A.K.A. The Eagle’s Nest Art Colony
By Mark Schwendau (NIU ’76, ’90)
“We are living in a world of beauty, but few of us open our eyes to see it.” ~ Lorado Taft
An often overlooked portion of Lowden State Park in Oregon, Illinois, is the Lorado Taft Field Campus of Northern Illinois University. To understand this field campus of the university one must first come to learn its origin as the home of the Eagle’s Nest Art Colony.
In 1843 the famous writer and feminist Margaret Fuller came to Ogle County, Illinois, to visit her uncle, William W. Fuller, an Oregon attorney. Fuller was the first full-time female book reviewer and newspaper editor in journalism. As a writer she wrote of the Ogle County area in her book, “At Home and Abroad”, but she did much more. She was the first to name the area of the “Eagle’s Nest” because of a 500 year old tall, dead cedar tree where American Bald Eagles were nesting. Also in this location, on July 4, 1843, she composed one of her best-known poems, “Ganymede to His Eagle”, for it was Fuller who also named a natural flowing spring “Ganymede’s Spring.”Ganymede is a divine hero in Greek Mythology. That spring runs into the Rock River one-quarter mile north of where the Black Hawk statue now stands.
As a consequence of her visit, when landowner Chicago attorney Wallace Heckman completed his summer residence in 1893, he named it “Ganymede Farm.” Five years later, from that first summer of 1898, he would set up an art colony from Fuller’s naming of the “Eagle’s Nest”. That original old dead “Eagle’s Nest” cedar tree came down in 1972 and a sign marks the spot of the tree’s location and what is left of its remains by the front door of the Dining Hall.
To honor Margaret Fuller’s visit and contributions to the area, both a Rock River island (south of Lowden Park) and road (west of Lowden Park) are named after her.
After Chicago’s Columbian Exposition, of 1893, a group of artists and others, led by sculptor Lorado Taft, gathered to continue practicing their arts while encouraging each other. Every one of the newly formed group were either members of the Chicago Art Institute or the University of Chicago Art Department. In time, they opted to escape the heat and congestion of Chicago by summering at a farm in Bass Lake, Indiana. However, an outbreak of malaria at Bass Lake drove them from Indiana to Oregon, Illinois. There, Wallace Heckman, who was a friend of the group and patron of the arts, offered the use of part of his Ganymede Farm summer estate for a lease of one dollar per year.
The Eagle’s Nest Art Colony was founded the summer of 1898. It was agreed that the lease would run as long as one of the founding members remained there. The colony was started by eleven men, consisting of artists, architects, writers, and a musician who all became affiliated with Taft in Chicago. The original members were:
Charles Browne (1859-1920), landscape painter, teacher at the Art Institute, and Taft’s brother-in-law
Ralph E. Clarkson (1861-1942), portrait painter and lecturer at the Art Institute of Chicago
James S. Dickerson (1853-1933), newspaper editor and Secretary of the University of Chicago
Clarence Dickinson (1873-1969*), organist musician and church music composer
Horace S. Fiske (1859-1940), poet and teacher at University of Chicago
Henry B. Fuller (1857-1929), novelist who wrote “The Cliff Dwellers”, later namesake to the Chicago fine arts organization of the same name
H. Hamlin Garland (1860-1940), author and Taft’s brother-in-law
Oliver D. Grover (1861-1927), landscape painter
Irving K. Pond (1857-1939), architect and brother to Allen
Allen B. Pond (1858-1929), architect and brother to Irving
Lorado Z. Taft (1860-1936), sculptor
(* Dickinson lived the longest but left the colony and later passed away in New York.)
The Eagle’s Nest Art Colony was a place of tranquility and inspiration for many Midwestern artists and patrons of the arts who would come to visit them to see what they were creating. In later years many other famous writers and artists visited the colony, among them William Vaughn Moody, Ralph Pierson, Bert Leston Taylor, Harriet Monroe, Lucy Fitch Perkins, George Barr McCutcheon, John T. McCutcheon, Dr. James H. Breasted, Mrs. Laura McAdoo Triggs, Edgar A. Bancroft, Charles R. Crane, and I. K. Friedman. Here, too, came Robert Burns Peattie and his novelist wife, Elia, who brought their two sons, Donald Culross and Roderick, both of whom were to become nationally-known writers.
Today, what remains of the Eagle’s Nest Art Colony is found at the northwestern corner of Lowden State Park as 66 acres of the 207 acres of the park. Lowden is one of several Illinois state parks in Ogle County, Illinois. The park was named after Illinois Governor Frank Orren Lowden (in office 1917-1921). Lowden State Park is home to the Black Hawk Statue by sculptor Lorado Taft. The 48 foot tall statue overlooks the Rock River from a bluff some 70 feet above the Rock River looking southwest towards the city of Oregon. The 1910 statue’s 536,770 pounds of concrete and steel is said to be the second largest concrete monolithic (one pouring from the top) statue in the world. The statue was just recently restored by a group of private local citizens and the State of Illinois working collaboratively together.
The 11 charter members, some with family, first lived in shanties and tents at the colony until the association’s constitution was written when charter and regular members were allowed to build summer homes. Taft’s original studio was a converted barn east of the Taft house. The small wooden building had a highly sloped roof which allowed large cast statue figures to be built therein. A skylight was added to allow natural light into Taft’s studio. The first reduced scale models of the “Eternal Indian” (Black Hawk) statue were created inside this studio. Taft’s original studio no longer exists, a Craft Shop now stands on its site.
The Poley House (also called “The Camp House”) was built in 1902 and remains today. The Poley House was designed by the renowned Chicago architects, and brothers, Irving and Allen Pond. The building features bricks above the large, 25-by-33-foot fireplace emblazoned with the art colony motto, a quote taken from Edward Lear’s “The Story of the Four Little Children Who Went Round the World” that reads as follows,
“And here all these interesting animals lived together in the most copious and rural harmony seldom if anywhere else in the world is such perfect and abject happiness to be found.”
The Heckman summer residence of Ganymede Farm was lost at some point due to a fire. It is said to have once stood somewhere around the southwest corner of Lowden Park near where the RV wastewater dumping station is now.
Grover Cottage, like the Heckman house, no longer exists, though its stone fireplace stands in the location of the original building. It is one of the first things one sees from the parking lot. Writer Elia Peattie penned her story “The Girl from Grand Detour” inside Grover Cottage in 1908. Ralph Clarkson’s cottage is also gone. It is said to have been a small wooden studio, just south of the Grover house near where the parking lot is now. It was said to have many windows on three of its four sides. Clarkson painted commissioned paintings of Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison and University of Chicago President Harry Pratt Judson there.
Lorado Zadoc Taft passed away October 20, 1936 and was laid to rest at Elmwood Township Cemetery in Elmwood of Peoria County, Illinois. Many said the colony “lost its spirit” upon his passing. Many credit him and Wallace Heckman as having created the very first “hippie commune” of the United States 60 some years before the term actually came to be. The colony would carry on for 44 years until the death of last resident member Ralph Clarkson in 1942.
Northern Illinois State College President Leslie Holmes (1949-1967) lobbied the State to acquire the land for the college under his leadership. The college had plans to use the land to improve the teaching program by retreats to the Taft section of the park for educational workshops and conferences. On August 7, 1951, Governor Adlai E. Stevenson II signed a bill into law which transferred ownership of the northwestern corner section of the park of the Eagle’s Nest Art Colony to Northern Illinois State College, now known as Northern Illinois University (NIU), just north of the Black Hawk Statue. The Lorado Taft Field Campus was born!From 1951 to 1954, Northern Illinois State College renovated six of the original buildings, including the two first structures built, Poley House and the home of Lorado Taft.
Some art pieces of the Eagle’s Nest Art Colony still exist at the Oregon Public Library, a piece of local art in, and of, itself as it was designed by the Pond brothers of the colony. Construction on the library was let in 1907 to M.D. Smith of Dixon. A second floor art gallery was included in the design at the suggestion of members of the colony. The colony artists used the gallery space for public art exhibits and lectures. Taft persuaded colony members to donate over fifty works to the library as a permanent collection. These paintings and sculptures remain in the library gallery and may be viewed by appointment. The library opened in 1908. The gallery just celebrated its 100th anniversary opening in 1918.
The first classes were held at the Lorado Taft Field Campus in August of 1952. Today, NIU’s Outdoor Teacher Education program at the NIU Lorado Taft Field Campus serves over 4,000 grade school students each year. Three dormitories of the campus make Taft a residential field campus with a primary focus on outdoor education. The Dickerson and Browne houses are used by teachers at the field campus. The campus offers activities such as art (of course), team building, birding, science projects, nature study, Native American heritage/pioneering, survival training, orienteering, as well as sporting activities of all seasons. The Oregon Park District offers luncheon tours of the campus reminiscing back to the days of the art colony several times each year. NIU’s outdoor education and conference center is open year-round to groups of up to 160 people by reservation, usually on weekends when students are away.
To this day, many different kinds of artists call the Rock River Valley home and continue to find tranquility and inspiration in this beautiful part of Illinois just as the artists of Eagle’s Nest Art Colony did 100 years ago.
If you want to visit:
Lorado Taft Field Campus – by appointment (815) 732-2111, or see the website: www.NIU.edu/taft
Lowden State Park – (815) 732-6828, or see the website: https://www.dnr.illinois.gov/Parks/Pages/Lowden.aspx
Oregon Park District – (815) 732-3101 (for luncheon tours), or see the website: http://www.oregonpark.org/
Oregon Public Library Eagle’s Nest Art Gallery – by appointment (815) 732-2724, or see the website: http://oregonpubliclibrary.com/
