Hawthorne Place
[Hawthorne Place, Chicago, March 5, 2010 /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
Along Lake Michigan on Chicago's north side, large houses on generous pieces of property
once lined the shoreline and a block or two inland. There was no Lake Shore Drive or Lincoln Park, just mushy soil, some sand with reeds and weeds. A few enterprising real estate men bought land near the lake, and developed the property into upscale residential communities on the then, outskirts of town. This is just what the Mc Connell brothers did in the 1880s when they created Hawthorne Place with large lots and large homes for an upwardly mobile clientle.
[Benjamin F. Mc Connell House (1884) 568 W. Hawthorne Place, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
The oldest house on the block was built by Benjamin Mc Connell in 1884 when the township
of Lake View was outside the city limits. He and his brother, and partner, John grew up in the area and Ben was the first graduate of Lake View High School in 1876. But his time on the street was relatively short lived. In 1899 Benjamin moved to St. Joseph, Michigan where he started a prosperous manufacturing business. The house underwent an extensive redo in 1987 designed by architects Schroeder Murchie Laya, including a large addition in the rear.
[John Mc Connell House (1885) 546 W. Hawthorne Place, Chicago /Images & Artwork: designslinger]
John's house stands on a lot next to brother Ben's. Very different in style, there is a corner
bay featured on the first floor of Ben's house, which you can just see under the large porch roof. John was quite a mover and shaker in Lake View and served as an alderman in the Chicago City Council once the city annexed the township in 1889. He was also a big proponent of bringing "the Lake Shore drive" (as it was known back then) into the area since Hawthorne dead-ended into the lake in the 1880s. There were big disputes over land ownership, titles and deeds, but eventually a roadbed was laid which brought the carriage trade northward. John and Ben thought so much of the name of their street that their yacht was christened The Hawthorne. Unfortunately the boat sank in the lake when it was struck by the Goodrich Lines' vessel, the Iowa.
[Alfons Bacon House (1937) Mayo & Mayo, architects /Images & Artwork: designslinger]
There were few houses on the block through the 1890s, but there was a burst of building
between 1900 and 1915. Eventually builing lots at the edges of the street gave way to large apartment complexes, but the central portion of the block survived virtually intact. The last single family home home built on Hawthorne was architect's Mayo & Mayo's 1937 home for 30-year-old obstetrician Alfons Bacon. Designed in an Streamline-Moderne style, the exterior has an almost Georgian orderliness and symmetry to it. It was constructed on the western edge of what had once been Benjamin Mc Connell's side yard.
Hawthorne is one of the few survivors in the city of the once stately, suburban tracts that
lined the lake front at the turn of the 20th century. You can see another remnant of this bygone era in our previous post: Just Around the Corner.
Also see what a difference a few years makes in an architect's style at another Mayo &
Mayo project: Parisian Starckness.
Posted by designslinger at 5/24/2010 2:51 AM 
Categories: Cities, Architecture, History, Preservation
Tags: Mc Connell Bros. Mayo and Mayo John Mc Connell Benjamin F. Mc Connell
Categories: Cities, Architecture, History, Preservation
Tags: Mc Connell Bros. Mayo and Mayo John Mc Connell Benjamin F. Mc Connell
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