FALL 2014 EVENTS: LAKE FOREST ELEGANCE, MODERN HOUSES, EVANSTON WALK, RUIN PORN

PARTNER ORGANIZATION

Lake Forest Preservation Foundation Presents

Enclave of Elegance:  Architecture, Interior Design and Gardens at Their Best

4 Historic Homes, 5 Gardens and Reception

Saturday, September 27, 1:00 to 3:30 PM Tour, 3:30 to 4:30 PM Reception

Tickets in Advance - General $95 - Patron $150, Day of Event purchase - $120

Organized with the assistance of SAH Member and Lake Forest historian Art Miller, this tour offers rare access to a range of sites from 1920s chic to the latest in traditional architectural and design high style.  The benefit House and Garden Walk funds preservation projects.  With four neighboring houses and five gardens, the last for a reception, the event promises to combine the kind of history, classic and current high style, and great stories locals travel abroad or to the east or west coasts to experience.  To attend this stellar walk please visit the Foundation website, www.lfpf.org and or call the office at 847-234-1230. 

Advance tickets must be purchased by September 24. Tickets are limited.

SOCIETY OF ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIANS CHICAGO CHAPTER: FALL SCHEDULE

Susan Benjamin Lecture: “Strikingly Modern” Houses of the 1930s-1960s

When: Monday, Sept. 29, 2014; 5:00 p.m. reception, lecture at 5:45 p.m.,

Where: AIA Chicago, 35 E. Wacker Dr., 2nd

What: Author Susan Benjamin’s upcoming slide lecture, “Strikingly Modern”, given in memory of the late Thomas Earle (a longtime member of CCSAH), defines Chicago’s great residential architecture of the 1930s through1960s. The influence of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe was great on subsequent practitioners of Modern residential architecture, those who designed many of the best houses in the Chicago area: i.e. Harry Weese, Edward Dart, James Speyer, Bertrand Goldberg, Edward Humrich, Bruce Graham, and David Haid, among others. Arguably every mid- century architect in Chicago reverberated off of them--Wright and Mies were the “elephants in the room”. Their ideas and work were accepted or rejected, but never ignored. Learn also about the challenges of preserving a Modernist icon owned by the Village of Schaumburg--the 1938 Paul Schweikher Home and Studio.  Susan will also explain how certain tax incentives and landmark designations, both local and national, can help save modernist houses, citing Dart and Weese houses.

Cost: Free to members, $10.00 for non-members.

RSVP: For questions, and to sign up, please contact Judy Freeman: by email: jrfree3500@aol.com, or telephone:  773-929-0329

Evanston Lakefront Houses Walking Tour

When: Saturday, October 11, 2014, 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.

Where: Meet at the Charles Gates Dawes mansion, now the Evanston History Center, at 225 Greenwood Street, Evanston, IL 60201 (nine minutes east of the Dempster stop on the Purple Line toward Linden) at 12:45 p.m. for a 1:00 tour of the museum and more.

What: Tour of the Dawes house by historian Kris Hartzell, followed by a walking tour of lakefront architecture in the vicinity of the museum, including the Japanese Consular Residence, the Arthur Orr house of 1888 by J. L. Silsbee (F. L. Wright’s first employer), with its gambrel roof. Shingle Style clapboard, stone bases and round porches, and also the eclectic 1892 C. F. Bradley house by architects Bosworth & Chase, among several other notable houses. This tour is given in honor of the new book, Evanston: 150 Years, 150 Places, Design Evanston 2013, by authors Kris Hartzell, Stuart Cohen, Heidrun Hoppe, Laura Saviano and Jack Weiss. This tour is limited to about thirty persons, so please reserve early.

Cost: Museum tour and walking tour admission fee is $15.00 for CCSA members, $20.00 for non-members.

RSVP: For further details, and/or to reserve a spot, please contact Judy Freeman by email:  jrfree3500@aol.com or by telephone: 773-929-0329.

Eric Holubow, Urban Archaeologist and Photographer

When: Monday, October 27, 2014, 6:00-7:30 p.m.

Where: American Institute of Architects Chicago Chapter office, 35 E. Wacker Drive, Suite 250

What: Urban archaeologist and architectural photographer Eric Holubow will speak on his new book: Abandoned: America’s Vanishing Landscape (Schiffer Publishing, $50.00), as well as his oeuvre of photography.  Eric’s photos speak: “For a relatively young country, America is rich in decaying ruins that cover its landscape.” Through his striking photography, Eric Holubow provides a glimpse inside these perilous structures to reveal the slow but unforgiving wear and tear that has befallen many of the country’s forgotten sites. What transpires is a surprising, yet undeniable beauty beneath the rubble and decrepitude.  Eric Holubow's compelling work forces us to pay attention to formerly grand, significant landmarks and institutions that have long been ignored, and reminds us of the tragic fate that they and everything we know eventually share.”

Cost: $10.00 for members, $15.00 for non-members
RSVP: Judy Freeman, email:  jrfree3500@aol.com

Annual Holiday “Show and Tell” Slide Show Dinner at Cliff Dwellers

When: Wednesday, Dec. 3. 2014, from 5:30 to 9:00 p.m.

Where: Cliff Dwellers, 200 S. Michigan, 22nd floor

What: Please save the date for our very own annual party of historical architecture slide shows.  Current SAH members who have ideas for presentations should contact Bill Locke, wlocke@ameritech.net or 312-932-9790.