Ruth Hendrickson Wood was born in Mount Morris, Illinois. Wood graduated from Lake Forest College in 1921. It is at the college that she met her husband, J. Howard Wood, who worked for the Chicago Tribune and later served as the Tribune Company’s chief executive and chairman of the board. Ruth and Howard were married in 1928 and had four children: Janet, Ann, John Jr. and Robert. Wood was active in the Chicago community, serving on the women’s board at both the Field Museum and the University of Chicago.
John T. McCutcheon Jr. was born in 1917 in Chicago and lived in Lake Forest, Illinois for most of his life. He was the son of Evelyn (daughter of famed architect Howard Van Doren Shaw) and John, eminent Chicago Tribune editorial cartoonist.
McCutcheon Jr. earned his undergraduate degree at Harvard University. While there, he was the managing editor of the Harvard Crimson newspaper. Upon graduation in 1939, McCutcheon Jr. spent a year at the City News Bureau in Chicago before becoming a reporter at the Chicago Tribune.
McCutcheon Jr. enlisted in the Navy in 1940 and served in the Pacific theater during World War II. During his Navy training, McCutcheon Jr. met his wife, Susan Dart. The two were married in 1943. They had three children, Anne, Mary and John III. Susan died in 2007.
After the war, McCutcheon Jr. returned to writing for the Chicago Tribune. He wrote a popular humor column during the 1950s and in 1957 become an editorial writer for the paper. In 1971, McCutcheon Jr. became chief of the editorial page. McCutcheon Jr. was with the Tribune for 49 years and spent 25 years on their editorial board. In 1982, McCutcheon Jr. stepped down as an editor and worked for seven years as an archivist for the paper and at the Cantigny estate.
McCutcheon Jr. died in North Carolina in 2008.
The Chicago Athletic Association first opened in 1893 during the Chicago World's Fair. Architect Henry Ives Cobb designed the building in a Venetian Gothic style. Cobb took inspiration from the Doge’s palace in Venice Italy, using replica pieces of the palace’s facade.
When it first opened its doors, the Chicago Athletic Association had 3,000 members and a 10-year waiting list. Needless to say, it was an exclusive association, so much so that members had to be voted in by existing members. Some of the founding members include Marshall Field, Cyrus McCormick, A.F. Spalding, and William Wrigley. Interestingly, the Association’s “cherry circle” emblem was adopted by Wrigley for the baseball team he purchased in 1905, the Chicago Cubs.
As the Chicago Athletic Association grew, there was a need for expansion. An attached building on East Madison was purchased and opened in 1907. Another expansion took place in 1926. By 1972, women were granted membership status at the club.
With declining membership, the Chicago Athletic Association was forced to close its door in 2007. Wanting to save the building, John Pritzker partnered with AJ Capital Partners, Agman Partners, and Geolo Capital to purchase the property for $13 million in 2012, with plans to restore and convert it into a hotel.
Chicago-based Hartshorne Plunkard Architects led work on the hotel. Also working on the project was New York interior design firm Roman + Williams, construction manager JLL and general contractor, Bully & Andrews.
Managed by Commune Hotels & Resorts, of which Pritzker is chairman, the hotel opened in 2015 and boasts 241 guest rooms and suites, a bowling alley, a game room, a fitness center, as well as retail establishments and restaurants. Many of the interior’s original designs were restored, including the mosaic floors, hand-carved fireplaces, the Circle Bar and White City Ballroom.
The building is a Chicago landmark, as it is part of the Historic Michigan Boulevard District, which received landmark status in 2002.
Samuel R. Rosenthal was born in Manistique, Michigan. He served as a lieutenant in the army during World War I and later earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan in 1921. He obtained his law degree from Harvard University in 1924.
In 1926, Rosenthal began work at Chicago’s Sonnenschein law firm. He eventually became a senior partner at the firm, working there for a total of 68 years.
He married Marie-Louise Dreyfus in 1932, with whom he financed a gallery at the Art Institute of Chicago. They had two children, Martin and Louise (Glasser).
Rosenthal was on the Board of Trustees at The Newberry Library, a trustee of the Ravinia Festival Association, Highland Park Public Library and Grinnell College, and a life trustee of the Highland Park Hospital Foundation. He also served as president of the Highland Park Community Chest and Board of Education of Highland Park High School. Rosenthal was a fellow of Brandeis University and the Morgan Library. He was a member of the American Antiquarian Society, the Chicago, American and Illinois bar foundations and Phi Beta Kappa. Harvard Law School named the Samuel R. Rosenthal Professorship of Law in his honor.
***With much of this collection focusing on Riverside Farm, the biographical history thus focuses on the founder of this farm, Francis Arnold Hoffman.
Francis Arnold Hoffman was born in Prussia to Frederick William and Wilhelmina Hoffman. He immigrated to the United States at the age of 18. Soon after arriving in the United States Hoffman took a job as a teacher for a Lutheran congregation in Dunkley’s Grove, Illinois. As the congregation did not have a clergyman at the time, he also conducted services. Enjoying this work, Hoffman became ordained and started work as a pastor.
Hoffman was married in 1844 to Cynthia Gilbert. The couple had several children.
In 1851, due to health issues, Hoffman changed career paths, moving to Chicago to study law and real estate. This eventually led him into banking, the industry in which he worked from 1854-1861.
Hoffman was also active in politics. In 1853 he was elected as a member of city council and in 1860 was elected to the office of Lieutenant Governor of Illinois. Hoffman also wrote and edited a variety of articles for largely German publications throughout his life. He wrote about a multitude of topics, but much of his writing focused on agriculture. His writing was often completed under the pen name, Hans Buschbauer.
In 1875, upon retirement, Hoffman purchased and moved to a farm in Jefferson, Wisconsin, which he named Riverside Farm.
Hoffman was part of a number of organizations throughout his life, including a member of the school board in Dunkley’s Grove, president of the Board of Chicago Underwriters and Deutsches Haus president.
Jane (Hunter) Sloan was born and raised in Sioux City, Iowa. Sloan was a 1910 graduate of Lake Forest College. While at the College, she was active in co-curricular organizations and her senior year was president of Lois Durand residence hall. She married Martin Luther Sloan, Jr. in 1911 and the two moved to Ohio.
Sloan attended graduate school at Western Reserve University, studying verse writing with Ralph Cheney and poetry reading at the Cleveland Playhouse. Sloan's first poetry book, titled "Prairie Vagabond" was published in 1939. She published a second book years later in 1967 titled "Moments Apart." Sloan's poems also appeared in newspapers across the country, including the Washington Post, the New York Herald-Tribune and the Christian Science Monitor, as well as several magazines.
During her life, Sloan was a member of the Ohio Poetry Society, the Cleveland College Club, and the local chapter for the National League of American PEN Women.
Sloan continued to write poetry until her death.
Kathy Stevenson began her career as a newspaper columnist for The Beach Reporter in California from 1987-1993. However, in 1993 she moved to Lake Forest, Illinois, after which she became a freelance writer.
Throughout her career Stevenson has published over 350 essays, articles, and short stories in magazines and newspapers, including in The New York Times, Newsweek, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Los Angeles Times.
In addition Stevenson has published two books, titled "Second Thoughts" (1992) and "The Lake Poet" (2001).
Stevenson holds an MFA from Bennington College. She was an English teacher for two years at the Agnes Irwin School in Villanova, Pennsylvania and has also taught writing classes at Ragdale and community centers in the North Shore area.
Francis Weeks was a longtime Highland Park, Illinois resident. He and his wife traveled extensively in the 1960s-1980s, including throughout Western Europe, Asia, parts of Africa and Peru.