The living room has been furnished with period pieces and overlooks the elegant gardens and lake view. Take a drive down Lake Road in Lake Forest and you will come upon a huge and elegant limestone home with its back to the road.
The house wasn’t deliberately built to shun the world, but rather, the road did not exist when it was built in 1916. And with a sweeping view of its own lakefront beach, the home might be said to be facing the right way after all.
After being under one owner for the past 23 years, the home today is for sale for $10,999,000. Patterned after an Italian villa, the home originally was built by famous architect David Adler for Mr. and Mrs. Charles Pike.
The home immediately became renowned for its elegant gardens, which have been featured in the book, The Golden Age of American Gardens. Its interiors also have been photographed for the book David Adler, Architect: The Elements of Style, Classic Country Estates of Lake Forest and The Country Houses of David Adler.
However, in recent years it has been viewed by very few people other than the owners. “This house was a secret until I listed it,” says Realtor Houda Chedid. Readers can take a private tour in the STNG video at The Adler House or view the full listing on SearchChicago-Homes.
Its current owner, Dr. Hikyung Kim, says she fell in love with the home immediately when she and her husband Dr. Yoonok Kim first saw it in the early 1980s.
“I looked at it and made an offer right away,” she recalls.
At 15,000 square feet, the home is small for a David Adler house, says Chedid. It also has an unusual, hand-dug basement, which was finished off as a party space and is open to the manicured patio and grounds that lead to Lake Michigan.
Adler’s signature style is everywhere, from its symmetry and eagle motifs, to a courtyard lined with statuary and columns and finished with a mosaic done entirely in stones harvested from the home’s private beach.
The Kims have decorated the home with museum-like pieces – antique chairs and statues and china pieces that are reminiscent of the era.
But even without the décor, the home evokes another era.
Entering from the rear of the home, which faces the street, one walks through a column-lined courtyard and into a small foyer that adjoins a long gallery lined with columns and topped with a sculpted ceiling.
Windows look out over the elegant courtyard and adjoining doorways take visitors into the vast living room, sitting room (loggia) and dining room with their vistas of the lake. Adler was a stickler for symmetrical design, so the dining room has a false doorway on one side of the room to match a real doorway on the other side.
The Kims turned part of the home’s massive kitchen into a sitting room. They use another part of the kitchen for its original purpose. Three student or servant rooms adjoin the kitchen area.
Up a wide marble staircase lined with artwork, one finds an upstairs gallery filled with antiques, and arched doorways to the bedroom areas.
The Pikes built the master suite with a “gentleman’s bedroom” for Mr. Pike to retire in when he got home later than Mrs. Pike, Chedid points out. Unlike other homes of that era, which have unfinished cellars, this home has a finished party space on the lower level, with a caterer’s kitchen and wine cellar.
Outside the home’s actual front are its famous gardens, lined with sculptures representing the 10 Greek muses as well as others representing the four seasons.
Chedid thinks the home is one of about 20 Adler homes in the North Shore area. It was built the same year Adler got married, and was the last house Adler designed with his partner Henry Dangler before Dangler’s death. That was more than just the loss of a friend; Dangler also kept Adler in business.
The fact is, Adler may have been a renowned and respected home designer, but he was not a licensed architect when he designed the Pike home. After Dangler’s death, he worked with another architect who lent his technical expertise to Adler’s plans. In 1929, Adler did become a licensed architect.
Despite his success and renown, Adler was never satisfied with his own accomplishments.
According to the Adler Center's Web site, at his funeral, a good friend said of Adler, “At the bottom of all this accomplishment lay great energy and pitiless self-criticism.”
