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C. S. Dole Mansion
401 Country Club Road,
Crystal Lake (McHenry County)
The Lakeside Legacy Foundation turned this 2002 Chicagoland Watch
List site into one of 2003 Richard H. Driehaus Foundation
Preservation Award winners. “This unprecedented effort by the Lakeside
Legacy Foundation not only saved a local landmark,” noted Landmarks
Illinois President
David Bahlman, “but it has continued with their very public process to
find appropriate long-term uses for the property.”
One of Crystal Lake’s most significant historic structures is the C. S.
Dole Mansion, an Italianate residence constructed in 1865 for Charles
Sidney Dole, an influential grain baron and ice harvester. In 1922, Eliza
Ringling, of the famed circus family, converted the
building into the Crystal Lake Country Club. In 2002, its owner, a local
church, listed the building and its 12-acre lakefront site for sale. Local
preservationists responded with a grass-roots campaign that—in less than
two months—raised most of the $1.6 million asking price, thereby heading
off plans by a developer to convert the property to condominiums and
townhouses.
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