This property sits on the land that was home to “Lakelandwood,” the estate of Stanley Field. Field, the nephew of department store magnate Marshall Field, served as an employee and executive for 70 years at Marshall Field & Co. Stanley Field helped establish Grant Park, the Shedd Aquarium and Brookfield Zoo. He guided the construction of the Field Museum of Natural History and served as its president.
It was through his many civic projects in Chicago that Stanley Field came to know architect and urban planner Daniel Burnham. Around the same time that Burnham was working on the design of the Field Museum, in 1912 Stanley and Sara Field commissioned Burnham’s firm to build Lakelandwood, a grandly scaled estate on 30 acres in south Lake Bluff. The dramatic approach to Lakelandwood was through an allee of trees (originally poplar, then hemlock) still in existence today. The three-story house had a four-pillared entrance, with the surrounding landscape having been designed by Warren Manning. Manning created the allee and the sunken garden as well as the long garden to the south. Though the main house was razed in 1967 and the property subdivided, the worker’s cottage is now a private home and some original garden elements remain at 575 Lakeland Road.