Four Grand Mansions
[Carl C. Heiser House (1890) Frank Abbott, architect; Mason B. Starring House (1889) Lars Gustav Hallberg, architect;
Arthur T. Aldis House (1896) Holabird & Roche, architects; Lawrence D. Rockwell House (1911) Holabird & Roche,
architects /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
These four houses, tucked behind the trees and surrounded by high rise apartment
buildings, are the last remnants of a line of mansions that once stretched 10 blocks along Chicago's Lake Shore Drive from Oak Street to North Avenue. Edith Rockefeller McCormick, daughter of John D., had a large home at Oak Street and the Drive, and Robert Todd Lincoln, son of the President, had a mansion just 3 doors south of our surviving cluster of homes. Both of their houses were torn down and replaced by 1960s-style apartment blocks.
[Heiser & Starring Houses, 1250 & 1254 N. Lake Shore Drive /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
The oldest two of our surviving group are the Heiser and Starring Houses built in 1890
and 1889 in a style known as Richardsonian Romanesque. The architects, Frank Abbott and Lars Hallberg aren't names that roll off your architectural history tongue, but they had pretty active practices during the late 20th century. Henry Hobson Richardson, for whom the style is named, actually built a house just north of these two for Franklin McVeagh in 1886, which was torn down in the 1920s.
[Carl C. Heiser House (1890) Frank Abbott,architect /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
The Heiser House looked so much like Richardson's McVeagh mansion that you'd think
they were designed by the same architect. But by the time real estate magnate Carl Heiser built this house Richardson was dead, the heavy rusticated stone genre was popular, and Abbott produced a facade that could be known as coming from the imitation-is-the-sincerest-form-of-flattery school of design.
[Mason Brayman Starring House (1889) Lars GustavHallberg, architect /Images & Artwork: designslinger]
Architect Gustav Hallberg followed some of the rules of the Richardsonian program when
he designed this house for Mason Brayman Starring, but it isn't quite the copy that Abbott produced for Mr. Heiser. Starring, like most of the home owners along this strip of the Drive, was well-connected and rich, but the kind of lifestyle that supported these 20-room mansions eventually went out of fashion and these two single family homes were turned into multi-room apartment houses.
Those are buildings I remember from the 1980s. Even though very grand on the exterior,
the old, yellowed, faded roller shades, worn and peeling window frames and large number of mailboxes in the entryways were hints of the declining stature of the houses. Of course they were threatened with demolition, and even though Heiser's mansion had been converted into a 23-room rooming house and the Starring manse turned into a 12 unit apartment building, the old houses held on. Purchased in 1989 by developer Art Frigo, he saved what he could of the original surviving interiors and turned each house into two-unit condominiums. Unfortunately they wouldn't sell, so Frigo took one apartment for himself and rented out the other three. By the time we entered the 21st century times had changed, and Frigo ended up selling the mansions (the Heiser residence sold for a reputed $10 million in 2002) and both houses now stand proudly, once again, as single family homes.
Posted by designslinger at 6/7/2010 2:47 AM 
Categories: Architecture, History, Preservation
Tags: Lars Gustav Hallberg Frank Abbott Lake Shore Drive Chicago Richardsonian Romanesque
Categories: Architecture, History, Preservation
Tags: Lars Gustav Hallberg Frank Abbott Lake Shore Drive Chicago Richardsonian Romanesque
Comments