Take a Break at The Geneva--One of Lake Geneva Wisconsin's Early Hotels

By Pamela S. Meyers

In our tour of the Lake Geneva, Wisconsin mansions that have populated the lakeshore since the late 1800s, this month we’re going to make a stop in the town of Lake Geneva and spend a day at the Hotel Geneva.

Vintage postcard depicting front view of the hotel

Taken in 1967, the hotel's exterior hadn't changed much since 1911

The hotel was designed in 1911 by Frank Lloyd Wright. This wonderful example of Wright’s design style met its fate with the wrecking ball back in the 1970s, so we’ll have to resort to time travel and journey back to the 1950s to enjoy this once-popular hotel.

As we walk down Broad Street, toward the lake, off to the left we spot our destination. The hotel is situated across the street from the Riviera Building that anchors the excursion boat dock and public beach. The Hotel Geneva's advertising promises to offer beautiful views of the lake and close proximity to restaurants and shops.

The hotel opened in 1911 under the name, The Geneva Inn, only to have its name changed two years later to the The Geneva, and that’s the moniker that has stuck until now, some 40 years later. I hear that the locals call it “The Geneva Hotel” although it has never officially been called by that name.

An hotel brochure from the 1950s

The facility offers 70 rooms, each with a bath, dancing and a restaurant that has featured fish and chicken dinners. It is very popular with the Chicago crowd that come on the train on Friday nights and return on Sunday. But since we’re here on a Thursday, and only staying one night, we’re blessed with a room that looks out toward the lake and the Riviera that was built about 20 years ago.

We need to see if any entertainment is scheduled for tonight in the Riviera ballroom. Well-known dance bands have played there, and if we're in luck we can catch one this evening.

Things do get a bit busy in the hotel bar on weekends, but nothing like back in the 20s when it’s said that tunnels from various stores nearby led into the hotel basement to facilitate liquor deliveries. The tunnels also offered ways of escape for the clientele whenever the place was raided. These reports have never been substantiated, but during that period Chicago gangsters such as Al Capone, Bugsy Malone, and others, were said to be in residence at various locations near Lake Geneva, lending plausibility to the stories.

The basement level bar is accessible from the street and does a fair business with the locals during the week. Same for the hotel restaurant, which serves food with an Asian flair. A nice change from the fried chicken and fish they used to serve.

After dinner we'll sit out on the patio that faces the inlet where people dock their pleasure boats and watch the goings on.

Before long we turn in and, since check out is 11:00 am, we’re soon be on our way to another interesting mansion on the lakeshore to be featured next month.

And here we are back in 2016. The ensuing years weren’t kind to the aging hotel and after a fire in 1970, the building met its fate. Thankfully, many artifacts that were retrieved from the building before it was torn down are still around and some have appeared on eBay, while others can be seen at the Geneva Lake Museum and the Lake Geneva Public library. Unique in their art deco design, many have made their way into private collections.

The art deco features included this stylized tulip that appeared in many places in the building.

A multi-story condo building now stands on the property. A webcam sits atop the building, offering a wonderful view of the Riviera and the lake. A view none of the Geneva Hotel guests ever enjoyed since the building was only 2 stories high.

Geneva Towers - What Stands on the property today

Today, many fans of Frank Lloyd-Wright mourn the loss of the building and the many treasures that got away. I have vague memories of it, but what child is interested in the history of a building or the significance of it's designer? 

Resources: Pictures of the 1967 view, 1950s brochure, Lake Geneva Tulip Blurb are all from the Wright Studies at Steinerag.com where you can find links to sites on Frank Lloyd Wright and his connection to Lake Geneva.

Picture of Geneva Towers: First Weber Realtors

A native of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, author Pamela S. Meyers lives in suburban Chicago with her two rescue cats. Her novels include Thyme for Love, which has recently been rereleased on Amazon and her 1933 historical romance, Love Finds You in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Love is All We Need (the sequel to Thyme for Love) will release in 2016, and Second Chance Love from Bling!, an imprint of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas, will release in January 2017. When she isn’t at her laptop writing her latest novel, she can often be found nosing around Wisconsin and other Midwestern spots for new story ideas

Linden Lodge: An Eclectic Design Built by a Self-Made Millionaire on Geneva Lake & a Book Giveaway!

Linden Lodge as seen from the lake.

It’s time for another trip back to the late 19^th Century for a peek at how the other half lived among the Chicago wealthy who built summer “cottages” in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

This month’s featured home, Linden Lodge, is especially interesting to me because the home sat on property that is now within the city limits of the town of Lake Geneva. The land was subdivided in the 1930s and over the next 30 or 40 years, the subdivision known as The Lake Geneva Manor, became one of the town’s higher-priced neighborhoods. Anyone who owned a home there gained rights to a private pier for swimming and opportunity to own a boat slip, even if you weren't privileged to have one of the homes directly on the lakeshore.

Levi I. Leiter came to Chicago in the mid 1850s and worked his way to financial success in the dry goods business. 

A somewhat blurry picture of Levi Leiter

He became partners with a man named Marshall Field and together, they began a department store operation known as Field, Leiter and Company. The partnership suffered through the Great Chicago Fire, when the store burned to the ground, only to be one of the first to recover by opening for business in a railway company’s car barns. You’re likely familiar with the store name, Marshall Fields, which was a mainstay for decades in Chicago, before being taken over by Bloomingdales.

Leiter purchased his 37-acre Lake Geneva property during the 1870s and built his huge 37-room mansion. Labeled as primarily Victorian, many people scratched their heads at the eclecitic  mix of styles. A recent article about the home in the Lake Geneva Regional News referred to a quote said back then about the home as “… a rather weird combination of mid-Victorian, Swiss, Strasbourg Castle, and American what-not.”

The home's barns and it's famous windmill.

Whatever it was, the structure had to have been very impressive to those who passed it by boat or walking along the footpath. Not to mention, the six-story high windmill erected near the home to provide water and a source of power. A story is passed down that the windmill drew so much attention that Leiter purchased a bull to keep on the property to stop people from tramping on his land to look at the windmill. It worked well until he himself had trouble entering his own property because of the bull. The animal was seen no more.

The Leiters had three daughters and a son, and their wealth afforded them acceptance in high society, both in the U.S. and in Europe. They often entertained at their Lake Geneva home by hosting parties, yacht outings, and sailboat races. As the daughters were coming of marital age, they were welcomed into English society at a time when many wealthy American young ladies were marrying British noblemen who had lost their financial underpinnings. The women’s wealth served to help maintain their elaborate manor homes. Think Downton Abbey. On a sidenote, Julian Fellowes, the creator and screenwriter of Downton Abbey is quoted as saying he created Nora Crowley’s character out of his research on this practice which was dubbed "Cash for Coronets."

Back at home in Chicago, the Leiter son squandered much of the family fortune and Leiter was eventually forced to sell his Chicago property to make up for the loss. 

Oh to have been able to peek in at this family’s life of tea parties, yachts, and visiting English noblemen.

Because it's summer and summer is the best time to visit Lake Geneva to view many of the mansions still standing on the shoreline, I am giving away a copy of my book, Love Finds you in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Set in 1933, when the Riviera building was built at the lakeshore in the town of Lake Geneva, LFY in Lake Geneva, WI is a love story with much of the history of the town and area at that time woven into the storyline. Please leave your name and contact information by August 11, 2015, and I'll draw names on August 12th. 

I’ll be back on September 4, 2015, with another story of one of Lake Geneva’s mansions that was built under a circus tent.

Resources Used:  
Lake Geneva Regional News, Welcome Home Magazine,7/16/15, Jessica Franzene, author.

Lake Geneva, Newport of the West, Ann Wolfmeyer & Mary   Burns Gage, authors.

A native of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, author Pamela S. Meyers lives in suburban Chicago with her two rescue cats. Her novels include Thyme for Love, and Love Will Find a Way, contemporary romantic mysteries, and her 1933 historical romance, Love Finds You in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. When she isn’t at her laptop writing her latest novel, she can often be found nosing around Wisconsin and other midwestern spots for new story ideas.

The Younglands: The History Behind Stone Manor One of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin's Icons of the Shore

Younglands & the yacht Polaris, which was featured in my April Blog.

Last month I wrote about the yachts that belonged to the millionaires who resided on the shores of Geneva Lake in southeastern Wisconsin, and this month I’m featuring one of the most well-known mansions on the lakeshore. 

Stone Manor has commanded Geneva Bay at the east end of the lake for over a century. Originally called Younglands after Otto Young, the self-made millionaire who in 1898, engaged noted architect of the time, Henry Lord Gay, to design a magnificent Italian-style mansion. 

The mansion (when the name change occurred is unknown--likely when the family sold the property) is now divided into five luxury condominiums, the exterior has barely changed at all since it was built over 100 years ago.

Recent picture of Stone Manor taken from town of Lake Geneva

After making his fortune in retail, Mr. Young, a German immigrant purchased the land on the south shore of Geneva Bay, and after the Italianate style mansion was completed in 1901, he moved his wife and four daughters into the home. And what a home it was with gold plated electrical fixtures on the first floor and sterling silver fixtures on the upper floors. Its carved mortar ceilings boasted of oil paintings done by artists he brought in from Europe. Other features were a dining room large enough to hold 100 diners, a nine-hole miniature golf course, a bowling alley, and a roof garden..

Original Ballroom - first floor condo

In addition to the features mentioned, the second floor contained nine large bedrooms with connecting sitting rooms and baths. Indoor plumbing was still a novelty for most at that time, but nothing was too extravagant for Mr. Young. 

The third floor contained seven guest rooms and seven servant rooms that were isolated from the guest portion of the floor. The golf course was on the fourth floor that also contained a gym. Nowadays a swimming pool occupies the roof deck.

The final cost was well over a million dollars, which was extremely extravagant for the times. By comparison the first floor condominium that takes up the entire floor is currently on the market for over almost 7 million dollars, and several years ago one of the upper level condos that occupies half of the second floor was on the market for almost 3 million dollars.  

Doors to Billiard Room

Unfortunately, Mr. Young was only able to enjoy his lavish home for five years. He passed away in 1906, and his wife and daughters did not spend much time in the home after that. His wife died in 1916 and the property was passed on to one of his daughters, who willed it to one of her daughters, Gwendolyn Koch. Mrs. Koch donated the mansion and acreage to the Episcopal Order of St. Anne and they ran it as a church camp and school for girls through the 1940s. From the 1950s to the current times, the property experienced several ownerships. It’s been a private residence, a school, and a restaurant. By the 70s and 80s, its future was tied up in courtrooms because of liens on the property. Finally someone bought it and began to convert it to condominiums after first having to repair a lot of water damage. Nowadays it is on the National Register for Historic Places, which ensures the outside appearance will never be altered, although individual condo owners can change the décor and floor plan in their own units.

Original staircase in common area of condos

Below is a video produced by the real estate agent who  handled the marketing of the one of the second floor condominiums a few years ago. 

The first floor condominium is on the market now, and the interior shots display a décor that is more true to the design of the time the home was built. The original carved ceilings, fireplace surrounds, and pocket doors are all there. Sale price is around 7 million dollars.

Click here for a virtual tour of the first floor unit.

Unless you know someone who lives in one of the condos or are seriously well-endowed and interested in purchasing one of the units for sale, chances are you won’t be able to see the interior of this magnificent representation of its time period, but you can see it up close and personal by walking the shore path from the town of Lake Geneva to the property, a short distance away. 

Picture Credits:

Picture of Stone Manor & Polaris Yacht from: Lake Geneva in Vintage Postcards, Smeltzer and Cucco, 2005.

Pictures of interior shots of the first floor Condo from: Lake Geneva Life at the Water's Edge, by Michael Keefe with Andria Hayday and Tom Keefe, 2006

Remaining photo by Pamela S. Meyers

A native of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, author Pamela S. Meyers lives in suburban Chicago with her two rescue cats. Her novels include Thyme for Love, and Love Will Find a Way, contemporary romantic mysteries, and her 1933 historical romance, Love Finds You in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. When she isn’t at her laptop writing her latest novel, she can often be found nosing around Wisconsin and other midwestern spots for new story ideas.