The request to demolish the historic Stuart place on Mayflower poses a serious challenge for those who would preserve classic Lake Forest. This house now has recent houses, sadly, of undistinguished design on small parcels of land to the south and across the road on Mayflower. This neighborhood has become commonplace and the loss of the Stuart place would be devastating, as the adjacent residents' anguished (if intemperate) remarks at the last hearing on this proposal demonstrated. But these residents overlook two important elements of this unusual proposal. First, the architect, Chicagoan Thomas Beeby, is recognized nationally for the quality of his classic residential work. This was highlighted in the April Town & Country article by Marc Wortman entitled "By Georgian!" which included Beeby as the only Chicago practitioner among six nationwide who are distinguished for their work in this style. Beeby's work then is of the stature of that done here in the country place era (1893-1933) by David Adler, Harrie T. Lindeberg, and Delano & Aldrich. Second, this is the first proposal to try to reverse the devastating trend of recent years to subdivide and build smaller, self-referential houses on modest lots from what were world-class estates.
This petitioner requests permission to re-create a classic Lake Forest estate like those of earlier days, but now lost: the Ryersons' internationally-known "Havenwood" at the foot of Mayflower; the Alfred Hamills' "Centaurs" with landscape design by Ossian Simonds and others; the Schweppe place most recently cut up, losing the work of key landscape gardeners such as Rose Standish Nichols or Henry Vincent Hubbard (of Boston's Pray, Hubbard and White); the Fitz Hugh's "Ingolsby;" Ernest Hamills' place with grounds by F. L. Olmsted, Jr.; and even the 1953 subdivision of the Charles B. Farwell place at Mayflower and Deerpath, which broke up the edge of the 1869 park design by F. L. Olmsted, Sr.
In most of these cases ("Havenwood" is a notable exception), the estate houses -- architecture -- has been saved. Thus, we have the remarkable resurrection of the Fitz Hugh place just recently. The "Centaurs" Adler buildings are there, but the gardens are gone. The Schweppe place now is a developement. And even Henry Ives Cobb's and Charles Frost's stunning Ferry Hall Chapel (1888) is part of a suburban development now. Happily one of Edwin H. Clark's stately Georgian residence halls for Ferry Hall survives nearby, to maintain some of Mayflower's old character, too. More historic structures survive on Mayflower than do estate-scale gardens. Happily, Charendon Drake plans to redevelop the English walled garden laid out at her place (255 N.) by nationally-known landscape gardener Ellen Shipman in 1930; not in the same style, but more formal probably. But usually the houses remain, surrounded by a fleet of smaller tender houses, perhaps covering the cost of buying and resotring the main place. Lake Forest architecture has survived often, but at the expense of the magnificent gardens and parks which gave Lake Forest its distinctive, internationally-known character.
Formalist landscape architect Ralph Rodney Root put this Lake Forest country place type on the map in his January 1924 Architectural Record article entitled "Country Places Types of the Middle West." These estates were notable for their prairie and lake view focussed vistas incorporating handsome formal gardens between vistas, using both native and non-native plants to extend the gardener's palette in this cold climate. This led to annual summer pilgrimages to Lake Forest until 1931 and the Depression by leading estate professionals and new graduates, for the summer months' Beaux-Arts-modelled institute here. The Ryersons at the foot of Mayflower donated an endowment ot send the best student architect and landscape architect abroad to Europe for a year, into the middle 1930s.
Today, not only has the seemingly permenant Ryerson place gone, but the whole idea of estate gardens that family and others created here -- a uniquely Lake Forest garden art form. The list of places gone and forgotten can continue: Albert M. Day, Francis Farwell, Clyde Carr, Finley Barrell, and more. All in the immediate neighborhood. Houses are there, handsome ones and often more distinguished architecturally than the Stuart place. But the gardens are all gone. None remain in their entirety - unless I'm mistaken.
This brings me back to the 930 East Rosemary Road request. THe architect proposes an ensemble of gardens, park, vistas, a pool house and other ancillary structures which hasn't been attempted here since David Adler fell off his horse and injured himself while fox-hunting in 1934. The owners of 930 East Rosemary and their architect, Thomas Beeby, propose to reverse both the steady erosion and eradication of Lake Forest country places and the type as a whole. They propose to build anew an estate in the Lake Forest style which was made this town a meccah for estate owners, architects and landscape architects in the first third of this century. Their efforts will increase dramatically the economic values of properties in the vicinity and dramatically reverse the downward spiral toward cookie-cutter executive housing which so frightens the nearby residents who fear the loss of the Stuart place.
The replacement structure, the new pool house, recalls the northern Renaissance style seen in the pavilion of the famous seventeenth century botanic garden at Leyden, in Holland (see pictures in John Prest, The Garden of Eden: the Botanic Garden and the Re-Creation of Paradise, Yale U. Press, 1981). This style was used by David Adler in his Bentley place on Lake Road near Spruce and in his garage for the Albert Lasker now on Estate Lane, currently being developed into a country place in its own right by Lake Forest architect Douglas Sutherland and landscape designer Craig Bergmann. The proposed new gardens for 930 East Rosemary Road themselves with their striking vistas to the ravine recall designs by Adler, Platt, Shaw, and others here early in this century. This new country place in the classic, specifically classic Lake Forest, mode will be the most important event in the history of local counry places in sixty years. It will restore to the Mayflower Road district one archetypical estate in the grand manner. In no way will it diminish either the quality of life or the property values of the neighboring residents. While this writer is tempted to say that anything Thomas Beeby designed for next to or across from the adjacent houses would improve their values, in this case the plans submitted speak eloquently for themselves and make it clear that these designs will elevate the architectural quality of this section of Mayflower.