2011 Preservation Awards

Holt (1823-1899) was born in New England but by the age of twenty was trading furs at Mackinac Island, Michigan; by 1847 he had started Holt Lumber Company in Chicago. His lumber was the first load carried on the new Illinois & Michigan Canal in 1848. In 1850, he married Ellen Hubbard. Holt was a charter member (1857) of Lake Forest University’s Board of Trustees.

The Holt house is a classic “Italianate,” a style built by carpenters and craftsmen from pattern books. The style was made popular in the United States by writers Andrew J. Downing and Alexander J. Davis in the 1840-1850s as an alternative to Gothic or Greek Revival design.

By the 1860s, Italian villas had become more widespread than Greek Revival as cast-iron and machine-pressed metal became available and useful in ornamenting these homes. The style was even adapted to lighthouses, chief among them being the Grosse Point Lighthouse in Evanston. However, by the 1870s Queen Anne “painted ladies” and French Second Empire became more stylish than the Italian.

The “four square” Holt residence is constructed of brick, covered by wood clapboards. The first floor includes a thin layer of concrete sandwiched between the wood floorboards. [Nine years later, the exterior of a neighboring residence, the 1869 John V. Farwell “baronial castle” at 880 East Deerpath, would be built entirely of concrete poured in situ (rather than concrete blocks), a method pioneered on England’s Isle of Wight in 1852.] Reinforced concrete was introduced in Paris in 1867.

The house boasts many visual elements that are key to the Italianate style. It has a low-pitched roof almost invisible from the ground, projecting eaves supported by corbels or brackets, arched windows, tall first floor windows, a belvedere (“widow’s walk” or “lantern”) on the roof, a loggia with balustrade, and an attic with a row of awning windows between the eave brackets.

660 N. Sheridan Road

Built for Hannah and Harvey Thompson

This house, prominently located just south of the ravine at the corner of Deerpath and Sheridan Road, is also an Italian villa featuring a low-pitched roof, arched windows, bracketed eaves under a projecting roof, and an octagonal bay window. However, “Thompson’s villa represents a stylistic departure from [the Holt house’s] regularity and balance toward the informal and picturesque … The main entrance was not centered on the roadway façade but inset within the northeast corner … The villa’s irregularity reached its climax in an assertive three-story octagonal tower with bracketed roof and pointed spire.”

The spire is topped with a long spindle. Some of the windows are “blind” and do not open. The landscaping of this estate “featured a network of wooden stairs, bridges and fences wending their way through [formal] Italian-derived … features … providing artificial transitions between abrupt changes in grade” down the steep slopes of the property’s ravine. A large greenhouse was located just to the rear of the main house.

Harvey Thompson (born 1820, New York) was the first mayor of Lake Forest (1861-65; 1867-1868). He was also an original Trustee of the Lake Forest Association and a member of the first Board of Trustees of Lake Forest University. The 1870 Census lists him as a “retired grocer,” but a roster of Lake Forest Association members says he is “of the Brevoort Hotel.” The Brevoort, located at 143 West Madison (now 188) was “one of Chicago’s oldest inns—the first with an elevator. It was rebuilt after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and offered guests a luxury—a bath. There were fifty rooms in the basement, well-ventilated, provided with folding couches and the finest artesian water.” “Bathhouse” John Coughlin was the proprietor. He was the “colorful” Alderman of Chicago’s powerful downtown 1st Ward for 46 years.

David J. Lake (born 1823, Mt. Morris, New York) was a realtor and, according to the 1880 Census, a “commission merchant.” He was secretary of the Lake Forest Association, one of the founders of the City, and the third Mayor of Lake Forest, from 1866-1867. He and his wife, Mary, had seven children: Wells C., Edgar J., Mary, Ruth, Julia, Fanny, and Daisey.

In 1927, the original tower was removed and the exterior was modernized with a coat of stucco. Other alterations include the change in projection toward a new front, new surrounds on the doors and windows, and the addition of a small porch next to the two-story polygonal projection. In 1976, the coach house was converted to a residence.

The local architectural firm of (Charles) Frost and (Alfred) Granger was hired to enlarge and enhance the then small farmhouse. It is now considered a “restrained Queen Anne” with extensive interior and exterior carved wood. There is a decorated pediment situateon the roof above the front porch entry and a matching pediment is repeated and tucked into the roof gable.

A wide porch wraps itself around the front and western side of the house. The home is entered through a wide Dutch door; the floors in the foyer are original quarter-sawn oak. Intricate spindles adorn the staircase. The ceilings throughout the first floor are 10’ tall.

In 1996, the detached garage (originally a two-story barn) was moved and connected to the house to accommodate a new kitchen and back bedroom. Historic preservation guidelines were carefully followed in making this change.