Custom Closets and Closet Remodeling in Lake Forest IL
Lake Forest is a city located in Lake County, Illinois, United States. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 19,375. The city is along the shore of Lake Michigan, and is a part of the Chicago metropolitan area and the North Shore.
Lake Forest was founded together with Lake Forest College; it was laid out as a town in 1857, and was a stop for travelers making their way south to Chicago. The Lake Forest City Hall, designed by Charles Sumner Frost, was completed in 1898. It originally housed the fire department, the Lake Forest Library, and city offices.
In the wake of the increasing population, pollution, and social unrest in Chicago during the latter decades of the 19th century, the suburban retreat of Lake Forest proved attractive to the city’s elite. Interest rose in leisure activities that required an abundance of open space, such as golf, polo, tennis, equestrian, and the hunt. The founding of the Onwentsia Club in 1895 signaled the era of estate culture in Lake Forest. Many of these new residents hired architectural luminaries to design country places and gentleman farms. Corresponding to all this development was the rise of a local service economy, as recent immigrants were drawn to town to exert their skills as shop proprietors, artisans and gardeners. Thus between 1880 and 1910, Lake Forest’s population nearly quadrupled, to around 3,300.
As a result of this population increase, local infrastructure required attention. The turn of the century brought growth to city services and facilities, with a new City Hall, train depot, the first professional police and fire departments, and Gorton and Halsey public schools. Most dramatic was the improvement to the central business district. In 1917, Market Square, the first planned shopping center in the nation, was completed. Architect Howard Van Doren Shaw designed the tree-lined square to open upon the train station and to incorporate access for automobiles.