Mitchell Estate Project

Custom Restoration of a Legend

JOYMARK Corp. had the opportunity to help restore the famous Mitchell Estate in Lake Forest, IL.

Restoration work included:

  • Exterior Work- Exterior Trim, Copper Gutters, Custom Restoration of Windows

  • Honoring a priceless painting with a custom fireplace surround. Hidden behind a wall for 80+ years, the painting was a headpiece over a pre-prohibition wet bar. The painting was found during the restoration work.

  • Ballroom- JOYMARK Corp. did an extensive custom paneling restoration and created custom new French doors for the Ballroom

History of the fascinating Mitchell Estate:

Built in 1914, its architect was Arthur Heun, who designed many of the premier mansions in Chicago and Lake Forest.

In 1918, the mansion became home to the newlyweds William H. and Ginevra Mitchell. The son of the president of the Illinois Merchants Trust Company,  Mitchell served with the U.S. naval aviation corps during World War I, working as a flight instructor in Key West. In 1919, he cofounded Mitchell, Hutchins & Co., an investment firm whose name, despite its 1980 acquisition by Paine Weber, remained in place until 2001.

In 1915, when she was 16, Mitchell’s bride, née Ginevra King, began a flirtatious, largely written in letter romance with F. Scott Fitzgerald while he was a student at Princeton University. Their relationship had cooled by the time she accepted Mitchell’s marriage proposal, but she left an indelible impression on Fitzgerald: he used her as the model for several of his fictional characters, most notably that of Daisy Buchanan, the glamorous heartbreaker in The Great Gatsby.

Read more about the famous Ginerva King in this Huffington Post article.

Vanessa Baker