By Anne Morrissy | Photo credits labeled within photo captions
“What do they do for a living?” It’s a common question asked by hikers on the Geneva Lake Shore Path and the many people who enjoy a boat cruise around the lake. Staring at the impressively opulent lakefront homes, it’s hard not to wonder about the source of the wealth that built them. This has been true since the first grand summer “cottages” began going up around the lake in the 1870s and 1880s. And in those days, one common answer to the question, “What do they do for a living?” turned out to be: “They make their money in railroads.”
More than any other industry at the time, the railroad transformed the Lake Geneva area from a small community of pioneer settlers to the summer playground of the wealthy. The arrival of regular train service to Lake Geneva in the summer of 1871 brought a new type of resident to the area: wealthy businessmen and their families eager to escape the dirt and chaos of the city.
Many of these families came up from Chicago by train and quickly fell in love with the area. Those with money to spend bought lakefront property and commissioned architects to design large summer estates. And for many of those early families, the fortunes they used to fund these projects were rooted in the railroad industry as well. Several of the earliest lakefront property owners in Lake Geneva were railroad executives, industry attorneys, capitalists who counted railroads among their investments or merchants whose businesses serviced the railroads. More than any other industry, railroad money built the Lake Geneva we know today.
SHELTON STURGES/HENRY H. PORTER, MAPLE LAWN
In fact, this trend began with the very first Chicago family to build a lakefront home on Geneva Lake: the Sturges family. Shelton Sturges, a Chicago banker and businessman, brought his family to live at Maple Lawn, the house he built near the site of modern-day Lake Geneva Manor in 1870. Thanks in part to the Sturges family’s connections, the following year, the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad extended their train line from Crystal Lake, Illinois to Lake Geneva, ushering in a new era for the once isolated town and inspiring the flourishing of the summer resort destination that Lake Geneva remains to this day.
In 1890, Shelton Sturges sold Maple Lawn to railroad magnate Henry H. Porter, chairman of the Chicago and Eastern Railway and a director of the First National Bank of Chicago. Porter hired famed architect William Le Baron Jenney to make modifications to Maple Lawn and add several outbuildings. The property remained in the Porter family until 1947.
GEORGE STURGES, SNUG HARBOR
In addition to the Shelton Sturges family, two of the early arrivals to the summer colony were Shelton’s brothers: George and Buckingham, and both had railroad connections. At age 17, George Sturges had begun working for his father’s firm, which counted among its many interests the leasing and management of grain elevators, a revolutionary new technology that was transforming the young city. During the Civil War, the company owned the grain elevators that served the Illinois Central Railroad depot and was the leading grain warehousing company in the city.
In 1859, at the age of 21, George left his father’s firm and formed George Sturges & Co., leasing a grain elevator under his own name, eventually expanding his operation. He was enormously successful; later, he took the money he made and transitioned to banking.
George Sturges and his family began visiting Lake Geneva as early as 1870 (when his brother first built Maple Lawn), renting and later buying a small home in town which they later donated for use as the public library. In 1881, they moved into their own impressive Lake Geneva estate, Snug Harbor. The 20-room mansion was built in the French chateau style and featured a dramatic, five-story turret that could be seen from across the lake. The rooms in Snug Harbor were so large that the family had to order custom, oversized furniture to fit inside it. The home was enjoyed by the George Sturges family through 1919, when it was sold. In 1947, the Swedish Covenant Church bought the property and demolished the home to make way for Covenant Harbor Bible Camp, which remains on the site to this day.
BUCKINGHAM STURGES, FAIRFIELDS
George’s brother, Buckingham Sturges, also made some of his money in the railroad industry, first by establishing the Union Stock Yards Bank to provide banking services to the newly built Union Stock Yards. A few years later, Buckingham Sturges and another brother, Albert, built the Leavenworth, Lawrence & Galveston Railroad, which was eventually sold to the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad.
In 1883, after more than a decade spent in a cottage on his brother’s Maple Lawn property, Buckingham Sturges and his family built a 15-room summer home in Lake Geneva on a 20-acre lot of what is today the Sturwood neighborhood (named for this family). The home, which they called Fairfields, was built in the Queen Anne style and sat on a hill with impressive lake views. It was separated from the lake by Main Street and his brother Shelton’s property, but provided the family with the benefit of seclusion while still being close to town and the lakefront. The house was mostly destroyed by fire in 1940, but the stone first floor was salvaged and converted to a bungalow-style home, which remains to this day.
GEORGE L. DUNLAP, THE MOORINGS
“Lake Geneva, I am told, was discovered by Shelton Sturges and George L. Dunlap,” wrote a reporter for the Chicago Evening Mail in 1885. Dunlap, the general manager of the Chicago & North Western Railroad “was instrumental in having the railroad extended from Crystal Lake To Lake Geneva” in 1871, according to a later article in the Chicago Tribune. Dunlap began his career as an engineer on the Boston & Albany Railroad before he was selected by Samuel Tilden to manage the new Galena & Union Railroad. Under Dunlap’s management, the Galena & Union was eventually rechristened the Chicago & North Western Railroad and extended its service throughout northern Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa.
Four years after completing the extension of the railroad to Lake Geneva, Dunlap built a summer estate for his family on the site of present- day Stone Manor that he named “The Moorings.” The 18-room home was
built of wood frame, three stories tall, featuring a large wraparound porch. Dunlap was an active Lake Geneva resident in these early years of the summer colony; he was a charter member of the Lake Geneva Yacht Club and he often sponsored a lavish fireworks show for the Fourth of July in front of his home. Otto Young bought The Moorings in 1897 and initially moved the house closer to the road. He lived in the original house until construction of Stone Manor was complete, at which point The Moorings was demolished.
HENRY STRONG, NORTHWOODSIDE
Among the railroad industrialists of the Lake Geneva summer colony in these early days, Henry Strong had one of the most impressive resumes. Born in Scotland, Strong returned with his family to the U.S. in 1834 and settled in Indiana. He studied and practiced medicine before turning to a legal career. He was hired as general counsel for the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, and eventually went on to serve as president of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad for about two years before resuming his legal career.
In 1876, Strong and his family built a summer cottage on the north shore of the lake, west of Lake Geneva, and named it Northwoodside. The house was built in the Exotic Revival style, a gabled clapboard house with wide, bracketed eaves, patterned stick- work and leaded-glass windows, the overall effect of which evoked Swiss architecture. The estate originally included several outbuildings as well, including stables, a children’s playhouse, a caretaker’s cottage, a boathouse, a lakeside pavilion, a pump house and an organ house. Strong, who was known to be a larger-than- life character, would arrange recitals on the large player pipe organ. The home remained in the Strong family until the 1920s; today it is part of the Wrigley estate.
JUDGE THOMAS F. WITHROW, BONNIE BRAE
Another railroad executive who became an early lakefront resident was Judge Thomas F. Withrow. Withrow served as general counsel for the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, known later as the “Rock Island Line.” Withrow was born in West Virginia and grew up in Ohio in an abolitionist family. As a young man, he moved to Iowa to attend law school, where he was selected by that state’s governor to serve as his private secretary. In 1873 at the age of 40, Withrow came to Chicago, accepting the position with the Rock Island Line and was also appointed the Lincoln Park Commissioner, both of which turned out to be lucrative opportunities.
Eight years later, Withrow and his wife built Bonnie Brae, a Queen Anne-style shingle home with a three-sided front porch and a second- story balcony. The home was named in honor of the Withrows’ only daughter, Bonnie. The family was one of the few lakefront homeowners that would visit their home in the winter as well as in the summer. But no matter the season, while visiting the lake, the Withrows tended to keep a low profile. When Judge Withrow died of heart failure in 1893, the local newspaper described him as “a man of great tenderness, universally esteemed… and averse to all forms of display.” The house was sold in 1897 to Martin A. Ryerson; it remains today in its nearly original exterior state.
JAMES HOBART MOORE, LORAMOOR
While he arrived at the lake a bit later than some of the other railroad industrialists, James Hobart Moore entered the annals of Lake Geneva history when he built an enormous estate on the south shore just outside of town in 1900. He named it Loramoor in honor of his wife, Lora. The estate was truly spectacular and contained 32 different structures across 133 acres. The horse barn alone could house 60 horses and featured a full-sized show arena. Inside, the main house boasted 27 rooms over three floors, a full-length veranda across the lake side of the home, plus a bowling alley and an extensive wine cellar in the basement, among many other luxurious amenities.
By the time he built Loramoor, Moore was a very successful attorney and multi-million-dollar capitalist with a wide variety of investments across many industries, including U.S. Steel, the National Biscuit Company (now known as Nabisco), the Diamond Match Company and the American Tin Plate Company. But like many of his contemporaries, Moore was also involved in railroads, serving on the board of directors for the Rock Island Line, the same famous railroad where Withrow was general counsel. Moore passed away in 1916 and the home was eventually donated to the Franciscan religious order, which used the property as the Queen of Peace Friary until the 1980s, when the estate’s buildings were demolished to make way for the Loramoor subdivision.
Editor’s note: Our thanks to the Geneva Lake Museum, the Matheson Memorial Library and the Lake Geneva Public Library for historic photos used in this piece
