Lester Armour House

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.

From the record

“The Lester Armour House is a historic mansion in Lake Bluff, Illinois, United States. It was designed by David Adler in 1931 and is considered one of his most pure works as well as one of his largest.”
Wikipedia article Lester Armour House, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 98 National Register listings published here for Lake County · listed in 1984 · category: Building.

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 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Listed as. Armour, Lester, House - the National Register files a house under its owner's surname.
Address. Sheridan Rd., Lake Bluff, 60044
When was it listed? May 1984
Category. building
Township. Shields township
Architect. David Adler
National Register reference number. 84001131 - 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 Bluff. This is what it says, exactly as the scans read.

Lake Bluff, otherwise known as the Lake Bluff Camp Meeting enterprise, is situated in this township, on Lake Michigan, a short distance north of Lake Forest, east of Rockland Station, on the Northwestern Railroad. A plat of this place was laid out and completed February 24, 1877.

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

6 since 2017

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 6 fires within 5 miles of Lester Armour House between 2017 and 2020, burning about 40 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	3
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
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

Mines and quarries near this property

2 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 2 workings within 5 miles of Lester Armour House: 1 producer, 1 plant. All of them still produce. What was taken out: Tantalum, Niobium (Columbium), Tungsten, Iodine. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Where	Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
	Abbotts North Chicago Iodine Plant	Iodine	Plant
	Fansteel #1 Tantalum Plant	Tantalum, Niobium (Columbium), Tungsten	Producer

Every working recorded in Lake County

Storms near this property

5 since 2003

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Lake Bluff, the town this property stands in, in 5 storm reports between 2003 and 2022: 2 flood, 1 hail, 1 flash flood, 1 thunderstorm wind. 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
August 2007	Flash Flood	Lake Bluff	$10,000	Up to 4 inches of rain fell in a short time in the early morning hours. Some low lying roads had more than 2 feet of standing water. US41 near the Route 176 viaduct was closed due to flooding. One man had to be rescued from his vehicle. Route 176 was also closed at Sheridan Road due to flooding and buckling of pavement.
July 2022	Thunderstorm Wind	Lake Bluff	-	A photo was shared of a tree that was blown down onto a car in Lake Bluff.
July 2007	Flood	Lake Bluff	-	Two feet of standing water at Route 41 and Route 176.
July 2006	Flood	Lake Bluff	-	Road closed at 14 Skokie Valley Road because of high water.
July 2003	Hail	Lake Bluff	-	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
William McCormick Blair Estate	0.2 miles	2008
Howard and Lucy Linn House	0.4 miles	2005
John Griffith Store Building	0.9 miles	2003
Lake Bluff Uptown Commercial Historic District	1.0 miles	2006
Great Lakes Naval Training Station	1.4 miles	1986
Mrs. C. Morse Ely House	1.5 miles	2000

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 84001131 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.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
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.