Driving Tour of Historic Homes and Landmarks in Evanston Illinois

Entries on This Tour

1. Evanston History Center; Charles G Dawes House

Home to the 30th U.S. Vice President (1925 - 1929) and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, this home now serves as the Evanston History Center. This local history museum includes archives open to researchers and genealogists as well as a permanent exhibit that traces the history of Evanston through a variety of artifacts and interpretive materials. The Center offers docent-led tours as well as special events and exhibits throughout the year. Charles Dawes is best known for the Dawes Plan, adopted in August 1924 to alleviate international tensions associated with Germany's inability to pay World War I reparations. The home was built in 1894 for the family of Robert Sheppard, treasurer and business manager of Northwestern University. Dawes lived in this Evanston house from 1909 to 1941. Designed in the French chateaux style by architect Henry Edwards-Ficken of New York, the three-and-a- half story mansion has twenty-five rooms, six bedrooms, seven bathrooms and eleven fireplaces.

2. Frederick B. Carter Jr. House Designed by Walter Burley Griffin

The Frederick B. Carter Jr. House (built, 1910) was designed by famous Prairie-School Architect Walter Burley Griffin. The house was one of 130 built in the U.S. by Burley before he moved to Australia, notably to design its capital city of Canberra. For there he moved to India, where he died at the age of 59. Griffin practiced for forty years and arguably stands as the third great member of the Chicago movement after Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright.

3. George B. Dryden House

This historic mansion was constructed between 1916 and 1917 for the family of Chicago rubber industrialist George Dryden and his wife Ellen, heiress of Kodak Eastman company founder George Eastman. The wealthy couple lived in the house designed by well-known Prairie School architect George Maher, whio designed the home in the Georgian-Revival style mirror that of the house where Eastman had previously resided in Rochester. The building enjoyed many modern advancements such as fireproof construction, a built-in vacuum system, and a water purification system. George Dryden donated the home to Northwestern University at the time of his death. The property was later sold to the school district and sold again to a Chicago-area developer in 2002.

4. The Andridge Apartments

The 1923-built S-shaped apartment complex, while unique in design, provides insight into a wealth of cultural history attached to the 1920s. In contrast to the dark, urban apartments that dominated the landscape of many cities during the height of the Industrial Revolution, Chicago-area apartments of the post-WWI era were required to provide at least 20% courtyard space, if not 35% -- combating the urban ills for which famous progressive Jane Addams fought. The apartment arose amidst a strong Chicago and U.S. economy and building boom, helped when Evanston received rail access to Chicago's downtown.

5. Dwight Perkins House

The house, built in 1904, stands as a monument to Dwight Perkins, one of the founders of the Prairie School architectural style that became a standard for Midwestern homes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The house also showcases landscaping and outdoor access, a key element of the Arts & Crafts style of architecture. Dwight and his wife Lucy Perkins loved nature and it influenced Dwight's career. Lucy,'s career was just as successful as she went on to sell more than two million children's books. Their two children and daughter-in-law also contributed heavily to local history, architecture, education and writing.

6. Edward Kirk Warren House and Garage

The Edward Kirk Warren House and Garage (built 1910) served as the home to Edward Kirk Warren and his wife. Warren was an inventor and industrialist who developed the featherbone corset, which begat the creation of the Warren Featherbone Company in 1883 (and remained in business until 2008). Meanwhile, the historic Tudor-Revival house is the product of Architect William Carbys Zimmerman, the Illinois State Architect at the time who is most known for designing many of the buildings found at the University of Illinois.

7. Grosse Point Lighthouse

Grosse Point Lighthouse was constructed between 1872 and 1874 under the leadership of engineer and Union Civil War officer Orlando Poe. An Evanston landmark, the structure stands today both as a reminder of the centrality of lighthouses as an aid to maritime navigation and the importance of historic preservation. The building of the Erie Canal in New York and the Illinois & Michigan canal in Illinois connected New York, Chicago, and New Orleans, turning the Great Lakes and connecting rivers into a national water-highway system. As a result, speculators heavily invested in Chicago, turning it into a major port city within decades thanks in part to the role of the Transcontinental Railroad. The waters near Grosse Point (now Evanston) proved to be quite dangerous, and support for the lighthouse came from the federal government. The lighthouse is only open for tours during the summer months, but the grounds are free for visitors to walk around throughout the whole year.

8. Roycemore School (1915-2011)

Roycemore School in Evanston was established in 1915 by a group of affluent Evanston parents in response to dissatisfaction with the public schools and the news that the current private schools would soon be closing. The school was named in honor of the prominent nineteenth-century minister Andrew Royce who was also related to Julia Henry, one of the leaders of the effort to establish the school. In its early years, the school was open to young boys and girls but only admitted young women to the higher grades. The school and served many of the children of wealth and privilege, including the granddaughter of U.S. Steel Founder Elbert Gary for whom the city of Gary, Indiana was named. In 1968, the first young man graduated from the school. The school moved to a new location in 2011 as its lease was set to expire.

9. Castle Tower Apartments

One of the many courtyard-style apartments that arose during the 1920s in the Chicago metro region, the 1928-built Castle Tower Apartments point to a desire to create multi-family dwellings that appealed to middle-class values. Rather than build bland, non-descriptive and crowded apartments, many architects played on ancient Roman and Medieval European designs, including the courtyards which also drew inspiration from U.S. Progressives that promoted healthier living and outdoor spaces, differing from city slums and crowded spaces.

10. Levere Memorial Temple, Sigma Alpha Epsilon

Sigma Alpha Epsilon Foundation owns, operates and maintains the Levere Memorial Temple. The structure was built between 1929 and 1930 and serves as a war memorial as well as an administrative building for Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity. The building houses offices and many historical artifacts to Sigma Alpha Epsilon, including the first minutes of the the first meeting.

11. Frances Willard House (A.K.A. "Rest Cottage")

Frances Willard (1839 - 1898) served as president of the largest women's non-secular group of the late nineteenth century: Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). The WCTU not only pushed for temperance, but also women's suffrage and for reforms to labor and prisons. The WCTU also provided a voice to anti-lynching campaigns. When she died, nearly 20,000 people paid their respects as she had gained considerable notoriety for her work as a social activist.

12. Woman's Club of Evanston

Built more than a century ago (1913), the building emerged during the height of the Progressive Era when women throughout the country were joining national organizations in droves. And from Mary "Mother Jones" Harris to Jane Addams and temperance to suffrage movements, women were also increasingly engaging in social and political activism. The Evanston house stands as reminder to that era, but it also speaks to its local significance; it remains pivotal to Evanston Women and the community at large.

This Tour is a Driving or Biking Tour.

Driving Tour of Historic Homes and Landmarks in Evanston Illinois

Created by Clio Admin on May 12th 2018, 11:13:53 am.

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Description

This tour starts at the Evanston History Center, located in the former home of Vice President Charles G Dawes. The tour includes several other historic homes as it winds its way south and then west before stopping at the Grosse Point Lighthouse and several buildings related to the history of Northwestern University. The tour concludes with the former home of Frances Willard, founder of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, and the building that has been home to the Women's Club of Evanston for over a century.

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Driving Tour of Historic Homes and Landmarks in Evanston Illinois

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