51 North Green Bay Road, built 1925. Pictured 2017. Courtesy of Palo Dobrik Photography.
Ambrose Cramer: Gentleman Architect
Changing The World
Ambrose Cramer, Jr., c. 1930.
35 North Green Bay Road. Pictured c. 1990. History Center collection, 1998.16.6.
Brushwood Farm at Ryerson Woods. Courtesy of Joel Sartore.
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 with superb taste.
Cramer married Grace Meeker, daughter of industrialist Arthur Meeker. Later they were divorced, and he remarried to her sister Mary Meeker.
Cramer received his degree in Architecture from Yale University in 1913, then went to Paris to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts for over three years. Upon his return to the U.S., Cramer, a cousin of architect Henry Dangler, worked in the firm of Dangler and Adler. After Dangler’s death in 1917, Cramer stayed with David Adler until 1929, when he went off to start his own firm, in Maine. Before he died in 1970, he designed many residences in the Santa Barbara region.
Local Commissions include:
1925 51 North Green Bay Road, Lake Forest
35 North Green Bay Road, Lake Forest
1929 Mr. and Mrs. Richard Bentley, 1435 Lake Road
1938 Brushwood Farm, Mr. and Mrs. Edward L. Ryerson, Jr., now Ryerson Woods Conservation Area