This grand home on Lake Forest’s Mayflower Road is truly one of the most magnificent ever built in Chicago. The 27-room mansion was completed in 1915 as a wedding gift from John G. Shedd, then the president of Marshall Field & Co., to his daughter, Laura, newly married to Charles Schweppe. Designed by Frederick Wainwright Perkins, who had built homes for the elder Shedd and a few other people in Chicago’s Kenwood neighborhood, this Tudor sits on the last five acres of what was once a far larger estate.
Fittingly for such a regal place, the home, known as Mayflower Place, may have entertained royalty at least twice. Legend says that Laura Shedd Schweppe hosted a crown prince and princess of Sweden, who danced on the eastern terrace. With Wallis Simpson, for whom he abdicated the British throne in 1936, Edward, Duke of Windsor slept in a bedroom on the western end of the home’s second floor. (There were once 20 bedrooms; the present layout has 11.)
-via Chicagomag.com
Listed currently at $12 million, down from the original listing price of $18 million.
