, IL, 1894, is a stylish home with several additions on an expansive corner lot. 6/2022 7.32mn 90%1005 Michigan Avenue, 1913. The light-colored brick house is Colonial Revival with modifications is by Howard Van Doren Shaw (1869-1926). The façade’s symmetry is prominently displayed in its 5 equal openings for its two main floors and topped by a shortened pitched roof with three flat-roofed dormers. A chimney protrudes at the roof line to the north. For the main mass there are aligned windows with a middle opening for both the first and second floor symmetrically displaying diverse residential functionality: a broad-arched porchway and genteel fanlight above a double door entry on the first floor and, at the second level. a wrought iron balcony providing a small, mainly decorative step landing. The great house is situated on the northeast corner lot of a leafy yet trafficked suburban residential intersection, with the main building’s symmetry broken to the south by the then-popular sun porch extension. It is a low, two-story flat-roofed projection with an enclosed porch on the first floor and an open porch originally on the upper level. 6/2022. 7.58mb 73% Howard Van Doren Shaw (1869-1926). Public Domain.Evanston fashion, c. 1918. Most Evanstonians used local dressmakers and tailors to have their clothes made. The white cotton summer dress with embroidery and lace insertions and natural waistline was typical for the era. 10.2015 4.24mb“Northwestern University Gate” by AcidFlask is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.Chicago Avenue at Clark Street. Evanston is home to Northwestern University. 6/2022 7.84mb 87%“Fortress Northwestern: University Library and Norris University Center, June 1977” by A.Davey is licensed under CC BY 2.0. Divvy bike (with basket!) to get around campus and the neighborhood. 6/2022 7.77mb 83%The longtime Chicago-Main Newsstand at 860 Chicago Avenue in Evanston is open 7 days a week from 7:00a.m. – 10:00p.m. 6/2022 7.74mb 85%Left: 1730 Chicago Ave, Evanston, IL Built in 1865, it was the home of Frances Willard (1839-1898) and her family and was the headquarters of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. 6/2022 7.73mb 88%First Presbyterian Church, 1427 Chicago Ave, Evanston, IL One of the historic church’s dramatic wall-filling stained-glass windows.10/2015 7.79mb 80%Grosse Point Lighthouse, 1873, is a tapering column to a catwalk supported by Italianate brackets built by the U.S. Government. The lighthouse marks the approach into Chicago. The promontory on which it stands was named Grosse Point in the 17th century by French explorers and the area was mapped in 1673 by Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit missionary. The lighthouse is topped by a polygonal glass lantern containing the light and lens. See – http://www.grossepointlighthouse.net/history.html – retrieved December 5, 2023.6/2014 4.03mb
Sources:
A Guide to Chicago’s Historic Suburbs on Wheels and on Foot, Ira J. Bach, Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 1981, pp. 499-530.
Bridal Party Dresses, 1924. Charles Gates Dawes House, Evanston, Illinois. 10/2015 500 kb
On Saturday, June 7, 1924, Ruth M. Anderson was married in this sleeveless wedding dress (left) to William Noling in Evanston, Illinois. The dress is now on display in the Charles Gates Dawes House in Evanston. Dawes was Vice President of the United States from 1925 to 1929 under President Calvin Coolidge.
The Noling-Anderson wedding was held in the house of the bride and her parents, Isak and Jennie (née Johnson) Anderson, at 1035 Ridge Avenue in Evanston. Built in 1914, the house still stands as it did 100 years ago.
The dress is made of silk satin in an egg shell color. It is accented by an oval medallion with bands also made of silk satin. The medallion is embroidered with faux pearl and other glass beads.
While the wedding dress was very fashionable for the mid1920’s – sleeveless tops of all shapes and sizes were the rage in 1924 – it probably was not allowed in one of Evanston’s houses of worship. The fact that it was sleeveless and au courant would be deemed by many as risqué for showing too much bare skin inspired by a thoroughly modern flapper style. It was only in 1924, for instance, that the Methodist Episcopal General Conference first lifted its ban on going to the theater as well as dancing though dance music was the radio’s most popular programming.
The bridesmaid dress (right) was the height of women’s style in 1924 – a mainly straight, knee-length skirt gathered slightly or cut with front pleats. Short sleeve and sleeveless tops were the rage in 1924 reflected in Hollywood by the Mack Sennett girls who starred in movies where they pranced on the beach in a chorus line in not much more than bathing caps and short swim suits.
The fashionable bride and her court likely sported the latest style of facial make-up which is hinted at in the 2015 display– masklike with garish, even orange, lipstick and heavy red rouge on the cheeks. Popular fashion accessories from 1924 are also evident – pearls knotted at the neck and simple, though elegant, arm bracelets.
The bride’s father, Isak Anderson, was born in Sweden and came to the United States at 20 years old in 1890. In 1891 he married Jennie Johnson and they had Ruth and another child. Ruth’s father was a bank director and partner in a local tailoring business in downtown Evanston at 608 Davis that today is a noodle shop.
With Prohibition starting in 1920, guests at the wedding may have been served the latest popular highball whose recipe called for fruit juice and raw eggs. Their morning could have started with a bowl of Wheaties at breakfast, since the cereal of champions made its first appearance in 1924.
Ruth Anderson married William Noling in this house in Evanston, Illinois, in June 1924. Fair Use.
SOURCES: Dawes House, Evanston Illinois; The Swedish Element in Illinois: Survey of the Past Seven Decades, Ernst Wilhelm Olson, p. 586; American Chronicle, Lois Gordon & Alan Gordon, Yale University Press, New Haven & London,1999, pp. 230-238; Chicago: The Glamour Years (1919-1941), Thomas G. Aylesworth & Virginia Aylesworth, Gallery Books, NY, 1986, p.14.
Howard Van Doren Shaw (1869-1926), 1906, THE MENTOR BUILDING, 39 S. State Street (6 E. Monroe Street), Chicago, from the southwest. Author’s photograph, July 2015.
A Mentor building has stood on this northeast corner of State and Monroe since 1873 when there had been a 7-story building erected here.1
Howard Van Doren Shaw’s only skyscraper presents an unusual mixture of styles.
There are windows grouped in horizontal bands between a four-level base of large showroom windows. The top is classically inspired with details that are strong and idiosyncratic. The building retains the character of its classical sources though they are used as large-scale motifs.2
Shaw’s 1906 building is 17 stories high with two basements on rock caissons.3
The photograph was taken on July 5, 2015.
1 Frank A. Randall, History of Development of Building Construction in Chicago, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded by John D. Randall, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1999, p, 196.
2 Alice Sinkevitch, AIA Guide to Chicago, 2nd Edition, Harcourt, Inc., Orlando, 2004, p. 59.
3 Randall, p.265.
Howard Van Doren Shaw (1869-1926). Public Domain.Howard Van Doren Shaw (1869-1926), 1913, 1005 MICHIGAN AVENUE, Evanston, Illinois. Author’s photograph, June 2022. 14.96 mb 25%
Seven years after Howard Van Doren Shaw’s sole skyscraper, Chicago Downtown’s Mentor Building (above), was built in 1906, the architect raised this highly sophisticated “great house” design in Evanston, Illinois.
The light-colored brick house is Colonial Revival with modifications. The façade’s symmetry is prominently displayed in its 5 equal openings for its two main floors and topped by a shortened pitched roof with three flat-roofed dormers. A chimney protrudes at the roof line to the north.
For the main mass there are aligned windows with a middle opening for both the first and second floor symmetrically displaying diverse residential functionality: a broad-arched porchway and genteel fanlight above a double door entry on the first floor and, at the second level. a wrought iron balcony providing a small, mainly decorative step landing.
The great house is situated on the northeast corner lot of a leafy yet trafficked suburban residential intersection, with the main building’s symmetry broken to the south by the then-popular sun porch extension. It is a low, two-story flat-roofed projection with an enclosed porch on the first floor and an open porch originally on the upper level.
SOURCE:
A Guide to Chicago’s Historic Suburbs On Wheels & On Foot, Ira J. Bach, Chicago, Athens, Ohio, London: Ohio University Press (Swallow Press), 1981, p. 518.
Villa Park, IL. 5/2018 4.06 mbEvanston, IL. 2/2019 4.94 mbLisle, IL. 3/2018 3.38 mbChicago. 6.30 mb 95%4/2020 7.39mb6/2020 4.59 mb4/2020 4.15 mbChicago. 3300 W. 111th St, 60655. 7/2015 4.16 mbChicago. Symphony Center. 10/2014 1.99 mbAuditorium Theatre. Chicago. 12/2016. (10)Chicago. Macy’s State Street. 1/2018 872kb9/2015 3.82 mbForest Park, IL. 7/2016 5.11 mb1/2018 2.40 mbChicago. 9/2015 2.75 mbChicago. 134 S Wabash Ave, 60603. 7/2015 3.68 mbChinatown Chicago. 8/2015 3.44 mbChinatown Chicago. 10/2016 404 kb 25%Chinatown Chicago. 7/2016 5.01 mb (20)South Loop Chicago. 9/2015 3.82 mbChicago. 558 E 79th St, 60619 6/2018 3.64mb6/2021 95%Watseka, IL. 8/2017 6.24mb Kentland, IN. 8/2017 3.16mbChicago. 8/2015 3.54 mbChicago. 2/2018 4.74 mbWestmont IL. 12/2017 7.83 mb 98%2/2018 6.74 mb 98%Cedarburg, Wi. 6/2018 6.23 mb 95% (30)Chicago. 9/2017 2.80 mbKennedy Expressway Chicago. 2/2018 6.58 mbChicago. 2/2018 3.63 mbChicago. 12/2015 4.30 mbChicago. Symphony Center. 10/2014 2.51 mbPost Office. 3/2017 4.11 mbChicago. 2/2018 6.18 mbDowners Grove, IL. 6/2018 7.35 mb Chicago. 12/2018 6.67 mb 99%Coke. 5/2022 7.33mb 98% (40)Pepsi.10/2023 7.78 mb 68%6/2022 7.02mbLisle Il. 9/2022 6.57 mbDowners Grove, IL. 10/2022 5.80 mb 99%10/2022 7.48 mb 99%Chicago. 6/2022 5.86 mbChicago. 12/2017 141 kb 25%8/2022 7.57 mb 99%Wheaton, IL. 917 E Roosevelt Rd, 5/2022 7.76 mb 99%Chicago. 9/2015 6.33 mb (50)Alsip, IL (Demolished). 7/2017 4.56 mbChicago. 8/2021 6.25 mb 99%Chicago. 6/2022 2.11mbChicago, 8611 S Pulaski Rd 60652. 8/2015 7.71 mb 87%Chicago. 2116 W. 95th Street, 60643. 8/2015 7.13 mbSan Diego, CA. 1/1999 75% The California Conservation Corps (CCC) at the end of a work day. The CCC was founded by Gov. Jerry Brown in 1976. It is a pay-as-you-go government agency that gives youth the opportunity to work in a job that is mostly outdoors as well as provides some scholarships. Chicago. 8/2021 7.43 mb 70%Waukegan, IL. 6/2014 7.10mb5/2023 7.09 mb 99%Chicago. Clinton-Gore Rally, October 20, 1992. In addition to the two Democratic candidates for U.S. president and vice president on the platform also in attendance was Hillary Rodham Clinton and Tipper Gore. On the platform was also Democratic Senate candidate, Carol Moseley Braun. All these candidates won their respective races in 1992 as Clinton-Gore went on to serve two terms and Moseley Braun, who served one term, became the first Black woman to serve in the U.S. Senate and first female U.S. Senator from Illinois. 75%
Chicago. 7/2015 4.84mb7/2023 7.65 mb 74%Savannah Theatre, Savannah, Georgia. 9/1989 At 222 Bull Street in Savannah, GA, the Savannah Theatre sits across from Chippewa Square, one of the city’s 22 historic squares. Chippewa Square was built in 1815 and named for a July 5, 1814 American battle victory over British forces in Upper Canada during the War of 1812. A statue of the founder of colonial Georgia, British General James Oglethorpe (1696-1785), stands in the square. Since 1818 a theatre has stood on the site of the Savannah Theatre. Built in 1948 the Arte Moderne movie house was by Robert E. Collins and Carl E. Helfrich, architects active in Georgia and Florida. Owned by Weis Theatres who had a movie house in Atlanta, GA, the nearly 1000-seat theatre had changed hands many times since 1981 among various theatre organizations. In 1989 when the photograph was taken looking from East McDonough Street the theatre would be downsized to about 350 seats and owned by the Savannah Theatre Company (STC) whose current use has been for live performance. SOURCE: https://visitsavannah.com/profile/chippewa-square/6117; https://cinematreasures.org/theaters/686; https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/battle-of-chippawa.
The premiere showing at the Savannah Theatre was Mister 880 in 1950, an Academy-Award-nominated (Edmund Gwenn) romantic drama film from 20th Century-Fox starring Burt Lancaster, Dorothy MacGuire and Gwenn. 8/2023 7.75 mb 61%8/2023 7.17mb 99%9/2023 7.84mb 91%6/2023 7.95mb9/2023 7.60 mb 80%Chicago. 6/2022 7.79mb 77%Darien, IL. 7/2023 7.94mb 85%Stillman Valley IL. 7/2017 3.69mb
The Battle of Stillman’s Run was named for the first engagement between Illinois militia led by Major Isaiah Stillman (1793-1861) and Sauk warriors during the short, storied Black Hawk War in 1832. Maj. Stillman, who was born in Massachusetts, had settled in Illinois and joined its newly-formed militia in 1827. On that perilous Monday, May 14, 1832, in present-day Stillman Valley, a town in north-central Illinois, Maj. Stillman’s 275 Illinois militia were attacked by Sauk warriors of Black Hawk’s British Band. The numbers of Native American warriors is unknown but is placed somewhere between 50 and 200 fighters. The Black Hawk War began when Sauk chief Black Hawk (1767-1838) recrossed the Mississippi River from Iowa into Illinois on April 5, 1832 to re-settle with around 1,000 warriors and women, children and elders. Black Hawk believed that the Treaty of St. Louis dated from 1804 that ceded land of his birthplace was invalid. Though a state since 1818, Illinois was on the edge of wilderness awaiting an influx of settlers and the return by Black Hawk was viewed as antithetical to that immediate objective according to the U.S. Government. During the Battle of Stillman’s Run, a name characterized by a nearby creek as well as the militia’s desperate foot-race in defeat, 12 militiamen had been killed by Band warriors as they made a stand on a small hill. In the retreat, the militia fled back 30 miles south to the fort along the Rock River at Dixon’s Ferry (present-day Dixon, IL). Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), future 16th president of the United States, was stationed at Dixon’s Ferry and may have been present at the Battle of Stillman’s Run though it is not yet known. Recent scholarship does put Lincoln at the Battle of Kellogg’s Grove in Illinois in June 1832 nearly 50 miles farther west. Lincoln was also present for the formal burials of the 12 militiamen who were killed at the Battle of Stillman’s Run. It was reported by Black Hawk that just 5 or less of his Sauk warriors were lost in that first day of battle. The Black Hawk War ended on August 2, 1832 with the military defeat of Black Hawk’s by then starving band that had retreated towards the Mississippi River near present-day Victory, Wisconsin, where the state lines of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota meet.
