West Park Walking Tour Preview

1

777 North Green Bay Road

This farmhouse has been the subject of various accounts about its origins. As the late Rollie Griffis, great grandson of William Atteridge, explained, at one time this was the house of Sarah Brewster Hodges, who was the daughter of Walter and Katherine Lancaster Brewster, who built the estate across Green Bay, Covin Tree, in 1907, with Howard Van Doren Shaw as the architect. Other stories heard are that the house was moved to this location and that at one time it was the house for a farm owned by a member of the McCormick family. An 1861 Lake County map in the Lake Forest College Library Special Collections shows that this land belonged to Thomas Atteridge. A map in an 1885 Lake County plat book just shows this as still part of the Thomas Atteridge farm. By the 1907 plat book for the county, prior to the Shaw Subdivision for the Young Men’s Club that year, Sunset Place was already platted, with this house’s location lot 65. The Brewster’s already owned the land across Green Bay to the west.

2

85 East Sunset Place

This red brick late Georgian style home was constructed in 1928 for Market Square merchant Stanley Kiddle, whose business there survives, though with new owners.

3

849 Summit Avenue

Scottish immigrant Alex Robertson first purchased this lot in 1907. Robertson had lived on South Oakwood Avenue. Robertson’s daughter married Gus Starck, who lived next door, in what originally was the home of City Clerk James King. The Starck’s son later also lived in this house, as well. Alex Robertson’s son George kept the mid=20th century Robertson’s Men’s Store on Deerpath at Forest Avenue, now Pet People.

4

857 Summit Avenue

This story-and-a-half cottage appears to retain its original form. It was the home of Aberdeenshire, Scotland-born (1858) James F. King. King, long time city clerk from the 1890’s through 1910 estate era, was an early drafter of local ordinances. King collaborated with the Improvement Trust on Market Square, 1915-1916. He also served in the first volunteer fire brigade. A subsequent owner was Elizabeth Stark, whose father was Alex Robertson (849 Summit Place, next door). The late Rolly Griffis recalled that circa the 1920’s, there was a small store in the front of the house, typical of stores in such neighborhoods around town (corner of Woodland Road and Western Avenue, Noble Avenue, Ryan Place, and the lower section of Washington Road).

6

873 Summit Avenue

Built after 1917 and before 1924 (the year the street addresses were changed). This is a gambrel-roofed Dutch Colonial house, in its original state, with a large second story dormer facing the street.

7

883 Summit Avenue

1952 classic central-hall brick colonial, with a simplified broken pediment over the front door and in its original state. Built 1951-52 from a Garling mail-order plan. Last house built by Griffis Brothers on the street. Home of the late Rolly Griffis, living on ancestral land. Decendant of Atteridge pioneer family and second generation local builder.

8

887 Summit Avenue

A larger two-story, central hall, four square house with a hipped roof and open front porch. Built among the first houses circa 1907. It was built for the father of Phil Speidel, a 1890’s pioneer and Western Avenue merchant.

9

895 Summit Avenue

Like 901 Summit Place, this 1912 home appears to be a slightly smaller version of that standard four-square variant hipped roof two-story plan. The house was built by Speidel. This was the Charles Kiddle home on the lot he bought in the 1907 auction. Kiddle immigrated from Somerset, England in 1904, and lived here with his spouse Anna, and two sons, Joseph and Charles, Jr. HE was superintendent of the former David B. Jones estate in 1930. The family name is best known for the cycle shop, which has long been a fixture in Market Square, though now owned outside the Kiddle family.

10

901 Summit Place

Pre-1917 Griffis Construction signature four-square stucco variant, with a newer replacement open front porch. James Davidson bought the lot in 1907 and Davidson’s lived here.

11

120 East Woodland

Young Men’s Club member, E. Masterson, perhaps acting for Ellen Atteridge Griffis and her spouse, Willis Griffis, Sr. purchased the lot in 1907. The late Rollie Griffis said that his grandmother, daughter of William Atteridge whose farm this had been, was given first pick from among the lots. Her son, James, a contractor, was the father of Rollie, and lived next door to the west at 112 East Woodland. The commodious house is simple and farmhouse-like in character and its grand wrap-around porch with its stucco arches all facing the then-new park lends it a Craftsmen feel.

12

139 East Woodland

Directly across the street you can see 139 East WoodlandAs the Griffith, Grant and Lackie Realtors, Inc. archives show, John Gr.iffith handled the sale of this property from the builder Gustavus Anderson to Mr. and Mrs. Lewis T. Greist in 1923, when it was very near completion. James Murphy purchased the original lot, number 89 in the Young Men’s Club subdivision, in 1907. According to telephone books by 1950 Joseph O’Neill was the owner. This English Arts & Crafts cottage is very similar to the house at the other end of Summit, on the northwest corner with Westminster. The O’Neill’s descended from Joseph O’Neill, a tinsmith who arrived in town in 1868 and built a hardware store with related businesses, which lasted for over a century.

13

166 Atteridge Road

Two-Story four-square variant, stucco entry on east side of south-facing front porch, large dormer on front hipped roof. George Blanchard, who built the house, owned the building supply yard around the corner on Western, now Regency Row townhouses.

14

90 Atteridge Road

The two-story, four-square house was built by Griffis, according to Rollie Griffis, with the east-side one story addition designed by Jerome Cerny (see the similar bow window at Cerny’s 66 Atteridge Road). The resident in 1930 was Swedish Painte Victor Lindquist and by 1938, Gottleib Schaffer, father of Otto Schaffer, a landscape architect who attended Lake Forest College before transferring to the University of Illinois landscape program. Otto drew plans for Triangle Park and later in the 1920’s for West Park. Byu 1920, he was an instructor at the University of Illinois landscape school.

15

947 Oakwood Avenue

1907-built four-square variant of the Prairie vernacular neighborhood type: two-story stucco with hipped roof and front dormer, enclosed front porch with south side entry. A rear porch facing Woodland dates from the 1990’s.

16

908 Oakwood Avenue

Directly accross the street is 908 Oakwood Avenue. This is a 1914 stucco four-square of the neighborhood type, owned by Walter F. Smith, who founded with his spouse, Smith’s Men’s Store. The store passed to Walter’s son, the late H. Brooks Smith, a jazz musician and local historian (also with his wife, Jacqueline, lead the creation of Gorton Community Center over 40 years ago when the Gorton School closed). Brooks’ mother, an Atteridge, also grew up at 908 Oakwood Avenue, on a portion of the old Atteridge farm property. The current view of the home reflects an expansion of the front enclosed porch.

17

903 Oakwood Avenue

1923 red brick and stucco, story-and-a-half bungalow, with enclosed front porch: unchanged from the late 1970’s. The home of Leon Wells. Wells’ grandfather came to Lake Forest to work for Jay W. Frye, a plumbing contractor who had been in charge of the Lake Forest College facilities in the 1890’s. Co-proprietor of Wells & Copithorne hardware in town, into the 1990’s. They purchased Harder’s Hardware, Market Square, in 1920 (now the location of Williams Sonoma), and in 1954 the business moved to 245 E. Deerpath (now Midwest bank). Wells retired in 1970.

18

865 Oakwood Avenue

1922 Craftsman style stucco two-story house, with a wood horizontal trim piece originally at the level of the top of the front second story group of windows since removed. This would have emphasized the Prairie School character of this house.

19

845 Oakwood Avenue

Built in 1915, this is a multi-family in-depth variant on the four-square, hipped roof and attic dormers neighborhood standard. In the late 1970’s it was stucco, except for a wood-frame portion in the front of the first floor. The porch used to be screened.

20

827 Oakwood Avenue

This is a 1922-built Dutch colonial wood-frame house, with a gambrel roof and a large dormer above the first floor, yielding almost a full story there. Local builder Harold Griffis owned it: later bought by his brother Willis Griffis (proprietor of Griffis Drug Store, southeast location in Market Square).

21

819 Oakwood Avenue

This 1921 Griffis built four-square central-hall two-story house, with hipped roofs with a dormer in front appears to be changed only by the substitution of shingles for stucco on the second floor. Here lived Eva Oke (Lake Forest College, Class of 1919), daughter of William and Bertha Burridge Oke. Bertha Oke was a resident of Lake Forest for sixty years, to age 86, and a founder of Church of the Holy Spirit in 1898.

22

132 East Westminster Avenue

Neighborhood Prairie vernacular standard four-square variant: two-story cement block and stucco with gabled roof. On the west side facing Summit Avenue, this house also has a Queen Anne Gable on the third floor, with an overhang. This overhang is typical of homes a decade earlier that the Young Men’s Club dwellings to the north.

23

112 E Westminster Avenue

This English Arts & Crafts two-story stucco cottage is a companion to the house at the corner of Summit Place and Woodland Rod (139 Woodland Road) which was built in 1924 by Gus Anderson.