Classic Country Estates of Lake Forest: Architecture and Landscape Design 1856-1940

On Lake Michigan’s North Shore, an extraordinary group of cosmopolitan and wealthy clients commissioned havens from the city’s bustle during the Gilded Age.

Classic Country Estates of Lake Forest is the first systematic study of this richly textured built environment. Beginning with suburban villas in the manner of Andrew Jackson Downing, Lake Forest was transformed by the work of Henry Ives Cobb, Howard Van Doren Shaw, David Adler, Harrie T. Lindeberg, Charles A. Platt, Holabird & Roche, Delano & Aldrich, Arthur Heun, and others. It was also distinguished by a tradition of innovation in landscape design, from the original Romantic picturesque town plan of 1857 to the later estate work of O. C. Simonds, the Olmsteds, Warren Manning, Rose Standish Nichols, and Jens Jensen. Architectural renderings, landscape plans, drawings, and period photographs of architecture and gardens, many of them not previously published, illustrate the work of these masters.