On November 8, 1914, John Glessner made the following entry in his wife’s
journal about their visit to the Lake Forest home of Cyrus McCormick Jr.:
“Frances and Emily came last Sunday just as we were starting to Lake
Forest by motor. Mrs. McCormick had
telephoned that her chauffeur would meet us at farther edge of Fort Sheridan
and convoy us to her house. On arrival
we were first taken around Lake Forest somewhat, then dinner where we met Mrs.
McCormick the elder, and Dr. McDonald, editor of Toronto. After dinner we were taken down the ravine to
the Lake and then to Harold’s great house (Villa Turicum), all splendid even in
its put away clothes. Mr. and Mrs.
McCormick were very attentive and hospitable, the meal was elaborate and their
lives seem complicated, or rather their method of living. The day was very pleasant.”
The North Shore home of McCormick and his wife Harriet was known as
Walden, the name inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, detailing his two years of simple living amidst natural
surroundings at Walden Pond. Although
the McCormicks embraced the idea of “simple” living, their property encompassed
more than 100 acres, and was generally regarded as the finest landscaped estate
in all of Lake Forest. It was situated
along the shore of Lake Michigan immediately north of what is now Westleigh
Road and Harold McCormick’s Villa Turicum.
Looking southwest across the estate, Walden at center,
Villa Turicum at upper left
The main house, a large yet informal structure, was designed in 1896 by
architect Jarvis Hunt in the shingle style, to blend into its natural
surroundings. Hunt had come to Chicago
to work on the World’s Columbian Exposition, and later designed the Great Lakes
Naval Training Station. He was the
nephew of Richard Morris Hunt, the architect of both the Marshall Field and
John Borden houses in Chicago, as well as homes for the Vanderbilts in New
York, Newport, and Asheville, NC.
The extraordinary grounds of Walden were the design of landscape
architect Warren Manning, who also came to Chicago for the Exposition while
working for Frederick Law Olmsted.
Manning worked closely with Harriet McCormick, who studied botany at
Lake Forest College and later helped found both the Lake Forest Garden Club and
the Garden Club of America.
The site,
with its dramatic deep ravine provided ample opportunity for expressing Manning’s
ideas on landscape design and he returned annually for the next 40 years to
direct changes to the landscape as it evolved over time.
Cyrus McCormick Jr. was the eldest son of Cyrus McCormick, and assumed
the presidency of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company at the death of his
father in 1884; Cyrus Jr. was just 25 years old at the time. He held the position until 1902 when
McCormick’s firm, John Glessner’s firm, and three others merged to form
International Harvester at which time the two men went from being competitors
to officers of the new corporation.
McCormick Jr. shared the Glessners’ love of music and is credited with
bringing Prokofiev to the United States.
His city house was located at 50
E. Huron in an area then known as “McCormickville” for the number of residences
occupied by members of the family. In
1914, the year that the Glessners visited Walden, McCormick purchased the
former Patterson house at 20 E. Burton Place, designed by McKim, Mead and White
in 1893, and later enlarged by David Adler for McCormick.
Harriet Hammond McCormick married Cyrus in 1889 and quickly made a name
for herself by insisting on improving the conditions of the workers at her
husband’s factory. In addition to this
important work in promoting industrial welfare, she became an active
suffragette, and a leader in the work of the Y.W.C.A., the Infant Welfare
Society of Chicago, and the Visiting Nurse Association. Her organizational affiliations included the
Fortnightly and the Colonial Dames, both of which counted Mrs. Glessner among
their membership.
After her death in
1921, the Y.W.C.A. constructed the Harriet Hammond McCormick Memorial Building
at 1001 N. Dearborn (demolished 2005).
The year before the Glessners visited, the house was significantly
expanded by Schmidt, Garden and Martin, working with Lawrence Buck. The image of the house at the top of the
article was taken shortly after that project was completed.
Cyrus McCormick Jr. died in 1936 (the same year as John Glessner). His second wife Alice Holt McCormick had the
main house demolished in 1955, but several elements of the original estate
survive.
One of these, known as the
Ravello, is a terraced overlook near the southeast corner of the original property,
inspired by a visit that Cyrus and Harriet McCormick made to Ravello, a town above the
Amalfi coast in Italy. The terrace
remains, now juxtaposed with a modernist house constructed in 1960.
Another structure to survive is the dramatic bridge over the ravine, the
design of which was conceived by Cyrus McCormick Jr. The bridge is supported atop a huge arch with
supports radiating like spokes on a great wheel, and would have been crossed by
visitors entering the estate on their way to the main house.
A third survivor of the original estate is a charming Japanese-inspired teahouse,
constructed in the 1920s for Alice Holt McCormick. The architect was Dwight Perkins who created
an authentic teahouse substituting the traditional bamboo walls with glass and
wood. It was acquired in the 1950s by a
descendant of C. D. Peacock, who hired architect I. W. Coburn to convert the
structure into a home, adding a large addition and utilizing the teahouse as a “great
room” or enlarged living room.
To learn more about Walden, follow this link to two excellent articles
by Arthur Miller, recently retired archivist and librarian for Special Collections
at Lake Forest College:
Further information on the estate can also be found in Classic Country Estates of Lake Forest: Architecture and Landscape Design 1856-1940, co-authored by Kim Coventry, Daniel Meyer, and Arthur Miller in 2003.
No comments:
Post a Comment