Clifford Milton Leonard Farm

Built in 1926 (Renaissance Revival architecture). Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.

From the record

“The Clifford Milton Leonard Farm is a historic farm at 550-579 Hathaway Circle in Lake Forest, Illinois. The gentleman's farm was built in 1923-26 for Clifford Milton Leonard; at the time, gentleman's farms were a popular pastime for America's wealthiest citizens, and Leonard, the head of several oil and banking companies, was no exception to this rule.”
Wikipedia article Clifford Milton Leonard Farm, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 98 National Register listings published here for Lake County · listed in 2000 · category: Building · built in 1926, Renaissance Revival architecture.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 7 buildingss, 3 structuress as contributing to the listing.
Listed as. Leonard, Clifford Milton, Farm - the National Register files a house under its owner's surname.
Address. 550,561,565,570,575,579 Hathaway Circle, Lake Forest, 60045
When was it listed? August 2000
Category. building
Township. Shields township
When was it built? 1926
Architectural style. Renaissance Revival architecture
National Register reference number. 00000944 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

The ground it stands on

4,524 words

The chapter on Shields Township in The Past and Present of Lake County, Illinois, published 1877 names Lake Forest. This is what it says, exactly as the scans read.

And the following persons were appointed a committee to draft articles of association, viz. : Hiram F. Mather, John H. Kedzie and H. G. Shumway. Meanwhile the Trustees appointed as aforesaid proceeded, by direction of the subscribers, to make purchases of land, the location having been determined upon at the present site of Lake Forest.

Passage source: The Past and Present of Lake County, Illinois, published 1877.

The land purchased for the association originally comprised about 1,300 acres, situated in Section 3, Township 44, and Sections 27, 28, 33 and 34, Range 12, in Lake County, lying on Lake Michigan, extending back across the Milwaukee Division of the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad. It was divided between the Lake Forest Association and the University afterward organized.

Passage source: The Past and Present of Lake County, Illinois, published 1877.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Shields Township - 4,524 words on its settlement, mills, schools and churches.

Fires near this property

7 since 2017

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 7 fires within 5 miles of Clifford Milton Leonard Farm between 2017 and 2020, burning about 42 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Debris and open burning	4
Equipment and vehicle use	1
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1
Power generation/transmission/distribution	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
1 June 2018	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Illinois Division of Forestry Resources	60118
8 May 2018	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Illinois Division of Forestry Resources	18-1522
9 April 2019	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	15 acres	Illinois Division of Forestry Resources	19-971
30 April 2018	Debris and open burning	2.0 acres	Illinois Division of Forestry Resources	18-1413
4 December 2017	Power generation/transmission/distribution	1.0 acres	Illinois Division of Forestry Resources	17-3964
15 December 2020	Debris and open burning	23 acres	Illinois Division of Forestry Resources	2020-2498
4 November 2020	Equipment and vehicle use	under an acre	Illinois Division of Forestry Resources	2020-2239

Every fire recorded in Lake County

Storms near this property

8 since 2000

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Lake Forest, the town this property stands in, in 8 storm reports between 2000 and 2024: 3 thunderstorm wind, 2 flash flood, 2 flood, 1 hail. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
October 2001	Flash Flood	Lake Forest	$180,000	no account filed
February 2024	Thunderstorm Wind	West Lake Forest	-	A photo shared via social media showed a tree downed onto a road at Lake Forest Academy. Time was estimated using radar.
June 2024	Flash Flood	West Lake Forest	-	The northbound lane of US Rt 41 was closed between IL Rt 60 in Lake Forest and Washington St in Waukegan due to areas of flooding.
September 2018	Flood	West Lake Forest	-	Route 41 was closed south of Route 60 due to flooding in a flood prone area under a low-lying railroad bridge.
December 2018	Flood	Lake Forest	-	Minor street flooding was reported in Highland Park including Tanglewood Court, Taylor Avenue and Tennyson Lane. Storm total rainfall of 1.55 inches was measured one mile south of Highwood.
June 2011	Thunderstorm Wind	Lake Forest	-	Approximately 300 trees were damaged in Lake Forest with 35 trees blown down or were damaged severely enough to be removed.
June 2007	Thunderstorm Wind	Lake Forest	-	Trees blown down.
May 2000	Hail	Lake Forest	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Lake County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Deerpath Hill Estates Historic District	0.4 miles	2006
House at 965 Castlegate Court-Deerpath Hill Estates	0.4 miles	2006
House at 380 Chiltern Drive-Deerpath Hill Estates	0.5 miles	2006
Frank Hibbard Estate House-Deerpath Hill Estates	0.6 miles	2006
J. Ogden Armour House	0.8 miles	1982
Noble Judah Estate	1.3 miles	1990

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 00000944 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Lake County	All 98 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.