Arthur HEUN

This fine watercolour by Arthur Heun depicts his design for the Lake Forest home of the attorney and future diplomat Fredrik Herman Gade (1871-1943). Of Norwegian birth and upbringing, Gade settled in America in 1888, enrolling at Harvard University Law School the following year. In May 1897 he married Alice Garfield King, and the couple settled in Lake Forest, where Gade served several terms as mayor between 1903 and 1906 and again between 1909 and 1910. Set on five acres of land at 335 North Green Bay Road in Lake Forest, Heun’s home for the Gades was built in the late 1890s, soon after their marriage. The house was named ‘Frogner’ by Gade, in memory of the area of his childhood home in Oslo in Norway. After the Second World War the house became the home of Volney W. and Adair Orr Foster and their three children. The Arts and Crafts style house designed by Heun at 335 North Green Bay Road remains largely unchanged today, and is listed in the U.S. federal government’s National Register of Historic Places.

As noted by an exhibition label pasted onto the wooden backboard of its frame, the present sheet was included in the 13th annual exhibition of the Chicago Architectural Club in 1900, although it is not listed in the catalogue. Heun’s office address at this time – Suite 1300 in the Ellsworth Building at 355 Dearborn Street in Chicago – is also written on the same exhibition label. Two further drawings by Arthur Heun were included in the 1900 Chicago Architectural Club exhibition; both were for the ‘Villa Crest’, built as a summer home in Manchester, Massachusetts, for the Walter D. Denegre family.