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.