In 2023, Chris and Brittany Davis, owners of Davis Home Renovations, Inc., a well-respected local contracting firm, bought the home at 775 Mawman Avenue in Lake Bluff
The house, Chris Davis says, according to local legend, is considered to be the second oldest home in Lake Bluff. The home was built before the Civil War, when Lake Bluff was known by another name, Rockland.
While other builders were talking about a tear down, Davis says, he and his wife decided to save the house, utilizing his years of expertise in historic renovations.
“She was in pretty bad shape,” Davis said, “but in our family if there is one thing we love, it’s a project.”
The property was purchased with the goal that it would become the Davis family home and they called it Mawman Manor.
“As a kid growing up in Lake Bluff, I used to ride my bike past this house, the cool house with the barn down by the railroad tracks, which even then seemed sort of overgrown and hidden,” Davis said.
On Sunday afternoon, the Davis family, Chris, Brittany, and their three sons Bryan, Brent and Christopher, held an open house at Mawman Manor.
According to Brittany Davis, friends and neighbors have taken great interest in the renovation and there has also been great interest from the community.
“An open house gives us a way to share the culmination of the years’ worth of after-work hours and weekend work it took to complete the house,” Brittany Davis said.
Sunday’s event also featured a few treasures unearthed during the demolition of the house — a gold tooth, a Daughters of American Revolution pin, a June,1903 issue of the Lake Forester, an old postcard, and a cannon ball, along with several other items.
Early on, Davis says, they consulted with the Lake Bluff History Museum.
“This house is actually an important part of the pre-Civil War, pioneer history of the town, built just around 1860, after railroad tracks were put in connecting the area to Chicago,” Lake Bluff History Museum president and historian, Kathleen O’Hara said.
O’Hara says the oldest home in Lake Bluff is at 666 Mawman Avenue, where a man named Henry Ostrander, built a tavern and boarding house for the railroad workers in 1855.
According to the History of Mawman Manor booklet distributed during Sunday’s event, the original carriage barn is first shown on the 1860 plat along with the E. Hart Street. Edwin Hart originally built the home as a one-room structure known as the E. Hart General Store and Post Office before Lake Bluff was even Lake Bluff.
The main door faced east towards the railroad tracks with a second entrance on the southwest corner. The home sits on 10×10 hand hewn logs with a field stone and brick foundation. It is a balloon framed home constructed with hand cut, rough dimensional lumber that was notched into the logs, a practice used before nails became part of construction.
“What began as a one-room general store and post office has undergone many renovations and additions over the years,” Davis said.
Davis says that in addition to their research and conversations with historians, taking the house down to its shell has revealed some of the history of the house.
Additions to the single-story room were added sometime between 1860 and 1903, then in 1903 a second story was added, and in the early 1930s a third addition doubled the size of the home on the first and second floors.
Davis says now that the house is done, they will move into phase 2 of the project which will focus on exterior landscaping.
Today, 775 Mawman Avenue in Lake Bluff has undergone a contemporary transformation and stands as a 3,050 square feet, 5-bedroom, 3.5-bath, house, with a finished attic, a cellar, and full barn which conveniently doubles as a 3-car garage.
During renovations, Davis Home Renovations, Inc., collaborated with Laura Kaufmann of LBK Design Group of Lake Forest, who worked on floor plans, cabinetry, elevations, and other design aspects of the project.
Kaufmann says she is honored to work on such an iconic Lake Bluff property, which she describes as Victorian in the details and Farmhouse in the layout.
“The place has undergone so many different lives so many different variations, and renovations it’s wonderful to bring it back to what a contemporary family needs, while paying homage to the past,” Kaufmann said.
Gina Grillo is a freelancer for Pioneer Press.
