Historic Lake Forest Figures Featured in Book

Lake Forest’s tie to history in the Midwest is robust. Nearly everyone who worked with Daniel Burnham to develop Chicago’s “Burnham Plan” lived there.

So it was a tough task for Susan Kelsey, who contracts with the city for economic development purposes and Arthur Miller, a former librarian at Lake Forest College, to pin down just 170 names to be featured in “Legendary Locals of Lake Forest,” a book released Nov. 30 by Arcadia Publishing.

“We came up with 350 names,” Kelsey told the Lake Forester. Kelsey and Miller researched and wrote the book over the course of a year.

“From there we started contacting people to see what photos we could get. Next was to see if they had been in previous books. We wanted to cover people who had not been highlighted or showcased in Lake Forest,” she said.

The book is 128 pages and includes 170 black and white photos and about 30,000 words. Among its most well-known subjects are author F. Scott Fitzgerald, meatpacking magnets Louis Swift and J. Ogden Armour and actor Richard Widmark.

According to the Lake Forester, it’s “long been known that Fitzgerald once visited Ginevra King at her parent’s home at 210 S. Ridge Road.”

Kelsey and Miller will sign copies of the book on Sunday, Dec. 6 at Lake Forest Book Store, 680 N. Western Avenue, at 12:30 p.m.

more via the Lake Forester