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NO. 163 | A JWC MEDIA PUBLICATION
NEWS
Lovell Restaurant Mural Finds New Home
PRESBYTERIANS, PARTYING AND POISON IN LAKE FOREST canal in the 1840s settled the area, farming what’s now western Lake he North Shore’s most aris- Forest—they created the town’s tocratic town was primarily first religious institution, St. made for privacy—as an Mary’s Roman Catholic escape from Chicago in a land- Church—the town founders were scaped, sheltered enclave. What wealthy Presbyterians, according the band of productive Presbyte- to Michael H. Ebner, a Lake rians who founded Lake Forest, Forester who is professor emeriIllinois, created was an elegant, tus at Lake Forest College and open spaced village. author of Creating Chicago’s It would become home to North Shore, A Suburban wealthy, powerful men and free- History (University of Chicago thinking, liberated women. Press, 1988). “The railroad opened in 1855 Lake Forest’s history is rooted in religion and riddled with and they flocked to Lake Forest, tragedy, indulgence and despair. hiring landscape designer No Illinois town on the lake north Almerin Hotchkiss, who laid out of Chicago shuttles between he- a very imaginative design with donism and Puritanism more curvilinear streets which broke famously than Lake Forest. It is with convention, green, open the setting for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s space and a college,” Ebner said, oppressive The Great Gatsby and noting that other Midwestern Judith Guest’s repressive Ordi- towns, such as Oberlin, Ohio and nary People. Appleton, Wisconsin, had also Though the Irish Catholic established colleges. When asked working class who came to work to name who fundamentally on the Illinois and Michigan created Lake Forest, Ebner pegs BY SCOTT HOLLERAN
BY BILL MCLEAN
I
t was the talk of the restaurant, Lovells of Lake Forest, for 16 years. An immense, magnificent 20-by-8-foot mural rested above and behind the main bar, greeting each patron, starting an instant conversation. It is dubbed, “The Steeds of Apollo.” The 1970 Apollo 13 mission crew patch was patterned after the mural, created by artist Lumen Martin Winter in 1969. The mural depicts several horses in flight, their legs in various stages of gallop high above Earth. “We threw the original plans for the building in the garbage can,” chef Jay Lovell, son of Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell, recalls. “The original wouldn’t have been big enough for the mural, so we started over. The ceiling had to be three feet higher. Continued on PG 13
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the family Farwell. He writes in his book that they came to Illinois in a covered wagon in 1838. They farmed land and made money, with son Charles bringing the farm’s wheat to Chicago markets. His younger brother John soon went to work in the dry goods business, earning $250 a year. But he married the boss’s daughter a year later, did well and, at one point, employed a young clerk named Marshall Field—they briefly traded as Farwell, Field and Company— before earning an estimated $7 million value as J.V. Farwell and Company by the mid-1860s. Charles went on to serve as a U.S. senator from Illinois. John served as Lake Forest mayor. “The descendants served the town, too,” Ebner said. “In the 1980s, John’s great grandson, Frank Farwell, served as mayor. So this family really watched over the community.” “The Farwells took bold steps
Albert B. Dick, inventor of the mimeograph.
to advance the community—one of the boldest steps was the creation of Market Square between 1912 and 1917,” he said. “Lake Forest had a rather shabby business district just across from the Chicago and North Western train tracks and [passengers on the train] could see this shabby scene.
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So, they created this Tudor-style square. It’s a precursor to the shopping center—an architectural gem that is really a distinctive aspect of Lake Forest.” The Farwells carved a new town out of nature’s density with Continued on PG 12
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