High-tech meets history with Lake Bluff Estate Tours
A Lake Bluff family in the mid-1920s looked into developing their prominent lakefront estate into a 150-home subdivision and hotel, possibly including a casino.
A Russian princess held court in a mansion near Sheridan Road for much of the 20th century after marrying into the Armour family. A Lake Bluff manor owner was one of the first interior designers to incorporate Lucite into furniture, sparking the midcentury modern affinity for acrylic resin back in the middle of the last century.
These are just a few of the anecdotes shared in the three newest tours on the Lake Bluff Walking Tours app: Moffett Road Estates, Green Bay Road Estates, and Sheridan Road Estates.
The Moffett Road and Green Bay Road tours provide an outdoor activity, while the Sheridan Road tour is best taken as an "armchair tour" to be enjoyed from the comfort of home, since most of the tour discusses private property not visible from a public street.
The Estates Walking tours showcase the country mansions built by late 19th and early 20th century American tycoon families, including the Swifts, Armours, McCormicks, Fields, Blairs and more. Learn about homes and landscapes designed by prominent architects and landscape architects, including Jens Jensen, Howard Van Doren Shaw and David Adler, to name a few.
• On the Moffett Road Estates tour, see what became of the heavily wooded, 115 lakefront acres railroad developer William H. Ferry purchased in 1871, a few years before the Lake Bluff Camp Meeting established a footing in Lake Bluff.
The Ferry family never lived on the land, which at one point held the Midwest's first polo field, operated by Onwentsia Club in the late 1890s.
After the polo field moved to Lake Forest, the property became Ferry Fields and Ferry Wood Subdivision, and included five estates owned by prominent Chicagoans.
• The Green Bay Road Estates tour details six estates built in the 1930s by Chicago business magnates including Ralph Poole, Philip Armour III, and William Kelley. All six are still standing today, though some face preservation challenges.
• The Sheridan Road "armchair tour" profiles numerous manor homes with names as beautiful and intriguing as the houses: Crab Tree Farm; Port of Call; Gads Hill Settlement; Pointed Roofs; and Shore Acres Country Club.
Each tour includes captioned, historical photos, as well as descriptions of what's currently at many of the addresses.
The Estate Tours are recent additions to the Lake Bluff Walking Tours app, which was launched in May by the Lake Bluff History Museum and Lake Bluff 125 Committee, with support from Abbott, to celebrate the village's 125th anniversary.
The walking tours are a modern, digital expansion of the Lake Bluff History Museum's popular docent-led tours. The app was produced by museum board members Steve Kraus and Mark Dewart and local resident Dan Huston.
Like the other tours on the Lake Bluff Walking Tours app, the Estate Walking Tours are narrated by local voice-over artists Lise Dominique and Walt Sloan. Other tours include the Uptown Commercial District; Lake Bluff Camp Meeting Grounds; Camp Meeting Cottages; and a tour of the Dogs on the Bluff public art installation. More tours will be made available in 2021.
The Lake Bluff Walking Tours app can be downloaded at no cost from the Apple App Store and Google Play.