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Located adjacent to the Grosse Pointe Lighthouse and Lighthouse Beach on Lake Michigan in the northeast corner of Evanston, IL, the Harley Clarke Mansion was built in 1927. The City of Evanston has declared Harley Clark “the grandest French Eclectic style house in the District,” in its criteria for determining landmarks.
History
Harley L. Clarke, who commissioned work on the mansion, served as President for Utilities Power and Light in the years leading up to the Great Depression. The mansion is situated on nearly five acres of beachfront property and was designed by Richard Powers. It originally featured gardens by the Midwest’s premiere landscape architect Jens [Jensen], a key figure in the Chicago renaissance. The three-story, brick lakefront home was completed in 1927 at 2603 Sheridan Road, next to the historic Grosse Point Light Station and its fog houses. The 37,700-square-foot estate featured a spacious glass conservatory, ballroom, basement rumpus room, and coach house. The house and coach house were listed as contributing structures in the application to the National Park Service designating the historic district. The Clarke family fortune fell in the Great Depression and they were forced to sell the property in 1949 to the Sigma Chi fraternity to be used as their national headquarters. In 1963 the city of Evanston bought the property and from the late 1960s leased the building to the Evanston Arts Center. In 2015, the property began to require more maintenance than either the City or the Art Center was able to fund; the Evanston Arts Center moved to a new location on Central Street and the property was closed.
In 2016 Landmarks Illinois included the mansion on its list of most endangered historic places.
Efforts to Preserve the Mansion
In June 2017 the City of Evanston issued a request for proposal (RFP) to lease the property to a not-for-profit organization. One of the proposals received was from Evanston Lakehouse & Gardens (ELHG), a local non-profit with the goal of transforming the Harley Clarke property into a fully renovated, multi-purpose venue for environmental education, community events, and cultural programming.
In November 2017 the City Council voted 8-1 to approve the proposal from ELGH and instructed the City Manager to negotiate a lease with the group. However, on April 9. 2018, after months of lease negotiations between the City and ELHG, City Council members raised a number of concerns, including the group’s 10-year timeline for fundraising and insurance liability and voted the plan down. As of May 2018, the Lakehouse group is making more appeals to potential funders and is appealing to the public for donations. It is possible that if they can present a shorter timeframe for raising the funds and demonstrate that a significant amount of money is already pledged, the Council will reconsider their proposal.