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Eclecticism by the Lake: Capturing Century-Old Residential Mastery in Evanston, Illinois.

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FEATURE Image: 1432 Forest Avenue, Evanston, IL, 1885. Stylish single-family home, nearly 5,000 square feet, has 6 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 7.7 mb 53%

A rich, cross-generational tapestry of American residential design, Evanston’s historic architecture documents how pioneering designers deftly synthesized early modern Prairie style geometry with imposing, traditional European forms. By juxtaposing the masterworks of figures like Howard Van Doren Shaw, Myron Hunt, John Van Bergen, Ernest Mayo, and Henry Edwards Ficken against the town’s vibrant collegiate and civic backdrops, the landscape reveals how Evanston transformed from a simple late-19th-century lakefront settlement into a premier canvas for structural eclectic innovation. Over the decades, this architectural haven became the permanent home and chosen retreat for influential civic, political, and cultural leaders whose impact shaped both Chicago and the nation.

Text and 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. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 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. In the 1910’s, the Oak Park-born architect did numerous such stylish house projects from DeKalb to Winnetka. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 7.84mb 79%

Architect John Van Bergen (above in c. 1927) 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. 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 on a grand scale and with dormers and porch projects that emphasize horizontality along with typical Prairie hoods. There is a stucco façade with brick detailing of varying geometric design patterns. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 7.95 mb 88%

1010 Michigan Avenue, 1911.

The Tudor style brick mansion was designed by Ernest Mayo (1864-1946). It originally sat on an even more expansive corner lot where Mayo designed the house and garden together. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 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 imposing Elizabethan manor houses. 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. He 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. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 7.63mb 66%

Dawes Mansion, 225 Greenwood Street, 1894.

PHOTO: “Charles Gates Dawes House, Evanston, Illinois” by StevenM_61 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

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.

Interior room, Dawes Mansion. October 2015. Author’s photograph. 4.20mb

1037 Michigan Ave, 1895.

A quintessential example of the Italianate style with eclectic classical modifications. Built in 1895, its architecture blends classic 19th-century grand proportions with imposing design choices. The most dramatic exterior feature is its soaring, double-story porch. It is supported by four monumental white Corinthian columns featuring highly ornate capitals that anchor the property’s stately curb appearance. A steeply pitched hipped roof crowns the structure, punctuated by a front dormer containing a triad of double-hung windows. The facade boasts an asymmetric yet balanced arrangement of tall, shuttered windows on the upper floor, sitting directly above expansive main-level windows that look onto the front grounds. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 7.52mb 99%

940-950 Michigan Avenue, 1927.

The Georgian Colonial style Michigan-Lee apartment building was erected by N.J. Lareau and associates in 1927 and sits on a 20,000 square-foot lot on the southwest corner of Michigan and Lee. It is constructed of red brick and Bedford stone and built to house 24 total apartments: three 7-room, three 6-room, fifteen 5-room, and three 4-room. The apartment complex was designed by architect and lawyer Frank William Cauley (1898-1984). https://www.archinform.net/arch/202206.htm and http://www.michiganleecondoassociation.com/history.html – retrieved November 28, 2023. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 7.68mb 66%

Orrington Hotel, 1923.

The architect of the Michigan-Lee building in 1927, Frank Cauley designed the $2,000,000 three-hundred room (each with its own bath) Orrington Hotel in 1923. A new graduate of the Armour Institute of Technology in 1922, but before he received his license to practice architecture, he designed the project for a local developer, Victor Ca/rlandrie Carlson. Carlson built the Carlson Building on Church Street in downtown Evanston as well as this landmark hotel and 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. PHOTO: “The Hotel Orrington” by Mark Blevis is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Evanston front porches.

During the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, the front porch was the centerpiece of suburban American social life. Before air conditioning or television, these grand verandas were engineered as open-air living spaces designed to catch lake breezes. They served a vital purpose: as a private sanctuary for families to relax, and a public stage where Evanston’s influential civic and cultural leaders could engage with their community. Nestled behind deep setbacks, manicured lawns, and a dense canopy of mature trees, this streetscape encapsulates the late-19th-century ideal of a peaceful, high-style lakeside retreat. June 2022. Author’s photography. 7.80mb 79%

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. October 2015. Author’s photograph. 4.24mb

Rising above the Lake Michigan shoreline, the lighthouse marks the approach to Chicago from the north, its tapering tower connected to a catwalk supported by handsome Italianate brackets. Built by the U.S. Government during the great age of Great Lakes navigation, it served as a vital guide for commercial vessels and passenger steamers entering one of the world’s busiest inland ports. The promontory on which it stands was named Grosse Point by French explorers in the 17th century, and the area was mapped in 1673 by Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette during their famous exploration of the interior of North America. Standing sentinel above the lake, the lighthouse is crowned by a polygonal glass lantern housing the light and lens that once warned mariners of the shallow waters and shifting sandbars along this stretch of shoreline. Today, the still fully working, operational lighthouse remains one of the North Shore’s most recognizable historic structures, linking the region’s maritime heritage with its earliest European history. See – http://www.grossepointlighthouse.net/history.html – retrieved December 5, 2023. June 2014. Author’s photograph. 4.03mb

1210 Michigan Avenue, 1880.

Started as a simple clapboard farmhouse one block from Lake Michigan, there have been several expansive additions since then. The front exterior is marked by a simple veranda with grouped struts in the lintel which is supported by turned posts. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 7.68mb 75%

1332 Forest Avenue, 1894.

A stylish home with several additions on an expansive corner lot. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 7.32mn 90%

1005 Michigan Avenue, 1913.

 

Designed by Howard Van Doren Shaw (1869-1926), this light-colored brick Colonial Revival residence presents a carefully balanced façade organized around five evenly spaced openings on its two principal stories. Above rises a truncated pitched roof punctuated by three flat-roofed dormers, while a chimney projects at the north roofline. The central bay anchors the composition, with aligned openings emphasizing both symmetry and function: a broad arched porchway and fanlight-crowned double-door entrance at ground level, and above, a wrought-iron balcony that serves as a modest yet elegant decorative landing. Situated on a leafy but well-traveled suburban corner lot, the house’s formal symmetry is interrupted on the south side by a fashionable early twentieth-century sun porch addition. This low, two-story, flat-roofed projection originally combined an enclosed porch on the first floor with an open-air porch above, reflecting changing ideas about light, leisure, and suburban domestic life. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 7.58mb 73%

Howard Van Doren Shaw (1869-1926). Public Domain.

Norris University Center, 1972, and Northwestern University Library, 1970.

The Norris University Center (left) serves as the main student union and activity center. It was designed by Chicago modernist architect Edward Dart of the firm Loebl, Schlossman, Dart & Hackl, opening shortly after the library in 1972. Modernist/Late-Brutalist, it shares a similar concrete materiality with the library, but embraces a more geometric, low-slung, and linear modern footprint.

The Northwestern University Library (right) designed by legendary architect Walter Netsch of the firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) and completed in 1970. A premier example of Brutalist architecture. Netsch used his signature mathematical “Field Theory”—a complex ordering system of rotated geometric squares—to intentionally break away from standard boxy modernism. PHOTO: “Fortress Northwestern: University Library and Norris University Center, June 1977” by A.Davey is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Chicago Avenue at Clark Street. Evanston is home to Northwestern University. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 7.84mb 87%

Weber Arch, 1994 and University Hall, 1869.

The prominent black wrought-iron structure in the foreground is the Weber Arch, installed in 1994 as the ceremonial gateway to Northwestern University’s Evanston campus. Standing at the intersection of Sheridan Road and Chicago Avenue, it marks the historic entrance to the university and symbolizes the passage of generations of students into academic and professional life. Long before the arch itself was erected, notable figures associated with Northwestern entered the campus at this location, including reformer Frances Willard, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, statesman Adlai Stevenson II, authors Saul Bellow, George R.R. Martin, and Veronica Roth, and performers such as Warren Beatty, Charlton Heston, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Stephen Colbert, and David Schwimmer. Today, the arch serves as one of Northwestern’s most recognizable landmarks, linking the university’s present-day identity with a legacy of alumni who have helped shape American culture, politics, literature, journalism, and entertainment.

Beyond the arch rises University Hall, the oldest surviving building on Northwestern’s campus. Completed shortly after the Civil War, it originally housed nearly the entire university, containing classrooms, a chapel, the institution’s first 3,500-volume library, and even a natural history museum under a single roof. Today it serves as the home of the English Department. Designed by architect Gurdon P. Randall, the building is a striking example of High Victorian Gothic Revival architecture, constructed of rugged rock-face Joliet limestone, the same native Illinois stone used in Chicago’s historic Water Tower. Crowning the structure is its soaring spire, which contains a historic Seth Thomas clock mechanism donated by the graduating class of 1879, linking generations of Northwestern students to the university’s earliest years. PHOTO: “Northwestern University Gate” by AcidFlask is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Chicago-Main Newsstand at 860 Chicago Avenue, 1940s/2001.

Established in the 1940s and named after its intersecting streets, the Chicago-Main Newsstand served regional readers until closing in 1993. Following a period of neglect that nearly led to demolition in 2000, the structure underwent a comprehensive 2001 renovation—featuring a new roof, rebuilt walls, and its restored, glowing neon sign. It is open 7 days a week from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. The Newsstand sat less than one block away from The Coronet Theatre, a single-screen theater that originally opened in 1915 at 817 Chicago Avenue and was in continuous operation as a movie theater until 1984. The theater building was demolished in 2000. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 7.74mb 85%

June 2022. Author’s photograph. 7.77mb 83%

1730 Chicago Ave, 1865.

The building at left was the home of Frances Willard (1839-1898) and her family. It served as the national headquarters of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. June 2022. Author’s photograph. 7.73mb 88%

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.

This explanatory article may be periodically updated.

From Italianate to Prairie School: The Making of Wilmette’s Architectural Character, 1873-1930.

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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

Prairie Architecture in Transition: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Frank J. Baker House (1909) in Wilmette, Illinois.

932 Forest Avenue, 1890s.

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.

From Little Fort to Industrial Port: Waukegan’s Architectural Legacy.

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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.

Encyclopedia of Chicago. n.d. “Waukegan, IL.” Accessed May 3, 2023. http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1328.html.

Waukegan Historical Society. n.d. “Historical Places.” Accessed May 3, 2023. https://www.waukeganhistorical.org/places.

Waukegan, Illinois, City of. n.d. “Demographic Information.” Accessed May 3, 2023. https://www.waukeganil.gov/178/Demographic-Information.

Waukegan, Illinois, City of. n.d. “History of Waukegan.” Accessed May 3, 2023. https://www.waukeganil.gov/181/History-of-Waukegan.

Wikipedia. s.v. “Demographics of Chicago.” Last modified October 3, 2026.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Chicago.

Wikipedia. s.v. “Otto Graham.” Last modified October 1, 2026.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto Graham.