{"nrhp_refnum":"73000698","name":"Kennicott's Grove","other_names":["The Grove","The Robert Kennicott House"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"Milwaukee and Lake Aves.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Glenview","county":"Cook County","state":"IL","lat":42.08217390950006,"lon":-87.85894051508674,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1973-08-13","is_nhl":true,"nhl_designated_date":"1976-01-07","areas_of_significance":["Education","Science","Agriculture"],"significance_levels":["national","state","local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"Kennicott's Grove (also called The Grove) is a woodland, marsh and open-land tract with a historic 1854 house, near Milwaukee Avenue and Lake Avenue in Glenview, Cook County, Illinois. Settled in 1836 by Dr. John Kennicott, it was a family homestead and nursery.","why_significant":"The nomination argues the Grove was the home and outdoor laboratory of Robert Kennicott, an early Illinois naturalist whose Alaska reports influenced the U.S. purchase of that territory. It was also a prototype of early Illinois settlement, shaped by Dr. John Kennicott's work in medicine, nursery farming and agricultural reform. Finally, it is valued as a surviving natural heirloom of prairie grove woodland.","narrative":"Kennicott's Grove is a wooded tract of marsh, thicket and open land in Glenview, Illinois, settled in 1836 when Dr. John Kennicott brought his family there. The original holding exceeded 250 acres and included log cabins, orchards, a peony nursery, bee hives and a spring-fed pond. Dr. Kennicott's house, built in 1854 as a modified Gothic cottage with board and batten siding, still stands and is occupied. The property matters chiefly for his son Robert Kennicott, a young naturalist who collected specimens here for the Smithsonian Institution, helped found the Chicago Academy of Sciences, and explored Arctic North America. His reports from Alaska influenced the U.S. purchase of that territory. Dr. John Kennicott was an early physician, nurseryman and editor who promoted land grant colleges and a federal agriculture department. Novelist Donald Culross Peattie later wrote A Prairie Grove here. The tract also preserves old oaks and wetland habitat.","period_of_significance":"19th Century","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Modified Gothic cottage (Dr. John Kennicott's 1854 house, with board and batten siding)","criteria":[],"status_note":"The 1854 Kennicott house is described as in excellent condition and occupied. The present Grove is about 70 acres of woodland, marshland and thicket plus about 70 acres of open land, with several private houses and some nearby subdivision intrusions.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:55:34.960385-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/26/8919/28891926/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_IL/73000698.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/73000698/f165708e31-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/73000698/f165708e31-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 2.0","author":"Teemu008 from Palatine, Illinois","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kennicotts_Grove_(7384457524).jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Teemu008 from Palatine, Illinois</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 2.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kennicotts_Grove_(7384457524).jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/28891926","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennicott_Grove","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6390902"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/illinois/cook-county/kennicotts-grove-73000698/"}