Lake Forest

Illinois. Jed Hotchkiss, landscape architect. 1856.

Lake Forest was founded in 1856 by several wealthy Chicagoans connected with Presbyterian College (now Lake Forest College): originally intended as a home for the college and as a resort, Lake Forest's history as a suburb of Chicago, 28 miles to the south, did not begin until later. The plan of the town was established in 1857, when Jed Hotchkiss, a St Louis planner and landscape architect chosen under the advice of Frederick Law Olmsted, prepared a design in which roads followed the landscape of ravines and rolling hills on the bluffs overlooking Lake Michigan. The plan is far more sensitive to the topography than it is to the needs of the casual visitor, who is likely to get hopelessly lost in its maze-like pattern.

As with many American suburbs, Lake Forest grew up with the popularity of golf. When the summer house of the architect Henry Ives Cobb was purchased and turned into the headquarters of the Onwentsia Club, Chicagoans started building year-round residences in the area. The town quickly became perhaps the most fashionable suburb of Chicago, and the site of many large estates. New York architects such as Charles Platt and James Gamble Rogers were often brought in to design the largest houses, although there were also prominent designs by local architects, notably Howard Van Doren Shaw and David Adler.¹ Platt's McCormick House was built in a classical style after Mrs McCormick had rejected Frank Lloyd Wright's grandest Prairie House design.

The principal architectural attraction of Lake Forest lies in its Market Square, designed by Shaw in 1916. Shaw's project anticipates the modern shopping centre, though its planning regrettably did not set the pattern. Unlike our vast contemporary malls isolated in a sea of blacktop, Lake Forest's Market Square is a charming, intimately-scaled group of buildings, arcaded along the street and surrounding a lovely square. In its centre is a memorial fountain built to honour Shaw.

Notes

1. See for example, 'Some Houses by Mr Howard Shaw. Architectural Record 19, February 1906, pp 104-122; 'The Renaissance Villa Developed into a Complete Residential Type for Use in America'; Architectural Record 31, March 1912, pp 201-225, and 'Residence of Robert G McCann, B&Q', Architectural Record 62, October 1927, pp.378-380.

1 Jed Hotchkiss, plan, 1856

2 Howard Van Doren Shaw, Market Square, plan, 1916

3 James Gamble Rogers, A B Dick House, c 1900

4 Howard Van Doren Shaw, Market Square, north and west blocks, 1916

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