The Railroad Station at Lake Forest 
LAKE FOREST 
THE BEAUTIFUL SUBURB OF CHICAGO 
(AMERICAN SUBURBAN COMMUNITIES-V.) 
T HE recent development of country or, 
more properly speaking, suburban life in 
America, is nowhere more in evidence than 
in the neighborhood of Chicago. Each year 
shows a marked increase in the number of 
attractive permanent homes built along the 
shore of Lake Michigan north of the city. 
For a long time, Evanston, twelve miles 
away, was the center of this semi-country life; 
but today the whole shore, from Lincoln 
Park to Lake Forest, is thickly settled with 
a population living outside the city for fully 
two-thirds of the year. 
The Village of Lake Forest was first 
chosen as the site of a Presbyterian Col¬ 
lege in 1856, 
and today the 
title of almost 
every piece ot 
property be- 
tween the 
Lake and the 
Chicago and 
North - West¬ 
ern Railway 
tracks, is origi¬ 
nally vested in 
the “Lake 
Forest Uni¬ 
versity.” 
For several years after the establishment 
of the college there was no apparent attempt 
to develop anything but a small college com¬ 
munity, and the first residences were built in 
the center of the present village and around 
the grounds now known as the college cam¬ 
pus. These residences possessed no archi¬ 
tectural merit, but were simple brick or frame 
houses, built in the ugly style of the fifties, 
when nothing seemed to be desired in houses 
except sufficient rooms to supply the family 
needs. The topography and beauty of the 
land, however, soon attracted Chicago business 
men searching situations for summer homes. 
A high bluff runs along the Lake, broken 
frequently by 
deep, wooded 
ravines, where 
all kinds of 
flowers flour¬ 
ish and many 
varieties of 
song birds 
make their 
nests. I'he 
whole tract 
was originally 
a vast forest 
of oak, maple, 
ash and hick- 
THE HOME OF THE ONWENTSIA CLUB 
265 
