Lake Forest:: Estates, People, and Culture (Images of America)

Lake Forest: Estates, People, and Culture is the first book-scaled historical survey entirely focused on this notable Chicago North Shore suburb in a generation, offering a newly visual approach to the community's unique early past. Many of the nearly 200 images have never been published, having been newly discovered in local archives and family collections. From the Civil War to World War I especially, this community of millionaires flourished, giving rise to a diverse whole town-within-a-town whose local industry comprised the estates and their owners. West Lake Forest had been settled by Irish-descendant farmers after 1836, but by 1857 a new sort of community had sprung up further east, between the then-new railroad line along the lake and the shore. It was a wooded, naturalistic, anti-urban suburb, centered on education and faith, established by New England descendant Chicago Presbyterians, and businessmen with their families.

Resident historians Arthur H. Miller and Shirley M. Paddock both are past board members of the Lake Forest/Lake Bluff Historical Society, and currently serve on the board of the Lake Forest Foundation for Historic Preservation. Miller is archivist at Lake Forest College, and recently co-authored 30 Miles North: The History of Lake Forest College, Its Town and Its City of Chicago. Paddock, retired from the staff of School District 67, has always lived in Lake Forest.