1140 Willow Rd
Winnetka, IL 60093, USA

Anita Willets Burnham Log House (Schmidt-Burnham Log House) - National Register of Historic Places

Statement of Significance:

The Anita Willets Burnham Log House in Winnetka, Illinois has local significance and meets Criteria B for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Its period of significance dates from 1917 (when Anita Willets Burnham purchased and moved the Log House from south central Winnetka to the edge of the Skokie Marsh in northwest Winnetka), unti11955, the fifty-year cutoff for significance to the National Register.

The house meets Criterion B as the property most closely associated with Mrs. Burnham during her career as a well-known artist on the local and state levels and later, as a widely traveled author and lecturer known on the local, state and national levels. Anita Willets Burnham lived and worked at the Log House, which served as her home and studio, for 41 years. Not only was The Log House the residence she occupied the longest, it was the focus of much of her artistic creation and teaching, a focus of her art and was an integral part of the subjects of her widely disseminated literature and lectures.

The property also meets Criteria Consideration B, "A building or structure removed from its original location but which is significant primarily for architectural value, or which is the surviving structure most importantly associated with a historic person or event." The Log House is documented to 1841 but historic newspapers strongly suggest that it dates to 1836 or before. The Log House was moved by Anita Willets Burnham in 1917 from its original location in south-central Winnetka to 1407 Tower Road, at the edge of the Skokie marsh in northwest Winnetka. The Burnhams immediately added the existing rear lean-to and sometime later, a two-story wood porch with deck supported by an underground garage. It remained in this location for 86 years.

Anita Willets Burnham highly valued the Log House for its historical and architectural importance as a rare survivor. She foresightedly preserved it within the context of prevailing artistic and cultural values, and enthusiastically shared its early history with village residents and famous guests during her lifetime. Her fondest wish-- for its legacy to be perpetuated under the stewardship of the Winnetka Historical Society- was realized in 2000 after the death of her daughter, Ann Hibbard Burnham Smith, the house's last Burnham family resident. The house was gifted to the Winnetka Historical Society and moved approximately 1 mile south to its present site in 2003, as the only alternative to demolition. Because of severe deterioration, the post-1917 two-story porch was unable to be moved. The building is being returned to its 1917 appearance, with the present marshland site carefully chosen to evoke its 1917 setting.

EARLY HISTORY

Anita Willets was born in Brooklyn, New York on August 22, 1880. She was the 6th of 8 children born to Joseph Hewlett Willets (1840-1911) and Marie Louise Nichols (1839-1894). Her lineage on both sides of the family traced its American roots back to the early colonial period, a fact of which Anita was very proud and which later, may have been among the factors that attracted her to the Log House. Family names were passed on to her own children- for example eldest daughter Caroline Louise and only son Willets. Ancestral luminaries on the Willets side included William Washburn, the joint purchaser of Oyster Bay, Long Island in 1653, and George Hewlett, one of the judges who sentenced King Charles I to beheading in 1648 and who emigrated to America a year later, only to have his first house destroyed by Indians.

Anita's girlhood diaries and drawings 2 reveal an intellectually curious, artistically gifted child, characteristics that would define her throughout her prolific life. The family moved to Chicago in 1883, after her father, Joseph Willets had himself resided there a year while he was employed by F.A. Fletcher and Co. The following year his business is listed in the Chicago Directory as Willets, us born and Phelps. After living briefly at 147 5th Avenue and 3241 Michigan Avenue the Burnhams settled down in 1886 at 2804 Indiana Avenue 4 and Anita was educated in the Chicago public schools.5 The family appeared in the Blue Books in the 1890s, and was definitely living in Chicago in 1893, the year of the most artistically important event between the first quarters of the19th and 20th centuries, the World's Columbian Exposition, held just 4 ½ miles south of her own house.

Held to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of America, the Columbian Exposition also showcased the rise of the broad-shouldered city that, just 20 years before, had been reduced to ashes by the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Its planners, led by Chicago's acclaimed architect Daniel Burnham (Anita's future cousin-in-law), were determined not only to outshine the last world's fair held in Philadelphia in 1876 in celebration of 100 years of American independence, but to show that Chicago had "arrived" culturally as well. It was into this cultural milieu that Anita would soon become actively involved.

They succeeded-- spectacularly. The fair was attended by almost ½ the people of the nation. Goods were brought from every corner of the world. For the 13-year-old, future globe-trotter Anita, it must have been dazzling. More significantly for the budding artist, art played a role of unprecedented importance, with the fair's Palace of Fine Arts (today's Museum of Science and Industry) displaying the "most complete exhibition of art ever assembled under one roof, including contributed by acclaimed artists who would be her teachers. The American retrospective section alone occupied 15 rooms containing "2,000 oil paintings, 200 water colors, and proportional displays of pastels, drawings, prints and sculpture."

Thus, the 1893 World's Fair is a window on the art world Anita would soon enter as a student and whose values she would absorb. Those values, shared by the public, were distinctly traditional and realistic. In the realm of art, the effects of the Columbian Exposition were long lasting. "The Fair reinforced the prestige of European art as the standard by which the native product should be measured. The Fair's architecture declared this to all the world, and the artists of the next few decades did not gainsay it."8 In fact, "[the] traditional flavor ... imparted to the city's art scene ... was almost totally undisturbed until the 1920s

ART SCHOOLS
Six years after the Fair, Anita, proud of her ancestral pedigree, set about building a artistic pedigree of which she could be equally proud, beginning with education.

Anita's talent gained her entry into four of the country's most important art schools-in Chicago, the Art Institute (1899-1903, 1905, 1906), in Philadelphia, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1903, and in New York City, both the Art Students League 12 and the National Academy of Design (1904) At these institutions, and later, in Paris, she trained under many of the most prestigious teachers of the day. The style and principles gained during the course of her student training account, in large measure, for the subject matter, style, media and quality of the art she produced during her long, versatile, prolific career.

The Art Institute of Chicago, incorporated under an Act of the Legislature of Illinois in 1879, bad developed into a nationally important art school by the time of Anita's student tenure at the turn of the century. "In the first decade of its existence, the Art Institute became the center of art in Illinois and the most important institution between Cleveland and St. Louis. Its school was the most important between New York and San Francisco before the turn of the century. Its annual exhibitions of American artists rivaled similar events at the National Academy of Design."

The school was directed from 1879 unti11914 by Harvard-educated William M. R. French (brother of the celebrated sculptor Daniel Chester French), who played a major role in determining the school’s educational policies, and probably its early European bias. 15 An important change at the school that occurred around the time of Anita's attendance as a student, and one from which she undoubtedly benefited, was "the gradual development of practical ability on the part of the students." 16 Thus, for example, in response to well-paid job opportunities for illustrators in the developing magazine and book markets, illustration education was expanded with courses on lettering and cartooning, as well as opportunities to carry out actual commissions. Anita took both illustration and lettering and would later apply these skills. The field of mural painting also offered a means of synthesizing the practical and the academic, a field Anita would also enter to a limited degree.

The school continued to grow in size and stature during the course of Anita Willets Burnham's long affiliation as an instructor, but never wavered from its mission of "the active encouragement of individual creative growth through methods which avoid the spectacular and superficial, but which are progressive in the best sense of the word, and are based on the mature experience of a distinguished faculty". Anita would take these words to heart.

Beginning at the Art Institute, Anita studied with some of the finest artists and teachers of the day-a necessity for aspiring artists. From them she learned not only the technical, aesthetic and philosophical aspects of art as a profession, but the career steps necessary to succeed as one. As was expected, these luminaries studied at the oldest, most prestigious art schools in America, and even more importantly, trained in Europe under German masters or particularly under masters in one of the Paris Academies.

One of the most important of Anita's instructors while a student at the School of the Art Institute was John H. Vanderpoel (1857-1911). Painter, teacher, muralist, illustrator and writer, Netherlands-born Vanderpoel trained at the Chicago Academy of Design and at the prestigious Académie Julian in Paris. Although his early paintings concentrate on Dutch genre scenes, his style, like so many noteworthy artists and teachers of the period, was formed in France. 18 Disabled by a fall as a teenager and later, losing the sight of one eye, be nonetheless became a highly influential teacher at the Art Institute from 1888-1916, twenty years of which be served as head instructor. Renowned artist Georgia O'Keefe, in fact, praised him as "one of the few real teachers I have known."19 A firm believer in disciplined drawing, he "[brought] a significant emphasis on draughtsman’s to the School of the Art Institute curriculum"20• His teaching method was based on careful observation from life, which be underscored in class with an amusing anecdote about a teacher in Paris who ridiculed him for being the only pupil to put six toes on a drawing---until the teacher realized the model's actual foot matched the drawing 21 • In addition to teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) be taught, classes-both indoors and outdoors--at various locations in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan and authored the classic art instruction book The Human Figure. The dynamic Vanderpoel founded the Chicago Art League in 1880 and was a founder and long-time president of the important Chicago Society of Artists (which Anita later joined), in addition to other important memberships.

In 1913, this award-winning artist was memorialized by his former neighbors in the affluent Chicago neighborhood of Beverly Hills with the founding of the John H. Vanderpoel Art Association and Memorial Art Collection, both of which continue to thrive. To the latter were donated works solicited from many of the artist whose lives be bad touched. Mrs. William R. French, friend and neighbor of Vanderpoel and wife of the Art Institute's director, was one of the energetic organizers of the collection. It was in response to her personal solicitation that Anita confirmed a donation with one of her signatures "artistic postcards" ---of the Log House, in fact, and gave two pieces, a watercolor titled "Lumber: Seattle" and an oil painting titled "Reflections", both of which remain in the collection 22. Anita is known to also have participated in at least two of the Association's annual exhibitions.

At the Art Institute she also studied with portrait, figurative and landscape painter Lawton S. Parker (1868-1954). Trained at the Art Students League in New York and in Paris at both the Ecole des Beaux-arts and Académie Julian, this widely-exhibited, award-winning artist taught at several American art schools, in addition to establishing his own academia in Paris. 24 An outgrowth of his extensive Parisian academy involvement, during Anita's s student tenure Lawton introduced a competitive system of "Ateliers" (studios) and "concours" (competitions) that eventually replaced the AIC school's academic diploma by 1906 in most disciplines (excepting architecture, design and education). The change was grounded in the dual philosophy that competition motivated student effort and that "graduation" in art was a fallacy.

The influence of the Munich ateliers was also felt at the AIC and reached a crest in the 1890s with the return of the award-winning painter and etcher Frederick Warren Freer (1849-1908), with whom Anita studied. "The Munich ateliers taught a style of painting ... combining the rich dark tonalities of the Dutch Masters with an admiration for [Gustav] Courbet's realism. The 'Munich Style' put a premium on spontaneity, eliminating the discipline of line in favor or direct "drawing" with a heavily-loaded brush." 2 A rigid formula was not preached during Anita's student tenure, however---Freer and many other Royal Bavarian-trained artists having also traveled to Paris. Thus, "the outlook was broad enough to absorb. [John Singer] Sargent, (James Me Neill] Whistler and other [French] influences without a feeling of contradiction." 27 Freer is best known for his genre scenes, interiors, portraits and figures, and worked primarily in oil and watercolor. A native of Chicago and son of the president of Rush Medical College, he was the winner of medals at many major expositions, taught at the Art Students League in New York, was elected an Associate of the National Academy of Design in 1887 and after serving for more than a decade on the faculty of the AIC, was appointed director of the Chicago Academy of Design in 1906.

Danish-born John Christen Johansen (1876-1964) completes the list of Anita's primary teachers at the School of the Art Institute. Trained at the AIC under Vanderpoel and Freer and in Paris under several masters, including James McNeill Whistler, Johansen is best known for his portraits, landscapes, genre and interior scenes, and employed a combination of luminist, tonalist and impressionist styles. 29 A trip to Venice taken by Johansen in 1905, the year of Anita's return to the AIC, resulted in a group of much praised work. Trips abroad would serve as impetus and inspiration for much of Anita's future oeuvre as well. While a student, Anita taught at the AIC to earn her tuition.

In 1903, Anita moved to Philadelphia to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) in Philadelphia. Founded in 1805, it is America's first art museum and school of the fine arts, and remains to this day, one of its most distinguished. Anita studied there under the distinguished portrait, landscape and still-life painter William Merritt Chase (1849-1916). Internationally acclaimed as one of America's greatest Impressionist masters, his European peers in Gilded Age salon portraiture included Anders Zorn and the American expatriate John Singer Sargent. The talented Chase was also one of the country's most influential teachers, with many of his pupils going on to become famous artists in their own right. The genial, Indiana-born Chase founded the first school of open-air painting in America at Shinnecock, New York.

While a student at the P AF A, the 24-year-old Anita also taught there 32 and transcript records indicate that two of her works were shown at the PAFA's 4th Annual Exhibition of Water Colors, Prints, and Drawings in 1907, "Market Day in Chicago Ghetto" and "Git Your Bargains, Ladies: Chicago Ghetto."

The following year, 1904 Anita enrolled at the Art Students League (ASL) in New York City. Established in 1875 it quickly rose to become one of America's most important art schools-so important, that many art schools in major cities offered scholarships to study there. 34 At the Art Students League Anita studied with Frank Vincent DuMond (1865-1951), one of the school's most influential teachers. DuMond was a renowned painter of luminous Impressionist landscapes as well as an illustrator, genre, portrait, landscape painter and muralist. Trained at the ASL and in Paris at the Academic Julian, he became a member of many organizations, including the Society of Mural Painters and exhibited widely, winning prizes at several major expositions. 35 In addition to teaching at the Pratt Institute in New York, he was appointed the director of the Lyme, Connecticut Summer School of Art, one of the foremost outdoor summer art schools in the country. 360pen-air painting would play a major role in Anita's career as a mature artist. Her listings in multiple Who's Whose also record that she studied at the ASL with etcher Ralph M. Pearson (1883-1958), who was also trained under John Vanderpoel at the AIC.

While in New York the same year (1904) Anita attended the National Academy of Design. There she took two classes-Antique (drawing from antique casts) and Painting. She is listed as living at 78 W. 106th Street. 38Founded in 1825 by such leading artists as Samuel F. B. Morse, Asher B. Durand and Thomas Cole, the National Academy of Design contains the oldest school of art in New York City. Modeled after the British Royal Academy, eminent professional artists elected as Academy members by their peers served as instructors of the school. Academicians both past and present encompass many of the nation's leading painters, sculptors, architects and printmakers and include Frederick E. Church, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Frank Lloyd Wright, Jasper Johns, I.M. Pei and Frank Gehry. Its mission, "to promote the fine arts in America through instruction and exhibition," has been steadfastly advanced not only through the quality of its instruction, but also through the exhibitions held annually since its inception and exposure to its museum, which, to Anita's benefit, houses one of the largest and broadest public collections of 19th and 20th century American art in the country. 39 Finally, Anita--like so many other American art students whose numbers swelled from the 1870's through the 1920-- sought to improve her technique, increase her acquaintance with emerging art forms and elevate her stature by studying at a European academy, particularly a Parisian one. In Paris, during the 1921 European trip she immortalized in her book, Round the World on a Penny, she studied with renowned Spanish painter Claudio Castelucho (1870-1927) at the Academie de Ia Grande Chaumiere, one of the five principal Parisian academies that were attended by Americans. Castelucho, a highly sought-after teacher of American art students, also served as director and master instructor at his own academie, Academie Castelucho, in the Montparnasse section of Paris.

In Paris, she also studied with Philadelphia and Paris academy -trained Cecelia Beaux (1855-1942), one of the country's most important women portrait painters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The great William Merritt Chase, growingly characterized her as not only "the greatest living woman painter, but the best that ever lived " 4 From 1895 to 1915 Beaux was appointed as the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts' first full-time female instructor, but frequently returned to France. She remained a prominent member of the national and international art community, being a member of important societies (such as the Société des Beaux-Arts, Paris), winning prestigious prizes (such as a medal at the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition in which Anita also exhibited), becoming part of premier art collections (including the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy) and attracting commissions from such important sitters as Henry James and Theodore Roosevelt.

EARLY CAREER
Her training concluded, Anita launched herself as a professional artist---joining prominent art societies, teaching, and exhibiting in venues commensurate with the quality of her education. Primarily a painter, the body of her adult work was executed largely in watercolor. However, over the course of her long career, the versatile Anita would practice in a variety of media-- oil, charcoal, pastels, crayon, pen and ink and at least one known mural. Her wide-ranging subject matter included portraits, landscapes, nature studies, genre scenes and streetscapes.

Reflecting the times and her academic training was the realism that remained the basis of Anita's painting and drawing style throughout her life. Realistic painting, in fact, dominated the Illinois art scene through the mid-1930s, underlain by the sincere conviction of established artists, mainstream critics and the respected art societies alike "that traditional standards of realism were worthy of honor." 43 Anita developed her distinctive painting style early in her career, a style well summarized by a c. 1942 newspaper review of a watercolor exhibit at the AIC, " ... she is a genius for composition and color, putting touches of humor here and there and more than a few touches of sentiment". 44 Characteristically, the ebullient artist and teacher shared her passion with readers encouragingly adding that "anybody can paint."

Like most of the conscientious realists in the first third of the 20th century and for much of her career, Anita sketched and painted out of doors. In fact, it was during one of many painting expeditions in Winnetka that she discovered the Log House in 1914. A combination of market forces, training and personal preference may account for her plien air propensity. In the period "from the Fair to WW I landscapes filled the exhibitions and won the prizes" 4 , and even continuing into the period between the wars ' [ r]ealistic landscape painting formed the staple of exhibitions and teaching outside of Chicago" 46 Esther Sparks further posits contemporary art influences that would have attracted Anita and other artists working in the period in this direction: "Impressionism's enduring influence and concern with natural light" (transmitted to Anita by some of the finest French-trained American Impressionist artists and teachers including Beaux and Chase), "a liberation from accurate representational drawing provided by Munich-trained teachers" (such as Freer), and "a growing awareness of the American landscape tradition as well as interest in native locales"47, that was fueled nationally by the nativist sentiments of World War I 48 • In the Chicago area these sentiments grew locally out of the Prairie School and especially the Prairie Landscape movement, the latter lead by neighboring Ravinia, Illinois landscape architect, Jens Jensen.

In addition to being a painter, the prolific Anita Willets Burnham was an illustrator and etcher. A large number of original plates exist for the bookplates, logos and personalized cards she designed for numerous important individuals such as Lake Forest resident Mary Shedd Reed (whose father's family established Chicago's Shedd Aquarium is named), and Max Adler (the founder of Chicago's Adler Planetarium), as well as for institutions such as Vassar College Library and organizations such as the National Sculpture Society 49 • The material, style and subject matter of the plates was equally diverse and demonstrated both the breadth of her artistic knowledge and her technical proficiency. Wood block, cardboard, linoleum cut and copper plates depict a variety of subjects including architecture, landscape, interiors and crests in styles drawing from Arts and Crafts, Art Deco, Japanese prints, cartoon and primitive influences.

Anita's boundless imagination spilled over into weaving and crafting as well.50 Enormously creative, her voluminous notes--which fill every square inch of many scrapbooks or are hastily penciled on any available scrap of paper-- are bursting with ideas for everything from woven reed baby rattles, to recycling old shirts into towel rolls, to a jig-sawed row of wooden flowers which charmingly, but effectively serve as a guard rail for one of the children's bedroom windows in the Log House.

Marriage and Family
Besides being a gifted artist, Anita was a dedicated one. Thus, when she met and fell in love with Chicagoan Alfred Newton Burnham (1878-1957), his proposal of marriage left her torn between her heart and her art. His witty retort, "Why can't you have a baby and paint one too?" proved irresistible and they were married in her parents' house on April18, 1906.

Like Anita, Alfred was a descendant of colonial stock that dated back to the very beginnings of this country in the 1630s. Burnham ancestral luminaries held large tracts of land in colonial Massachusetts, were seated in the General Court, founded the state of Vermont and included his cousin, the renowned Chicago architect and city planner, Daniel Hudson Burnham (1846-1912). 51 Burnham, IL was named for Alfred's investor father. Alfred, a graduate of the University of Chicago, followed many of his ancestors into the law and became associated with the major corporation Chicago Title and Trust Company. 52 He and Anita shared an artistic spirit, and his complementary interests in poetry and printing produced many recreational collaborations. Alfred wrote poetry for Anita's arts organizations, and printed her "artistic postcards". In 1920, they were awarded the top prize for two carved dolls they jointly entered in an AIC exhibit showcasing the progress of beauty in the design of American toys.

After living in Chicago at 28 E. 44th Place, they moved to the city's suburban North Shore in 1910, residing at 125 4th Street in Wilmette, IL. Two years later they had moved two suburbs north to 1255 Asbury in the northerly Hubbard Woods section of Winnetka, IL. 54 Their union produced four children, Caroline Louise (also known as Carol-Lou or Kee, 1908-1997), Florence Adele (also known as Flo or Sis, b. 1909), Willets McIntyre (also known as Bud, b. 1911), and Ann Hibbard (1920-2000).

Affiliations
The gauntlet through which artists must run in order to achieve recognition has not changed since the mid nineteenth century. The stages that have served to launch artists, careers have been the art galleries, artists, clubs, competitions, and the important salon-type exhibitions at museums. Without these venues and the concomitant exposure by the critics, an artist’s chances of being discovered and gaining lasting recognition in his or her lifetime are remote. For women artists, those chances are even more remote. ----Peter Hastings Falk, "On Rediscovering Forgotten American Artists and the Role of the Sound View Press, ~ Who was Who in American Art, pp40-1

Consistent with her education and areas of artistic interest, Anita affiliated with the city's respected clubs and arts societies. These specialized organizations, formed by the artists themselves, drew artists together, provided a forum for the dissemination of ideas, sponsored exhibitions and facilitated commissions. Many such organizations had been started between the Chicago fire of 1871 and the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, and a few notable groups, such as the Arts Club of Chicago, were added in the period up until WW I. The Art Institute, the epicenter of Chicago art, served as headquarters for many of the major arts societies, such as the Chicago Society of Artists Society of Etchers, Western Art Association, and the Art Students League. The AIC provided space for the regular exhibitions and receptions they and other art societies held there into the 1930s

Anita is known to have belonged to many of the city's major arts and arts-related organizations, beginning as a student with her membership in the Art Students League (ASL)*. The ASL, organized in 1893 and incorporated in 1911, was the oldest honor society at the School of the Art Institute, with admission being based on the quality of work submitted. The organization offered annual juried exhibits at the AIC and an auction. 5 6, with Anita winning the ASL first watercolor prize in 1903 and 1907. Anita was awarded the AIC Goodman Prize in 191657• Subsequent memberships included the venerable Chicago Society of Artists* organized in 1888 largely by distinguished AIC faculty members58 ; Artists Guild of Chicago*, established 188159 ; Art Fellowship Association of the AIC*; Water Color Society of America, founded in New York in 1866 and sponsor of annual juried exhibitions at the AIC, many of which Anita participated in, and the Chicago Water Color Club60• Clubs of which she was a member include The Arts Club of Chicago*, which opened in 1916 and held regular exhibitions at the AIC until 1922, focusing on Illinois artists 1 ; the McDowell Club 62 and the Cordon Club. The latter, was founded in 1915 by women with studios in the Fine Arts Building, the center of Chicago's fine arts community and located just south of the AIC. Anita was a charter member of this club "created to foster independence and to 'guard and protect self-expression beyond domestic bounds'.

Art societies were formed in several locales around the state of Illinois as well. The more important groups, such as the Rockford Art Association (founded 1913), the Decatur Art Center (founded 1917) , and the Aurora Art League (founded 1919) sponsored regular exhibitions, lectures and classes and brought in quality paintings from Chicago, New York, and other cities.64 Anita would exhibit at several of these locales, including the Rockford Art Association in 1934 65 and become a charter and lifetime member, as well as a director, of the North Shore Art League, founded in 1924.

Exhibitions
For Illinois artists, the Art Institute's annual Exhibition of Chicago Artists (changed to Chicago and Vicinity Artists in 1913 to more correctly recognize its regional nature) was the best opportunity to present their work to the public. Reflecting prevailing taste, representational art was the norm. A few avant-garde canvasses testifying to the new developments in European abstraction were admitted in the 1920s, but overwhelmingly these exhibitions were dominated by conservative juries until at least the mid1930s.66. Anita participated in the Chicago and/or Vicinity Artists shows eight times between 1903 and 1926, and again in 1946 for the 50th anniversary exhibition. 67 She was a frequent exhibitor at the Art Institute at a variety of other shows, with many different organizations, through the early 1930's. These included American Water Colors, Pastels and Miniatures Exhibitions 68 in 1907, 1908, 1910, 1912, 1914, 1917,1918, and 1919 69; International Water Color Exhibition in 1923,1925, and 1931; with the Art Students League in 1903, 1907, 1910, 1914, 1916, 1917, and 1923; American Painting and Sculpture Exhibitions in 1918, and 1931; an American Oils Exhibition in_1907; with the American Society of Etchers in 1915; and the Society of Western Artists 71 in 1906 and 1907. In total, Anita is known to have exhibited at the AIC in 1902, 1903, 1905, 1906 1907, 1908, 1909, 1910, 1912, 1914, 1915, 1917, 1918, 1919, 1923,1924,1925,1926,1927,1931, and 1946.

In the years before acquiring the Log House, she exhibited in other respected venues as well. World's Fairs, being international showcases for art, were an important addition to the exhibition record of artists in the last quarter of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th century. Anita exhibited in the last of the great fairs comprising "the golden age of expositions" the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915, where she was awarded 3 prizes for water colors73• Later, she would not only work as a staff member at the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago, but exhibit her literary and art work there as well.

Galleries were also beginning to come into their own, with middle class buyers purchasing an increasing share of the merchandise. Between the wars, the overwhelming majority of paintings sold were in the conservative, representational style and while American work was beginning to sell, in general, galleries sold few paintings by local artists. 74 Anita Willets Burnham, however, exhibited solo at two of the great Chicago department stores. In 1913, the Picture Gallery at retail giant Marshall Field and Co held an "Exhibition and Sale of Oil Paintings and Water Colors by Anita Willets Burnham", March 17-29. Forty-nine works were offered. An undated clipping from the Lake Shore News about the exhibition (pasted to the back of the catalogue) noted, "Mrs. Burnham is a former student and teacher at the Art Institute and her many friends and pupils in Glencoe are glad of this opportunity to view her excellent work". Anita's entry in the 1946 Who's Who in Chicago and Illinois notes that the great Carson Pirie Scott and Co. department store also held a "One-Man" exhibition of her work (no date is noted, however). Later, she would also be part of a group show at the Mandel Brothers Department Store Galleries.

ACQUIRING THE LOG HOUSE
Discovery
Sustaining a busy career and a growing family defined Anita's life for most of the first quarter of the 20th century. Fortuitously, her creative multi-tasking led Anita to discover the Log House-- then sheathed with clapboards and located just west of the ridge near the intersection of the present Hill Road and Church Streets in Winnetka-- while on a Spring painting expedition in 1914. With her three small children, perambulator (doubling as storage for scavenged firewood) and painting paraphernalia in tow, she was inspired to capture the romantic image of the "tumble-down house" 75 framed by an orchard of apple trees (her favorite) in bloom. Having "always longed to live in the shade of an old apple tree"

inspiration quickly turned to desire when the house's renter invited her in to rest and told her that the house under the apple trees was a log cabin more than 100 years old.
"To possess it possessed me."

History of the Log House to 1914
The log construction that so captured Anita's imagination was introduced to America's eastern seaboard in the 17th century by western Europeans whose prehistoric ancestors had developed the techniques. 78 It is theorized that as settlement of the continent progressed, log construction technique differed regionally, depending on the country of origin of the settlers. Late in the 1600s, the "Pennsylvania Germans" (who emigrated from the present-day Czech Republic and Switzerland as well as Germany) brought a building type called the "continental log house", which was characterized by horizontal logs secured at the corners by one of several types of notching. English settlers, by contrast, continued their tradition of heavy timber framing.

The most current physical and archival research 79 on the Winnetka log house reveals that the location Anita first discovered it was the original site, that the structure was probably built before 1836, was of the single pen (room) plan and that it had always been a two-story log house, not an enlarged log cabin. The latter distinction is important. Whereas log cabins were generally small, impermanent, one to one and-a-half story structures and hastily constructed with unfinished round logs, log houses were larger, more permanent dwellings constructed of hewn logs, of one to two stories, and of more complex notched construction. 80 Thus, the log house Anita eventually acquired measured 16' X 25', whereas the typical log cabin was 16' X 18'.

The logs comprising the Burnham house are roughly hewn (ax marks are clearly visible) on all four sides everywhere but in the attic, and are held together at the corners with the square notching technique that required a moderate degree of skill to execute. By locking the log ends in place, notching provided much of the rigidity and stability of the building. As was typical, this log house was clad with clapboard siding not too long after initial construction.82, since settlers aspired over time to ever more refined housing. Log construction expert Tom Vance confirmed during an August, 2000 site visit however, that the house was originally constructed with the intention of having the logs exposed, reasoning that if the house were intended to be immediately sheathed with clapboard, the logs would have been set farther apart and less well finished. That the logs remained exposed for several years is also evident by the pattern of wear on the exterior.

The first documented owner of the Log House was Peter Schmidt, who purchased it in 1841 from John Malter, probably a land speculator, who acquired it from the U.S government only days before. Records of ownership do not exist before that time because the land was not available for sale by the U.S. government until1841. Schmidt family lore has it that the house was already on the property when the earliest family members arrived in Chicago after emigrating from Koblenz, Germany in 1826. This tale appears to be borne out, in part, by a March 12, 1836 advertisement in the weekly newspaper the Chicago American:

For Sale
A valuable Claim situated on the Milwakee [sic] Road, about two miles [word obliterated] of;; Mr. Patterson's," and sixteen miles from Chicago, all timber, consisting of Burr, White and Red Oak, with Bass and Poplar. The Improvements are a Log House (now occupied [sic]O 4 acres Cleared, fit for Ploughing--. The soil is of superior quality, well-watered, and a living spring adjoins. The above will be sold a great bargain at private sale. Apply to W. Montgomery, Auctioneer

This description is significant in many respects, beginning with the correlation of material. Testing confirms that the lower courses of the Burnham house are comprised of white oak logs. 85 Chestnut, white oak, cedar and fir were desirable because these trees could provide long, straight, rot-resistant logs. Woods were often mixed, with the harder, heavier, rot-resistant wood such as white oak being used for the foundation "sill log" and lighter, more-easily hewn wood such as yellow poplar for the upper log course.

The year 1836 would date the Log House to the earliest period of Winnetka history, which began in 1830 with the arrival of pioneer farmers such as Simon Doyle 7 , followed in 1836 by the arrival of North Shore pioneer Alexander McDaniel. The Erastus Patterson mentioned in the advertisement above also arrived in 1836 and built a two-room log house on the section of Winnetka's lake bluff now named Lloyd Park. Significantly, as in the advertisement, the Patterson site is located approximately 2 miles northwest of the original Schmidt log house site.

Indeed, the entire lakeshore north of Chicago was characterized in the 1830s by this pattern of "scattered, isolated, and unplanned" development and habitation, according to North Shore historian Michael Ebner. 89 Chicago itself possessed a population of merely 150 when it was incorporated as a town three years earlier (1833) 90; Cook County was created only two years before Chicago. The end of the Blackhawk War, its concluding Treaty of Chicago and the consequent removal of the area's Native inhabitants west of the Mississippi shortly after Chicago's incorporation enabled the town to blossom quickly thereafter. An early product of this bloom was Green Bay Road, also known as "the Milwakee Road" that was referenced in the above advertisement. The Log House was constructed along the road. Around it was centered the "scattered, isolated, unplanned" habitation pattern of the early North Shore. So named because it followed an old Indian trail running due north from Chicago along a ridge parallel to Lake Michigan and passing through Milwaukee to its terminus at Green Bay, Wisconsin, the Green Bay Road served as the infant North Shore's primary land connection with burgeoning Chicago.


The North Shore's "scattered, isolated development" of the 1830s included some known log residences (demolished), notably Simon Doyle's log cabin near Lake Michigan at the present Winnetka-Kenilworth border, and the log cabin of Antoine and AR change Ouellette, farther south in present Wilmette. Today, it is important to note however, that while settlement patterns in Illinois were such that "log structures of almost every type were built [well past mid-century], and no style is unique to Illinois", log structures were rarer in the upper third of Illinois. 91Unlike southern and central Illinois, it was largely settled after the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 by New Englanders whose English heritage did not include the use of log construction. The invention of balloon frame construction in Chicago in 1833 also may account for the early eclipse of log construction in this area. The Burnham log house is thus a rare survivor of a relatively rare building type in northeast Illinois.

The Log House passed to Peter Schmidt's son of the same name, who raised a family of 10 children there. Five more owners subsequently held title to the property-Michael Schafer (1870), Clarinet Aldrich (1875), Walter Fanta (1884), Carl Waldron (1911) and Charles Joy (1913). 92 By the Civil War, residents of log structures considered their homes primitive and collectively, the previous owners improved the house Anita purchased with clapboard siding, porches at the front and rear 93, raised ceilings, 94 plastered interior walls and the addition of a rear lean-to.

Acquisition
After a three-year courtship of the log house's owner (a Mr. Charles Joy residing on Wilson Avenue in Chicago) with visits and "home-made artistic postcards"95, the determined Mrs. Burnham was able to buy the house, but not the land which was sold to the adjoining Indian Hill Country Club. Anita paid Mr. Joy the $25 prize money she had earned for one of her paintings, struck a bargain with the Log House renter to continue payments to her for several months (whereby she recouped her investment) and closed a $100 dollar deal to remove it with Glencoe house mover Mr. Eisenberger.

"Picking it up from its foundation of logs and sand", 97 Mr. Eisenberger's team of horses slowly moved the house, on rollers, over the course of three days98, north on Green Bay Road (then Church Road) and west on Tower Road (then North Avenue) to the outskirts of Winnetka where the Burnhams had purchased a small wooded lot at the edge of the Skokie Valley marsh, to what is today the northwest corner of Tower Road and Vernon Avenue. The house was placed on a new brick foundation and Mrs. Burnham, aided by the neighborhood children, promptly began removing the deteriorated exterior shingles and interior plaster, eventually revealing the log structure within and without. The tale of this transformation was endlessly recounted by Anita, who ironically ended it with Mr. Eisenberger incredulously asking the frugal Mrs. B. whether she realized that her contract specified additional time and cost for a guarantee not to crack the plaster!

The house's new setting had one shortcoming-the name of its street. Consequently, the gregarious Anita soon initiated a petition to change unimaginative "North Avenue" to lofty "Tower Road". The new name was suggested by her neighbor and friend, the eminent attorney Laird Bell, and inspired by the towers flanking the mile-long street-- the water tower at the East, and the Techny towers "rising so Maxfield Parrish-like west across the Skokie."

The house, too, was soon imaginatively yet sympathetically improved with a clapboard, two-story rear addition lean-to which gave them two bedrooms, a bath, and a balcony on the second floor and a studio, kitchen and powder room on the first floor. Sometime not long thereafter, a two-story screen porch with upper deck was added. While the addition's architect and/or builder is currently unknown, its concept probably originated with Anita. In her book Round the World on a Penny, she recounts convincing her reluctant husband to live in the coveted log house "by painting word pictures" of the improvements that soon were realized:

a big open fireplace, a balcony, a modern Jean-to tacked on the cabin, and the feel of romance that a hundred years of service had weathered into the very fiber of those humble logs. ''We would have a cement floor, too," I told him. "A cement floor has no upkeep, and is nice for the children to skate on"

Anita furnished the house with sturdy antiques, rustic built-ins and simple floor and window coverings.
RUSTIC INFLUENCES
Interest in Log Architecture
While year-round living in an authentic, historic log house was unique on the North Shore in 1917 (the family continued to cooked in the open hearth throughout its residence and central heat was not installed until the 1940s), nonetheless nationally, the general level of interest in both rustic architecture and simple living during the period was high.

Interest in rustic architecture between the last quarter of the 19th century through the first third of the 20th century produced three principal types of specifically log structures-summer house compounds, large hotels and cottages. The earliest of these, the well-known and publicized "Great Camps" built in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York date back to the 1870's. Over a hundred of these complexes of log structures were constructed, through the 1930s, on vast tracts of land by wealthy New York industrialist and financiers as private get-aways, far from the city, as part of a quest for healthy recreation. Although characterized by the use of log and stone construction sympathetic with their unspoiled natural surroundings, the log residences comprising the great camps-unlike the Burnham log house--were generally grand and supported a luxurious life style.