Griffith, Grant & Lackie, Realtors, Inc.
In 1999 and 2000 the Griffith, Grant & Lackie, Realtors, Inc. firm donated two major collections relating to the distinctive character of Lake Forest: the papers and plans relating to the creation of Market Square (1912-16), Western Avenue, Lake Forest, and four hundred topographic plans and plats of survey by various firms relating to Lake Forest, covering about half of the original 1857 town plan and also much of the Green Bay road and Waukegan Road estate districts. Most of the latter donation has been transferred to the Lake Forest-Lake Bluff Historical Society, where it is accessible. The former, Market Square material, remains in Special Collections, where it anchors a campus-related architect Howard Van Doren Shaw collection.
The firm was organized by John Griffith, a former employee of estate-owner Louis F. Swift, in 1903, and for the next three decades and beyond was the donminant estate real estate sales, insurance, rental and storage agent for the Onwentsia-club related estate community here. Essentially all property transfers involving the estate community hinged on Griffith's efforts, and that of his nephew, Melville Lackie, also an Ontario native. At first Griffith assisted Swift and others in assembling parcels of farmland into estates, some of a hundred acres and more, including the major west of Lake Forest J. Ogden Armour, Samuel Insull, and Albert Lasker estates -- all including several hundred acres at one time. Then in the period from the 1930s to the 1960s the firm, later also including Gordon Lackie (Lake Forest College, Class of 1949), Melville's son, the firm managed the subdivision of many of the properties they had assembled into smaller parcels. From 1916 to 1968 the firm was the rental agent and manager for Market Square, following up on John Griffith's key role in creating the development as a viable commercial enterprise. By the 1970s the firm merged with that of Thomas Grant, based in adjacent Lake Bluff, resulting in the firm's current name.
The Lake Forest and southeast Lake County area as had a unique estate history, due to the strong motivation of those who could to leave Chicago between heating seasons when windows had to be open to air, but also the stench and grime of the stockyards, the steel mills, and the ubiquitous use of coal for heating. Griffith and his successors have played an epic role in the development of the upper North Shore of Chicago community, between the former Fort Sheridan and Great Lakes Naval Training Station on the lake and west to Long Grove and north to Milburn.
Arthur H. Miller
November 3, 2009