Lake Forest’s Notable Historic Downtown Architecture

1. 720 N. McKinley Rd. Chicago & North Western Train Station, 1900. Frost & Granger, architects, ALF, 45. Tudor style. Rehabbed by lessee from railroad, City of Lake Forest, 2011-18, architect Gunny Harboe, based on his 2009 Historic Structure Report and later involvement. Tudor styled building and interior partially rehabbed for passenger use, 2018. (Architectural Lake Forest, LFPF, 2022) ALF, 23. 

2. 630 N. Western Ave. Blackler Building 1895, architect not known. First three-story mixed use (including retail and apartments, still being rented) masonry designed building with a turret and bow windows west of the tracks. Italian Renaissance style, with Beaux Arts and Aesthetic Movement ornament in copper. ALF, 15. 

3. 284-296 E. Deerpath. Anderson Block, 1904, James Gamble Rogers, architect. 

Three story mixed use, including retail and apartments, by 1980s the latter offices, at the northwest corner with Western Ave. Classic Georgian style. On site of 1867 James Anderson frame two-story general store building, moved ca. 1903. At southeast corner of the first floor, Walgreens. ALF, 15. 

4. 684 N. Western Ave. Krafft’s Drug Store, 1917, Howard Van Doren Shaw, architect ALF, 11, 93. Small building significant architecturally for its stepping down from three-story Anderson Block south to south two-story and attic building of Market Square north.  In 2023 Federal Savings Bank, with a classic addition west, 2005, by Peregrine Bryant, London. ALF, 14. 

5. 672 N. Western Ave., Market Square South Building and Tower, 1916. Howard Van Doren Shaw. Two-story English traditional, Arts & Crafts style. Balancing the block-long north building, both starting on Western Ave. and then bending west past a tower to Bank Lane. Features medieval and modern clock tower. ALF 11, 14.

6. Market Square Plaza, Fountain, and Park, 1916-17. Howard Van Doren Shaw, rehab 2000, Rodney Robinson, landscape architect.  Garden evolving through three plans, 1912, 1914, and 1915, fountain 1917 with “Friends” sculpture by Sylvia Shaw Judson Haskins. Two rows of trees in park continue columns from east to west end of complex. Plaza east of fountain. ALF, 11, 14.

7. 720 N. Western Ave., Market Square North Building and Tower, 1916. Paired with South Building, same features rearranged, with a taller contrasting classic Stuart, pre-Georgian English tower, Incorporated the ca. 1904 Gordon and Griffith Buildings north, part of Shaw’s design plan. ALF, 11, 13, and front cover. 

8. 768 N. Western Ave. The Lantern (O’Neill Building), 1905, architect not known. Three-story, mixed-use building at the northwest corner of Westminster, the same scale and height as the Anderson Block one block south at Deerpath. Lantern tavern and restaurant a tenant since the end of Prohibition, mid 1930s.

9. 682 N. Bank Lane, Former Marshall Fields (Market Square West Building), 1916, Howard Van Doren Shaw.  In the complex’s third plan, 1915, the architect created the park space from the towers north to Bank Lane, in contrast to the English traditional style of the two long flanking buildings, this one’s design is Italian Renaissance derived from Andrea Palladio, mid-16th century. Marshall Fields, 1931-2006. ALF, 11, 17.

10. 230 E. North Gate, Post Office, 1933, Milman & Morphett. This simple, visually quiet conservative modernist building, constructed with Hoover Administration funds, fits into this corner of Market Square with good manners, even set back from the street. Its original Art Deco landscape was by Helen Brown Milman. ALF, 18. 

11. 655 N. Forest Ave., Former Police and Fire Station, 1904-1920s, Frost & Granger and 1920s Anderson & Ticknor. Initially a small building for the fire horses, it evolved as an annex to the City Hall, by 1970s, Rec Department use.  By the 1980s it was adaptively reused as restaurant space, now Le Colonial. ALF, 18.

12. 260-272 E. Deerpath, Anderson Trust Buildings. 1925-29, Anderson & Ticknor. Developed from east to west, with two-story and attic Georgian colonial revival unit west of Anderson Block, it reprised the Arts & Crafts style of Market Square further west to Bank Lane, with west end a theater, adaptively reused ca.1980 for commercial space and offices. ALF, 16.

13. 265 E. Deerpath, Former 1st National Bank, 1930, Anderson & Ticknor. By the 1980s this Georgian and colonial revival building a branch of Chicago’s Northern Trust Co. On the southeast corner with Bank Lane, it expanded compatibly east in the 1960s and 1990s. In brick and limestone, it is the highlight of this stretch west of Western Ave. ALF, 16. 

14. 675 N. Forest Ave., Former Young Men’s Club, 1917, Howard Van Doren Shaw. Two stories, this Arts & Crafts style building housed on the first floor the Young Men’s club, and on the second a gymnasium, shared by the YWCA. The second floor of 682 N. Bank Lane, just east, with a bridge between. ALF, 18.

15. 220 E. Deerpath, City Hall, 1899, Frost & Granger; 1998 addition, David Woodhouse, Doug Hoerr, landscape architect.  English traditional, Arts & Crafts two-stories, with tower. West side addition in same style. ALF, 19. 

16. 255 E. Illinois Rd., Deer Path Inn, 1929, Jones & Jones, rehab after fire Anderson & Ticknor, 1938. Central half-timbered section modeled on Chiddingstone Old Manor, Kent, 16th century. Rehabbed 2016, Travel + Leisure top ranked Midwestern resort hotel. ALF, 19 and back cover. 

17. 300 E. Deerpath, Lake Forest Library, 1931, Edwin Hill Clark, architect. Cruciform plan with central rotunda below a dome. 1978 wings added by Danforth & Brenner, architects.  Classic early National style and conservative modernist. Houses important artworks, on display. ALF, 43. 

18. 400 E. Illinois Rd., Gorton Community Center (former Gorton School), 1900, Howard Van Doren Shaw, additions Anderson & Ticknor, 1930s.  Two story, classic and Arts & Crafts building, saved from demolition in 1972 to create the Gorton Community Center, a public-private partnership of board and City. ALF, 65. 

Lake Forest Preservation Foundation, May 2023, map © Mark McMahon.

Key Sources:

 ·          Architectural Lake Forest:  A Guide to National Register Historic Districts and Properties in Lake Forest, Illinois, Arthur H. Miller (Lake Forest:  Lake Forest Preservation Foundation, 2022), $25 at LFPF office at Gorton, 400 E. Illinois, lfpf .org, 847-234-1230; or Lake Forest Book Store, 662 N. Western Ave., 847-234-4420.  ALF with page numbers and most entries here.  References in the Address Index; Architects and Landscape Architects Index.

·          Market Square, Susan Dart (Lake Forest:  LF-LB Historical Society, 1984).  History Center of LF-LB, 509 E. Deerpath.

·         Downtown Lake Forest, Then & Now; Susan L. Kelsey and Shirley M. Paddock (Arcadiea 2009). The illustrated map was created for the Preservation Foundation by well-known Lake Forest based artist, muralist, and illustrated mapmaker, Mark McMahon. Mark is widely-known and his work, including beautiful prints, sought after for its animated and colorful impressions of urban, suburban (especially North Shore), sports settings, and even a recant map of sculptures in Lake Forest and Lake Bluff.

For more information on the architects and landscape architects, see the references to these buildings, listed in the address index to Architectural Lake Forest, 2022, 146-55 (ALF); available at the Lake Forest Preservation Foundation Office and the Lake Forest Book Store.  Thumbnail biographical sketches, also, appear in Classic Country Estates of Lake Forest… (2003), p. 295-301.

This plaque project was conceived by Susie Athenson, LFPF advocacy committee chair, 2019-21, and president, 2021-23, texts and logistics orchestrated by executive director Marcy Kerr; plaque texts approved by site owners; and remediated and mounted by Jim Opsitnik.