Fairlawn I

965 East Deerpath Road, Lake Forest, Lake County, Illinois

Built in 1870, for Senator Charles Benjamin Farwell (1823-1903), and his wife, Mary Eveline Smith (1825-1905). Charles and his brother, John, were the first shareholders in the Lake Forest Association and their mansions stood opposite one another. One wing of his Italianate mansion (originally the conservatory) was given over to his art collection, the glass roof of which allowed it to be bathed in daylight....

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This house is best associated with...

Charles Benjamin Farwell

Senator Charles B. Farwell, of Farwell & Co., Chicago & Lake Forest, Illinois

1823-1903

Mary (Smith) Farwell

Mrs Mary Eveline (Smith) Farwell

1825-1905

Anna (Farwell) de Koven

Mrs Anna (Farwell) de Koven

1860-1953

Rose (Farwell) Chatfield-Taylor

Mrs Rose (Farwell) Chatfield-Taylor

1870-1918

Grace (Farwell) McGann

Mrs Grace (Farwell) Winston, McGann

1866-1949

The lakeshore estate occupied the entire block within Deerpath Road, Spring Lane, Mayflower Road and Lake Road. Its imaginative grounds were thought to have been laid out by the great Frederick Law Olmsted, but he was not responsible for what put them in the history books today: In 1892, Charles Blair Macdonald (1855-1939) finally accepted the invitation of Rose Farwell (1870-1918) and her husband, Chatfield-Taylor, to lay out a golf course at Fairlawn - the first golf course in the Chicago region, "seven tomato cans (laid) out over 20-acres, utilizing both the decorative pond and the lake bluffs as hazards".

Farwell's son is better associated with Mallow, but through his three talented daughters (and their respective husbands) in the years around the turn of the century Fairlawn became, "an important artists' community". Sadly, the mansion burned down in 1920. Three years later Grace (Farwell) McGann built Fairlawn II in its place.