Ambrose Cramer: Gentleman Architect

Ambrose Cramer was the very model of a gentleman architect. Born in Chicago in 1891, he grew up in a grand house built for his industrialist father in Lake Forest and combined a distinguished manner w...

John Vinci: Preservationist and Modernist

Born in Chicago in 1937, John Vinci studied architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology. Since the 1960s, he has championed the preservation of important historic structures including Louis Sulli...

Robin Williams: Actor, Comedian, Lake Forest schoolboy

Oscar-winning actor and legendary comedian Robin Williams was born in Chicago and spent formative years in Lake Forest, where he attended Gorton School and Deer Path School in the early 1960s.

Andrew Bird: Violinist, Singer/Songwriter, Whistler

Internationally acclaimed musician Andrew Bird was born in Lake Forest in 1973. He’s a 1991 graduate of Lake Forest High School who first picked up the violin at the age of 4. Bird’s music has a disti...

A Wedding: Robert Altman Film with a Lake Bluff Backdrop

Legendary director Robert Altman’s 1978 comedic film was shot almost exclusively over an eight-week period in the Lester Armour estate in Lake Bluff. The then-owner, Alexandra Armour, his widow, initi...

Henry Ives Cobb: Turn-of-the-Century Architect in Town and Country

Architect Henry Ives Cobb was born in Massachusetts in 1859 and attended MIT and Harvard University. Cobb came to Chicago in 1881, partnering with Charles Sumner Frost till 1888.

Allan Carr: LFC Alum Strikes Grease Lightning

Lake Forest College alum Allan Carr (class of 1958) was a successful film and stage producer, whose hits included the Hollywood musical Grease and Broadway’s La Cage aux Folles. Grease is credited wit...

Frederick Wainwright Perkins: Flexible Interpretation

Wisconsin-born Frederick Wainwright Perkins (1866-1928) was a prominent Chicago architect who graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Highly successful in his day, Perkins favored Sh...

Arthur Meeker Jr.: Chicago with Love

“In the Skokie Valley we had neither the lake nor the forest falsely promised by our postal address, but we did have what we thought better, the prairie.”So wrote Arthur Meeker Jr. in his memoir, Chic...

Arthur Heun: Grand Domestic Design

Arthur Heun was born in Michigan in 1866 and graduated from the University of Michigan’s architecture program. He came to Chicago to work as a draftsman for Francis Whitehouse. In 1893, Heun took over...

Ike Colburn: Too Modernist for Lake Forest?

Ike Colburn was born in Boston in 1924. He attended Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh and Yale University. Colburn came to the Chicago-area in 1951 at a time of post-war growth. He worked for Schweikher and...

Franklin McMahon: Sketching our Nation's History

Reportorial artist Franklin McMahon bore witness to history. His drawings provided unique perspectives on the political, religious and cultural epochs of the 20th century, in particular illuminating t...

Alfred Hoyt Granger: Architect Extraordinaire

Educated at Kenyon College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and eventually the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Alfred Granger came to Chicago to assist architect Charles Coolidge on the design of...

Steve Goodman: Go, Cubs, Go!

This catchy, Chicago-favorite tune, which became the Cubs victory song in its 2016 World Series season, was written by Steve Goodman, a 1970 Lake Forest College graduate. The song was one of three he...

Edward Bennett, Co-author of the 1909 Plan of Chicago

Edward Bennett was born England in 1874, later moving to San Francisco. There, well-known architect Bernard Maybeck, convinced Bennett to attend the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He returned to New Y...

Narcissa Niblack Thorne: Designer of Miniatures

Narcissa Niblack Thorne constructed the meticulously-crafted and thoughtfully furnished period rooms, known as the Thorne Rooms, housed at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her scale of one inch to the fo...

Architect to the Sky: Adrian Smith

Adrian Smith is the world’s foremost experts of supertall towers. His extraordinary body of work includes some of the world's most recognizable landmark structures. He designed the Burj Khalifa in Dub...

William Carbys Zimmerman: State Architect and Estate Architect

Illinois State Architect William Carbys Zimmerman was born in Wisconsin in 1856. Upon graduation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he moved to Chicago in 1886 and became a junior partner...

Richard Widmark: Actor and LFC Alum

Iconic Hollywood actor Richard Widmark, an Oscar nominee and Golden Globe winner, graduated from Lake Forest College in 1936. Appearing as the lead in a college production of “Counselor-at-Law,” he ga...

Russell Smith Walcott: Architect

Born in Chicago in 1889, Russell Walcott was a graduate of Princeton University. He studied architecture in Europe and worked with his older brother, Chester Walcott, from 1919-1920. Walcott later par...

Rose Marie Emma aka Joan Taylor: Lake Forest Girl in Hollywood

A busy, high profile Hollywood actress whose career spanned the 1940s-60s, she was raised in Lake Forest as Rose Marie Emma by show business parents. Her mother, Amelia Berky, had been a vaudeville st...

Martha Sleeper: Wide Awake and On It

The multi-talented Martha Sleeper was born in Lake Bluff in 1910. Her family probably lived with her uncle John J. Murdock, a big name in vaudeville who went on to run RKO Pictures.

Ginevra King: Not Just Gatsby's Girl

Though the rest of the world may conflate Ginevra King with the romantic heroines of her one-time beau, author F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lake Forest knew her as one of its own. She grew up spending summers...

Ralph Milman: Art Deco French Flair

Ralph Milman (1888-1963) graduated from Harvard in 1913 and started his career as an associate working in Howard Van Doren Shaw’s firm. By 1930, he had formed a partnership with another Shaw office ve...

Jazz Pioneer: Bix Beiderbecke

Leon Bismark (Bix) Beiderbecke (1903-1931) was one of the pioneers of jazz music.

Hugh Mackie Gordon Garden: Chicago Prairie School Master

Canadian Hugh M. G. Garden first arrived in Chicago in the 1880s, where he apprenticed as a draftsman working for Howard Van Doren Shaw, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright among others. In 1895, he...

Asher Carter: Architect of Early Lake Forest

Asher Carter was born in 1805 in New Jersey. He arrived in the young city of Chicago in 1849, self-taught to assist architects as a building supervisor. Carter formed a partnership with Augustus Bauer...

John McCutcheon, Dean of American Cartoonists

John T. McCutcheon (1870-1949) was a long-time editorial cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune. His career included a Pulitzer Prize (1932) and ground-breaking efforts for his illustrations.A world trave...

Looking on Life with Quiet Eyes: Frances Wells Shaw

Frances Lillian Wells Shaw was born in Chicago in 1872. She was the daughter of early Chicago shoe merchant Moses D. Wells and his wife, Frances E. Searls, and in 1893 married architect Howard Van Dor...

Jean Harlow: Ferry Hall in High Heels

Harlean Carpenter, later known as Jean Harlow, was born on March 3, 1911 in Kansas City, Missouri. Her parents divorced and her mother remarried, moving with her daughter to 288 Central Avenue in High...

Award Winning Photographer: Mary Ernestine Rabson McMasters

Mary Ernestine Rabson McMasters was born in Chicago and met her husband, Ward McMasters, at the Trianon Ballroom in 1925. She became a nature photographer after being inspired by a trip to Turkey Run...

John J. Murdock: Now That's Show Biz!

A pioneer showman who became one of the richest men in America, Scottish immigrant John J. Murdock worked his way to the top of the ladder. He started as a stagehand in Cincinnati, then moved to Chica...

James Leland Lockhart: "The Twentieth-Century Audubon"

James Leland Lockhart (1912-2005) was one of America's foremost nature and wildlife artists. Growing up in rural Arkansas along the Mississippi River, his careful observation of the natural world bega...

Ed Cook

By Caroline Lauber

The home of America Bridgeman Sales, widow of early Lake Forest police officer Walker Sales, served as a landing place for both visiting and relocating relatives from the South. Joining her at 321 Gra...

Clarence P. McIntosh

Breaking Barriers

A grandson of one of Lake Forest’s earliest Black residents, Civil War veteran Henry McIntosh, Clarence P. McIntosh made the most of his opportunities. A standout athlete and student at Lake Forest Hi...

In "Play"n Air: The Ragdale Ring

Plays written and adapted by poet and playwright Frances Shaw were performed at her Lake Forest home, Ragdale, by family members and friends. In 1912, her husband, architect Howard Van Doren Shaw, des...

John Griffith: Developing Lake Forest

John Griffith opened his Lake Forest business in 1903 which grew to include real estate, insurance and mortgages. Born in North Wales, he came to Chicago in 1888 and within five years was in Lake Fore...

Lake Forest Flowers: Growing with the Community

The origins of this business date all the way back to the earliest days of Lake Forest. Frank Calvert was born in Scotland in 1830 and immigrated to Chicago as a young man. He was one of the earliest...

Map: Lake Forest, 1881

Many streets in Lake Forest changed their names in the 1910s.Depot Avenue --> McKinley AvenueHazel Avenue --> Church StreetLinden Avenue --> College RoadPoplar Avenue --> Rosemary RoadMapl...

Market Square: Heralding a New Era in Urban Planning

At its beginnings, Market Square broke new ground. In 1916, as the nation’s first artfully designed shopping center, it linked pedestrian, automobile, and train, and heralded a new era in urban planni...

Arthur and Mary Aldis: The Aldis Compound

Ragdale: Where Art Meets Prairie

Ragdale was the beloved country estate of one of the Chicago area’s greatest residential architects, Howard Van Doren Shaw. In 1897, on 33 acres just west of Green Bay Road, Shaw created a relaxed, su...

Annette Hoyt Flanders: Cottage Garden Designer

Milwaukee-born Annette Hoyt Flanders earned her degree in Botany from Smith College and continued her studies at the University of Illinois.  After attending the 1916 Lake Forest Garden Club summ...

Ellen Biddle Shipman: Dean of Female Landscape Architects

Ellen Shipman started out as a hands-on gardener and received drafting instruction from the offices of architect Charles A. Platt, a neighbor of hers from Cornish, New Hampshire. By 1910, Ellen Shipma...

Transforming Landscape: Rose Standish Nichols

Boston-born Rose Standish Nichols, (1872-1960) was one of the country’s earliest professional garden designers.  She trained with Charles A. Platt, studied horticulture at Harvard and drawing at...

Helen Brown Milman: Landscaping Market Square

Landscape designer Helen Brown Milman (1887-1987) was a student of Ralph Rodney Root at the University of Illinois. In addition to teaching, Root was an author and estate garden designer. In 1916, Hel...

Portraiture: Preserving Intangible Wealth

Are you intrigued with portraits? Read on!In the late 1970’s, Kathleen Van Ella of Lake Forest began showing Portrait Painters.

Looking for Sculpture and All That Leads up to It

It was natural for Kathleen Van Ella to walk around looking for sculpture potential, like a scout with larger eyes. In 1994, her Lake Forest agency PORTRAITS/CHICAGO, created in 1980 to present Portra...