{"nrhp_refnum":"87000649","name":"Grigsby Estate","other_names":["Elsbert Farms","Stephenson Residence"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"125 Buckley Rd.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Barrington Hills","county":"Lake County","state":"IL","lat":42.17198749450006,"lon":-88.17938199577327,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1987-05-12","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A country estate and working hobby farm of about 112 acres (originally 200) at 125 Buckley Road in Barrington Hills, Lake County, Illinois. It was designed in 1930 as a complex of English Tudor buildings.","why_significant":"The nomination argues that the estate embodies the characteristics of an American country estate built as a working hobby farm in the English Tudor style. It has local significance as an example of early hobby farm and country estate development in Barrington Hills. It also possesses high artistic values in the completeness of its design and retains an unusually high degree of integrity.","narrative":"Set on roughly 112 acres of rolling farmland and woods in northern Barrington Hills, this estate was designed in 1930 by the Chicago firm Rowe, Dillard and Rowe for Bertram James Grigsby, an electrical engineer and radio manufacturer, and his wife Elsie. It was planned as a working hobby farm. The complex includes a manor house, a garage with a chauffeur's apartment, a guest cottage, a potting shed, a firehose shed, a farmhouse, a barn with milkhouse, and a machinery shed. All are built in English Tudor style with textured brown brick, half-timbering, casement windows and hand-wrought iron hardware. The buildings sit in three informal groups near a five-acre lake. The estate was listed for its architecture. It is a representative example of the hobby farms that wealthy residents created in the area while modeling their lives on English country living. Few such estates kept their original outbuildings, and this one has retained nearly all of them.","period_of_significance":"1900-","architect_builder":"Rowe, Dillard and Rowe","architectural_style":"English Tudor (Period Revival)","criteria":["C"],"status_note":"Listed as occupied, in excellent condition and used as a private residence. The greenhouse is demolished and the chicken house is largely gone; the other original buildings are intact.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:55:35.676347-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/0/8933/28893300/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_IL/87000649.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/87000649/c628ec4fd7-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/87000649/c628ec4fd7-1600.webp","licence":"Public domain","author":"Smallbones","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BHills_Estate.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">Smallbones</a>, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BHills_Estate.JPG"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/28893300","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigsby_Estate","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q85764613"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/illinois/lake-county/grigsby-estate-87000649/"}