999 N. Lake Road Annual Meeting Reception Host 2024
2024 post-Annual Meeting Visit, 999 North Lake Rd.
May 5, 2024
Current Owners: Ronald G. and Karena K. Garriques
Original owners: Anna LaRue Griffith and Clayton Mark
Original architect: Howard Van Doren Shaw, 1912-14
Original landscape designer (reflecting pool area, courtyard): Rose Standish Nichols
Early Lake Rd. Site History
The almost 16,000 sq ft house in 2024 was a replacement for an 1880 large wood frame cottage for Lucy Sturges and Ebenezer Buckingham. Buckingham was a Chicago grain elevator mogul and his family included children Clarence and Kate Buckingham, of Chicago’s Grant Park Buckingham Fountain. This iconic Chicago landmark was donated by the sister in memory of the brother, 1920s. The 1880 estate crossed Lake Rd., bounded by the Woodbines and Barberry on the other three sides. On the south, the surviving wood frame carriage driver’s cottage survives unchanged and on the southwest the original gardener’s cottage remains, updated on the exterior. In ca. 1912 the now demolished Buckingham cottage was moved west across Lake Rd., probably onto a former Buckingham garden site.
This Buckingham estate was one of four such estates on both sides of Lake Rd. The others were (1) the 1869 and later family compound of the John V. Farwells at 880 E. Deerpath with Tuttle and Ferry daughters northeast; (2) the B.L. Smith estate, where Lake Rd. bulges to the west north of 999 N. Lake Rd.; (3) the 1880 Poole/Reed estate, at 1315 N. Lake Rd.; and (4) the early 1880s John Hannah estate redeveloped by 1904 Mark Cummings, just south of the cemetery, its early 20th century garage surviving in the Love house, visited for the 2023 holiday party. The Buckingham/Mark replacement estate was the second of these to be redeveloped, with also a new staff lodge on the west side of this plot. The carriage driver’s cottage became part of the 1905 first Arthur Heun designed Eugene Pike estate, replaced after it burned on the lakefront, 1914, by David Adler, 1916-17. This made a fifth estate on both sides of Lake Rd., shortly after the Marks’ estate became a second iteration of the Buckingham estate.
Clayton Mark and the Mark Residence, 1912-14
The Marks’ former residence at 747 E. Deerpath—a early 20th century Beaux Arts renovation of an 1860, 1867, 1875 house—burned on April 15, 1912, with steelmaker Clayton Mark and his large family then planning this new Lake Rd. residence. Mark’s steel mill was in East Chicago, Indiana, where in 1917-18 Shaw began building Marktown, a much-surviving, exemplary planned community for his workers and managers. Mark also was president of the Lake Forest College board of trustees, 1911-20.
In 1912 architect Howard Van Doren Shaw’s perhaps principal design associate was Princeton (1905), Munich Polytechnic (1905-06), and Ecole des Beaux Arts Paris (1906-13?) educated David Adler. In December of 1912 two important plans were issued by Shaw’s office. These were, first, the first version of Market Square including a park, an arcade, and the iconic medieval/modern top for the south tower, then called Town Market, Second the Mark lakefront residence was a house rivaling in scale the colonial revival 1895 Smith house (demol.) just north then and larger than the 1905 first Pike house by Arthur Heun.
Several circumstantial clues indicate that Adler played a part in Market Square, including the eagles holding up the vase in the fountain, adler being the German word for eagle. Then at the Mark house four eagles are shown above the porch piers, as well, as just called to my attention by board member and Crab Tree Farm curator Tom Gleason. The Mark house plans at the Art Institute library archives are dated in the last few days before New Year’s, 1912. On January 1, 1913, Shaw associates Henry Dangler and David Adler went into practice on their own, though Adler by then may have been already in Paris, from which he returned in May (see Olmsted firm correspondence on the Poole estate, Lake Bluff, copy in Lake Forest College archives Miller collection files).
The house’s layout with a long lateral hallway is a prequel to Adler’s mid-1930s Mrs. J. Ogden Armour country house on Green Bay Rd. across from Onwentsia. Strong piers, as at the east end arcades at Market Square and retained from the 1912 Town Market plan, separate the entry from the stairs. That prominent central feature was positioned as at the 1916 Adler second Pike house, an Italian villa at 955 N. Lake Rd. Longitudinal hallways had been signature Shaw elements since the architect’s own Ragdale, 1898. This also follows The plan of Mellody Farm/Lake Forest Academy, designed by Arthur Heun, 1908, though with the Mark stairs centered. The Prairie Renaissance horizontal character of the Mark house--like Heun’s Mellody Farm--is Shaw’s, as in the 1912 McLennan house at 1345 N. Lake Rd., while elements of Adler’s own vocabulary show up as well.
The landscape for the lakeside terrace with its reflecting pool was landscaped by Rose S. Nichols, Boston, who also collaborated with Shaw in the period on the similar terrace at the 1913 second E.L. Ryerson estate (demol.). Both had large reflecting pools, with the Mark pool’s sculpture originally a fountain with four eagles holding up the base, as at Market Square. Miss Nichols’ Boston ivy on the east façade by the terrace would have contributed to insulating the house in that pre-HVAC period, while the greenery softened the formality so noticeable on the front.
“Mostly Hall,” 1930s into 21st century
Rob Isham, who grew up in the house after the Marks sold it, 1930s, remembers it mid-century as “Mostly Hall” after the removal of the northeast dining room wing toward the lake and the larger south living room wing, a reduction from the Depression/FDR period of very high income taxes on the wealthy. Library and billiard rooms from the 1912 plan still provided much living space along the gracious hallway. The land west of Lake Rd. was subdivided off, with the Marks’ staff lodge developed more recently as a fine separate residence, while the old Buckingham cottage was demolished over a half century ago, replaced on Lake Rd. by two more recent houses.
21st century Restoration and Rejuvenation
In the late 20th century the house was maintained by preservation-minded residents, though until the current owners no effort was made to restore the original lost wings. The current owners most notably restored the northeast dining room wing, on the lake side north of the terrace and protecting it and its plantings from north wind. The terrace though remains open to the east side lake vista and to the south, the latter aperture letting in warming sunlight, likely to put into shadow the terrace if the living room and porch wing were restored there. The former service wing has been repurposed for family use, the house originally staffed by servants. To the south a new swimming pool and a vehicle access to the bluff and down to the shore have been added, as well.
Two References:
--Kim Coventry, Daniel Meyer, and Arthur H. Miller, Classic Country Estates of Lake Forest… (2003), 179-85 and passim.
--Paul Myers, The Marktown Historic District, East Chicago, Indiana…. (2004).
Art Miller, ahmiller169@gamil.com