The first sign that I’m in a historic house is the straw basket full of powder blue surgical booties by the entrance. I presume they’re for prospective buyers. The Reed house, built in 1931 by architect David Adler, is currently on the market for $26 million, a record price for the Chicago area. Adler, presently the subject of a major exhibit at the Art Institute, is celebrated for his magnificent society homes, and the 24,179-square-foot Lake Forest mansion he designed for Mrs. Kersey Coates Reed is considered one of his crowning accomplishments.
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I’m about to pull on a pair of booties when the cleaning ladies wave me over the threshold, my boots uncovered. Flanking the entranceway are two dressing rooms, the ladies’ on the right and the gentlemen’s on the left. The latter has been converted into a trophy room and teems with stuffed game animals and hides, including a leopard and a lion-skin rug. They are the property of the house’s current owner, a personal injury lawyer and developer who’s also a hunting enthusiast. He purchased the house from the Reed estate in 1979. The ladies’ room across the way is spartan and elegant, furnished only with three chairs and a stool–nothing to hide the ebony floor, which is inlaid with a geometric pattern of nickel-copper alloy bars.
Adler (1882-1949) was born into a prosperous Milwaukee family; his father was a clothing manufacturer. Educated at Princeton and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he started his architectural career in Chicago in 1911, under the tutelage of Howard Van Doren Shaw. A year later he set up practice with his cousin, Henry C. Dangler. Hampered by his weak drafting skills from qualifying for an architectural license, for years Adler was unable to work without a partner. When Dangler died in 1917, Adler undertook a new partnership with draftsman Robert Work. When he at last qualified for a license, in 1929, the Reed house was his first commission as an autonomous creator. Mrs. Reed, the daughter of Marshall Field’s company president John G. Shedd, gave Adler one simple directive: “Don’t let us make this a stuffy house.” Adler satisfied his patroness by infusing an essentially Georgian design with neoclassical elements. Reed’s husband died before the house was completed, but she remarried and lived there until her death in 1978, at the age of 94.
