Lake Forest Estate That Inspired 'Great Gatsby' To Be Restored

LAKE FOREST, IL — A dilapidated 125-year-old mansion believed to have played a part in the inspiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel "The Great Gatsby" has been sold for the first time in decades. Designed by Howard Van Doren Shaw, the estate on Ridge Road was built in 1906 for the family of Chicago stockbroker Charles Garfield King. King's socialite daughter Ginevra is said to have briefly dated the author and introduced him to elite high society before dumping him.

According to literary legend, Fitzgerald would go on to base the character of Daisy Buchanan in "Gatsby," Isabelle Borgé in "This Side of Paradise" and others on King, whose family made a fortune during the boom in Chicago during the Civil War, according to Classic Chicago Magazine. He established the brokerage King, Farnum & Co. and maintained offices in New York and Chicago, and his daughter would go on to become a member of what Time magazine dubbed the "Big Four" of socialite heiresses.

In 1915, 16-year-old Ginevra King met Fitzgerald, then a 19-year-old Princeton University student, at a sledding party in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he lived at the time, during a visit to one of her classmates from the elite Westover School in Connecticut, according to the New York Times.

Fitzgerald visited Lake Forest twice during the two years the pair corresponded through love letters, although the author of a book about their relationship told Chicago Magazine it was unknown if he ever visited the house.

King wrote in her diary she was "madly" in love with Fitzgerald, the Times reported in 2003, when her papers were donated to the Princeton library. But after Fitzgerald's August 1916 visit to the North Shore, he penned a pessimistic phrase in his ledger: "Poor boys shouldn't think of marrying rich girls."

When King became engaged in 1918 to William Mitchell, a young business partner of her father, her portrait graced the cover of Town & Country magazine, according to Classic Chicago. King would go on to divorce Mitchell in 1939. She died in 1980 at the age of 82.

Jeanette and Danny Hodkinson are the new owners of the King house, Crain's reported. They closed on the home Sept. 14 through their real estate firm Belle Design. The couple have bought and sold half a dozen houses so far in other communities, but they told Crain's they plan to rehab the property for themselves. After restoring the property to its former glory, they plan to "throw a lot of parties."

Formerly part of the 47-acre Kingdom Come Farm, the estate was remodeled in the Colonial Revival style in 1938 but has not been updated since the 1950s, according to Crain's. The entire property was sold for $9 million in May 2017 to Ryan Homes, of Schaumburg.

The sudivided land is being sold by North Shore Builders, which is building 26 new homes and plans to sell the other eight lots on the site to buyers looking to build they own designs, Chicago Magazine reported in March. Named Westleigh Farm, homes in the subdivision will sell for $1 million and up, according to the developers.

• Address: 250 S Majestic Oak Ct, Lake Forest, Illinois
• Square Feet: 7,424
• Bedrooms: 7
• Bathrooms: 7 full, 2 half
• Built: 1906
• Last Sold: Sept. 14 for $685,000

More Recently Sold Lake Forest Homes »