2430 N. Lakeview, Chicago
[2430 N. Lakeview (1927) Rebori, Wentworth, Dewey & McCormick, architects /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
Have you ever heard the expression, A rose is a rose is a rose ? They are the eight most famous and most quoted word group that author and art collector Gertrude Stein put together during her long, repetitive word, writing career. By 1934 Stein had achieved a certain amount of fame and notoriety when she and her partner Alice B. Toklas took their very first plane ride on a cross country journey from New York to Chicago to visit Toklas' good friend Bobsy Goodspeed. The couple were on a visit from their home in France touring the U.S. giving talks and lectures, and arrived at Goodspeed's swank Lincoln Park address for a prolonged stay while Stein worked in Chicago with composer Virgil Thompson on their production of Four Saints in Three Acts: An Opera to be Sung.
[2430 N. Lakeview, Chicago /Images & Artwork: designslinger]
Gertrude and Alice were wined, dined, and spent their nights sleeping in one of the bedrooms in Elizabeth (Bobsy) Fuller Goodpseed's posh, top-floor duplex apartment at 2430 N. Lakeview Avenue that overlooked the park. Charles was a wealthy, Ohio industrialist which gave Bobsy the cash and cache to indulge in cultural philanthropy. She was the hostess with the mostess, fun-loving, witty, intelligent, and cultivated the culturally inspired. She took her interest in the arts seriously, serving as the president of the Arts Club of Chicago for several years. The Goodspeed's were one of the original shareholders and occupants of the high-rise, cooperative apartment building, built in 1927 on the site of the former Henry K. Chapin mansion. Chapin sold his property to a syndicate made up of wealthy city residents who were looking for luxury accommodations in a luxuriously designed building. As part of the deal, Chapin took over a single floor, while the rest of the building was cut in half and 16 duplexed, 17-roomed apartments were offered to the remaining owners.
[2430 N.Lakeview /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
Architect Andrew Rebori of Rebori, Wentworth, Dewey & McCormick, took one of the apartments for himself, and in keeping with the tastes of his rather conservative neighbors, designed an exterior with sedate, graceful, Georgian Revival detailing. The apartments themselves were finished-out per each owners requests, and the Goodpseed's chose architect David Adler, a practitioner of perfectly proportioned classical architecture and exquisite sweeping staircases, to design their interior.
It wasn't many years after Gertrude and Alice went back to their home in France that Charles died suddenly while he and Elizabeth were spending the winter of 1947 in Arizona. The widowed Mrs. Goodspeed married widower and wealthy New York industrialist Gilbert Chapman in 1950 and left Chicago for New York City, where she died in 1980 at the ripe old age of 87.
See 2430's neighbor's at: 2400 Lakeview Apartments and Priviledged Cooperation.
Posted by designslinger at 6/30/2011 6:24 AM 
Categories: Architecture, History
Tags: Andrew Rebori Rebori Wentworth Dewey and McCormick Lincoln Park Lake View apartment buildings
Categories: Architecture, History
Tags: Andrew Rebori Rebori Wentworth Dewey and McCormick Lincoln Park Lake View apartment buildings
I'm always surprised at how understated luxury apartments in Chicago could be. From LSD you really haven't a clue.
Reply to this
And that stretch along Lakeview Avenue is particularly nice, since it's not right on the Drive and a little quieter.
Reply to this
A year or two back, Classical America held a cocktail reception in the Goodspeeds' old apartment, which had been beautifully restored for its owners by Scott Himmel, and on a whim I called up the author of the Chicago Magazine article that put Bobsy Goodspeed's name back into [limited] circulation, and asked if he wanted to go as my guest--and he did. I figured it was probably the only chance I'd ever get to step foot into the place, and so far, I've been right. Even cooler was that the first person to say hello when I walked into the foyer was the L.A. decorator Joe Nye, and right around the corner in the honey-colored drawing room was Stephen Salny, who wrote the most recent book on Adler's country houses.
Reply to this
Wow, what a grand slam event. Seems like the perfect Bobsy Goodspeed gathering. She'd have loved it!
Reply to this