Lake Forest-Lake Bluff History Museum

This house was built in 1926 for Hermon Dunlap Smith and Ellen Thorne Smith; the home of Smith’s brother Lawrence Dunlap Smith was constructed just down the road at 190 East Onwentsia around the same time. Hermon Dunlap Smith rose through the ranks at Marsh & McLennan, where as chairman and CEO he developed the firm into “the world’s largest brokerage house,” according to his 1983 obituary in the Chicago Tribune. Active in civic and charitable work, he was described as “the complete citizen, a doer of deeds, and a great enabler.” He was president or a trustee on the boards of countless Chicago civic institutions, including the Chicago Community Trust, the Newberry Library, the Adler Planetarium, the Chicago Historical Society, the Welfare Council of Metropolitan Chicago, and many others. Ellen Thorne Smith was a trustee at Hull House, the Chicago Zoological Society, and the Field Museum; she was also an ornithologist at the Field and authored a study of Chicagoland birds. Locally, the pair helped found the Lake Forest Day School and served on the boards of the YWCA and Lake Forest Library.

The Smiths resided here through 1946; other inhabitants around mid-century included Richard L. Kennedy Jr.; Walter H. Buchen; J. G. Stevenson; and R.W. Belcher.