Professional Carpet Cleaners Lake Forest Illinois & Surrounding Areas

The Potawatomi inhabited Lake County before the United States Federal Government forced them out in 1836 as part of Indian Removal of tribes to areas west of the Mississippi River.

As Lake Forest was first developed in 1857, the planners laid roads that would provide limited access to the city in an effort to prevent outside traffic and isolate the tranquil settlement from neighboring areas. Though the town is considerably more accessible today, due in part to the extensive new construction taking place further west, the much smaller neighborhood of eastern Lake Forest, near the coast of Lake Michigan, remains relatively secluded. It is one of the most scenic, historical, and architecturally significant suburbs of Chicago. These neighborhoods include estates and homes designed by distinguished architects such as Howard Van Doren Shaw, David Adler, Frank Lloyd Wright, Arthur Heun, Jerome Cerny, Henry Ives Cobb, and modernist George Fred Keck, among others. Landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Jens Jensen also designed projects in Lake Forest. Market Square, designed by Howard Van Doren Shaw, was completed in 1916 as a commercial center for Lake Forest.

Lake Forest had an African-American community from very early on in its history, drawn to employment opportunities on the estates and educational institutions. Unlike other communities in the area, Lake Forest had many residents who were associated with the Abolitionist movement. Lake Forest’s first mayor and a founder of Lake Forest College, Sylvester Lind, was a major figure on the Underground Railroad, and was known to help escaped slaves settle in Lake Forest. Roxana Beecher, niece of abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, taught integrated school in Lake Forest. A prominent early Lake Forest businessman was Samuel Dent, an escaped slave and Union veteran who ran a livery stable. A local jazz band was named in Dent’s memory. Another black entrepreneur was Julian Matthews, who ran a bakery, restaurant, and ice cream parlor with his wife Octavia. The second police officer hired in 1900 in Lake Forest was a black man from Kentucky, Walker Sales, who was hired in 1900 and stayed on for nearly 20 years. Members of this African-American community established the African Methodist Episcopal Church as of 1866, and it stood at what is now the corner of Maplewood and Washington Road. By 1900, another black church, the First Baptist Church of Lake Forest, had opened and is still active. By the 1980s, increased housing prices had encouraged some older black residents to sell their properties lucratively, but others stayed in the community. Lake Forest also had a small community of Jews, typified by wealthy socialites such as Albert Lasker and David Adler .

The secluded style of Lake Forest was intended as a form of protection. According to the president of the Lake Forest-Lake Bluff Historical Society, the captains of industry and upper-class elite who first settled in Lake Forest sought a refuge from late 19th and early 20th-century Chicago. In their view, the city was overrun with immigrants from southern and eastern Europe who had dangerous socialist ideas and indulged in excessive alcoholic consumption.

Country clubs became important centers of social activity in Lake Forest’s early decades. The Onwentsia Club was, in the words of one writer, “the premiere social and sporting club in the Midwest”. In 1898, members held a plantation-themed party, dining on fried chicken, corn on the cob, and watermelon served by—in keeping with the party’s theme—”little colored girls”. After-dinner entertainment included a minstrel show. This was a period in United States history in which there was considerable interest in Southern culture and the mythical plantation society. Both the North and South were active in memorializing their contributions to the Civil War, as well as achieving a kind of reconciliation that, according to historian David W. Blight, pushed issues of race to the side.