By Anne Morrissy | Photo by Holly Leitner
This summer, the Elgin Club subdivision will celebrate 150 years on the lake’s north shore. Founded in 1874, Elgin Club is one of the oldest residential subdivisions on Geneva Lake. It was established when two fishermen from nearby Elgin, Illinois, bought 16 acres of lakefront property from John Wyckoff for just $400. The men recruited eight friends from their hometown and other nearby towns to help them purchase the parcel, naming it the “Lakeside Park Club of Elgin.” This was one of the first such associations established on Geneva Lake, and it helped to set the precedent for many others.
Cousins Barbara Snell and Martha Redeker are fifth-generation Elgin Club residents, having inherited the home that their great-great- grandfather built in 1878. Redeker has become an expert in the history of Elgin Club. She says that, at first, members camped in tents before building rustic cottages to shelter from the weather. Meals were served in a communal clubhouse that was built during Elgin Club’s first summer. “Getting to Elgin Club in [the 1870s] involved a train trip, or horse-drawn conveyance, followed by a boat trip to the pier in front of the clubhouse,” she explains.
A few years after establishing Elgin Club, the original group recruited 10 additional members, including Redeker’s ancestor, and each stakeholder was given a 50-foot-wide lakefront lot. Redeker says that the cottages built on these lots were “mostly used as place to sleep that would be dry in a storm, or warm in the spring and fall, with a fireplace and, later, a potbelly stove in the living room.” Eventually, owners added modern amenities like indoor plumbing and kitchens, in some cases choosing to remodel the existing homes, with others choosing to build new homes on the original lots. Throughout the decades, the club continued to embrace its communal living roots with boat races, picnics and Sunday night singalongs.
Today, the lakefront community still comprises 20 homes, three of which remain in the families of the original Elgin Club founders, like the one shared by Redeker and Snell. Others, like the home owned by Andrea Gibbs and her husband, were built by later owners, but remain in the families of those that built them. Another throughline for the club is the presence of an on-site caretaker who lives on the property with their family. Redeker explains that, in the past century, Elgin Club has been served by just five caretaker families, and describes the caretaker as “the stabilizing factor that keeps things safe and running smoothly.”
To celebrate the 150th anniversary this summer, Elgin Club residents plan to commemorate the event at their annual association picnic in July. The highly anticipated event involves children’s games, tennis and pickleball matches, a golf outing, a parade to meet the Mailboat, food and music in the evening. This camaraderie is what keeps families coming back to Elgin Club year after year. “We’re one of the smaller associations … the families over the years grew up together,”
Gibbs explains. “People made lifelong friends there. Kids played together, spent their summers on the piers together.”
Snell agrees. “What keeps people in Elgin Club coming back for generations is its value as a center of family life and memories,” she explains. “Learning to dive off the pier, swimming out to the buoy, catching your first fish and meeting the Mailboat are all core memories for each successive generation. Watching your grandchildren make sandcastles at the beach and capture fireflies in the evening takes you back to your own early years. Time seems to slow down here, as we appreciate the simpler ways of life.”
