By the History Center of Lake Forest-Lake Bluff The Winter Club began in the early 20th century amid a flurry of new clubs, institutions and recreational opportunities in Lake Forest. Frederick C. Aldrich came up with the idea for a “club for winter sports to be located somewhere near the center of the village.” He and his friends and neighbors gave the idea a trial run in the winter of 1901-1902, leasing some land on Sheridan Road and preparing it for winter activities and fun.
James O. Heyworth stands in front of the long, steep toboggan slide that crossed Sheridan Road in 1915. Image Source: Marni Wilson.
That first winter, the club had a snug little temporary clubhouse where Mary Patterson, the proprietress at the Golf House hotel (precursor to the Deer Path Inn), served tea, coffee, hot chocolate and 15-cent sandwiches. A 125-foot-by-100-foot ice rink was flooded, providing space for skating, hockey and curling, with “the whole brilliantly illuminated by electric lights,” per the Lake Forester. And the crowning glory: a 500-foot-long toboggan run.
According to the Chicago Tribune in 1901, the toboggan slide was “but thirty feet high, but so steep does it appear to the women members that they have already declared they will never ride down it. The men have showed no intention of changing it any, however, and declare the first trial will convince the others,” which seems to have been the case.
The initial season was successful enough that the members formed a stock company to purchase the land and build a proper clubhouse, which was designed by Alfred Granger. Completed in 1903, the clubhouse’s features were enumerated in the local newspaper: “On the ground floor is the spacious observation room with its large windows facing the pond, the locker rooms, large kitchen, bowling alleys, boiler room and ladies’ and gents’ toilet rooms. On the second floor there is an auditorium 30 x 60 feet to be used for dancing, concerts and other entertainments. It has a large stage for private theatricals, etc. There is also a large reception room 20 x 30 feet with its fire-place of red brick, a card room and large balcony overlooking the pond and grounds. The whole is heated by steam and the furnishing throughout are of the best and all are in perfect harmony.”
The toboggan slide was also expanded. Initially it was built on the later location of the tennis courts and ran eastward over and across Sheridan Road. Cars going along the road would drive right underneath.
It lived large in the memories of Lake Foresters of the time. In 1945 Alfred Granger himself recalled the toboggan run as “at once the joy and terror of boy old and young. Well do I remember the first time I tried it wondering whether for me the end of the world had come.”
Looking back in the 1960s, Madeleine Childs Pullman reminisced about the toboggan run as well: “You had to get a good start to go up and over the slide, and at the end you tumbled into a haystack on the other side of the road.”
“Probably the greatest fun of all in those winters was skimming down the toboggan slide,” Durand Smith told the Lake Forester in 1949. “The slide stood in the northwest corner of the grounds. After a breath-taking descent on its glistening surface we slid swiftly along a wooden trough or chute which was completely iced. Then came that joyful moment when we reached Sheridan road; we soared up and over it by viaduct, then down and off the chute and into the snowy fields beyond.”
It wasn’t a total free-for-all, as Balky Grannis recalled. “Kids had to pull their sleds to the top, where a man bundled you up and told you to put your hands in. Then away you shot down the iced trough, across Sheridan Road and finally into the field opposite the club.” According to historian Edward Arpee, “This was considered the most daring sport afforded anywhere, until an even more precipitous one was erected on the Onwentsia grounds in the 1920s, which lasted only a short time for reasons of safety. Mary Peddle broke her leg from a fall at the Winter Club [in 1923] and Mima di Manzionley had a similar fate at Onwentsia.” (The short-lived Onwentsia slide, opened in 1917, was 50 feet high and 400 yards long with a descent of 45 degrees, costing $3,000.)
Schedule a visit to the History Center of Lake Forest-Lake Bluff’s Research Center to find out more about winters past in Lake Forest. And be sure to stop by the History Center museum in January to check out the Whistle-stop Wonderland model trains.