Many retail workers are happy just to get a day off every now and then these days. Wouldn’t it be nice if employers offered a free vacation to a lovely, leafy, lakeside resort every summer?
Marshall Field & Co. did. Starting around 1917, Field’s owned a retreat house at 348 Foss Court in Lake Bluff to give female employees a break from the city’s toil and smog. The retailer also had a small, red cottage on the property for widows and their families.
There were a few catches: the women had to be “of lesser means,” they had to take turns, and they could only stay one week.
It’s fun to imagine what their days were like. They likely took the C&NW railroad up from Chicago, their wool bathing attire packed in steamer trunks. Did they walk the half mile from the Lake Bluff depot to Foss Court in long skirts and long-sleeved blouses? Or did they catch a ride on a horse-drawn cart?
Had they taken a stroll to Lillian Dell’s Drive, the vacationers surely would have noticed the ashen remains of the Hotel Minnetonka at the corner of North and Maple avenues, which burned to the ground on August 25, 1917.
One of the smaller hotels in Lake Bluff, the Minnetonka was built in 1894 for working women (as in women who worked — not women of ill repute). It was designed by Louis Sullivan for the Working Women’s Association.
In later years as the hotel was opened up to others, it became known as the Honeymoon Hotel because it was directly across from Lillian Dells Drive, a romantic way down to the beach that had a nickname of its own: Lover’s Lane.
Written by Adrienne Fawcett for LBHM’s July 2024 e-newsletter.