End of an era on the North Shore - Lansdowne, the last of the lakefront estates from the Gilded Age, has been sold to a developer

End of an era on the North Shore - Lansdowne, the last of the lakefront estates from the Gilded Age, has been sold to a developer who plans to subdivide the 21-acre property
By Mary Umberger
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
Published July 12, 2007

One can still live the Gatsby-esque estate lifestyle on the North Shore; it just will have to be on a smaller piece of land.

With the sale of a 21-acre Lake Bluff estate known as Lansdowne to a developer, the end of an era is at hand. The lakefront mansion was deemed to be the last of its kind, a cavernous home on vast acreage that symbolized the extraordinary wealth on the North Shore in the late 19th and 20th Centuries.

The Lansdowne property will now be carved up and parceled out, the parties involved said Wednesday.

Built in 1911 for the family that headed the Rand McNally map empire, Lansdowne was sold for $16 million to Lincolnshire developer Orren Pickell, who plans to preserve the existing house but will build six other homes there, according to Ronald Friedman, who had been trying to sell the estate for more than five years.

It's the third such property to pass into developer hands in the past year or so, preservationists said. Students of the era say the multiacre estates have fallen victim to high maintenance costs and property taxes, not to mention changed notions of proximity to neighbors.

"To be on that piece of property just isn't affordable for most families anymore," said Pickell. "I talked to some of the wealthiest people in the country [about another huge mansion he bought in Highland Park], and they didn't want the whole estate -- they wanted neighbors."

Arthur Miller, archivist at Lake Forest College, who has studied the history of North Shore homes, lamented the evolution. He said subdividing the naturalistic landscape plan by fabled designer Jens Jensen, who worked on all three properties, would be a particular loss. "The [three properties] are the last to go."

One of the three, the former Highland Park home of insurance magnate Michael Segal, was purchased by Pickell last fall. His plan to subdivide its 17 acres is in the midst of a tug-of-war with preservationists, who this month succeeded in acquiring a historic landmark designation for the property, known as the A.G. Becker estate.

The designation means that the building plans will have to be approved by the town's preservation commission.

Brandon Stanick, assistant to the village administrator in Lake Bluff, said it was unlikely that any efforts to landmark the entire Lansdowne estate would derail development because it already has been legally subdivided by Friedman, who at one time planned to develop the land himself.

Also sold in the past year was the 20-acre estate in Lake Bluff known as the Harrison House, according to Miller, who said it was in the process of being subdivided.

David Bahlman, president of Landmarks Illinois, a preservation group, said he was disappointed that Lansdowne's acreage would be cut up, though he wasn't surprised.

"The ideal preservation plan for both [the Becker estate and Lansdowne] would be for an individual to buy them and preserve them as-is," he said. "But we have to accept the fact that such an individual didn't present themselves in either of those situations.

"Nobody wants to see a beautiful property like that destroyed with a subdivision but, often times, there is no economic alternative."

Friedman, who had listed the home for $25 million, said he was selling the property because his children are grown and he and his wife, Patricia, intend to move into a smaller home in the area. He declined to discuss his property tax bill, but published reports put it at $170,000 a year.

"We tried for a long time to get a buyer, to get one person to own it, as we did," said Friedman, a manufacturer of auto parts. "There are a lot of wealthy people around, but nobody seemed to want the property.

"I would have preferred to keep it intact, but it wasn't really in the cards."

The Georgian-style home was designed by Chicago architect Benjamin Marshall for Elizabeth McNally Clow and her husband, Harry Clow, who headed the map company. Marshall also designed the Drake and Blackstone hotels, the former Edgewater Beach Hotel and numerous Chicago landmarks. The main living areas of the 13,500-square-foot home were mostly unchanged in the past century, said Jane Lepauw, the Coldwell Banker real estate agent who represented Friedman in the sale. Filled with a mix of Art Nouveau, Art Deco and classic European detailing, the three-story home contains 10 bedrooms and a dozen baths, though Friedman at one point lost count and said he thought he might have had 11 bedrooms. On the grounds are tennis courts and a polo field. Much of the Jensen landscaping has deteriorated or been removed over time, she said.

Lepauw, who became fascinated with Marshall's architecture in the course of marketing the home, founded a society to educate the public about his works. She said the subdivision of the land was "almost inevitable," but regards the preservation of the home itself as a triumph.

"It is the passing of an era. It's over," she said. "But the house is fabulous."

Miller said there are a couple of pieces of occupied land in the north suburban region that are of Lansdowne's size or larger, but it's the last of the true lakefront estates from the North Shore's Gilded Age.

"At the peak of the estate period, between 1910 and 1940, there were probably two to three dozen such country places" with 10 to 25 acres along and near the lake, said Miller, who in 2003 co-wrote "Classic Country Estates of Lake Forest." One, for example was Mellody Farm, the J. Ogden Armour estate, which had a 20-acre lake.

North Shore architect Stuart Cohen said the estates were initially intended as summer escapes from city heat and crime. "They were refuges from the rest of the world," he said. "Invariably, even if the main house survived, they were subdivided after World War II."

"People had no interest in houses of that sort," said Cohen, who also has written a book on the region's homes, called "North Shore Chicago." "They looked at them and saw enormous maintenance and repair bills.

"They lived in an era that was so categorically different from 'Leave It To Beaver' and the Nelsons -- no one could imagine why you would want them or what you would do with them."

Pickell said he plans to seek landmark status for the house. "It's an awesome house, among the prettiest houses I've ever been in," he said.

He intends to sell the land around it in 2-to-3-acre plots for about $2 million to more than $5 million each. His company will contract with the buyers to design and build the homes on the lots.

The builder, who has made his reputation in the past two decades building large homes, said people admire the wide-open estate acreage, but few actually want to own it.

"To have 17 to 20 acres in the middle of town, it just isn't the thing to do today."

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mumberger@tribune.com