Peabody, Francis Stuyvesant, Estate

Mayslake is a country estate in Oak Brook, Illinois, built between 1919 and 1921 as a retirement home for Francis Stuyvesant Peabody. Architect Benjamin H. Marshall designed the 39-room Tudor Revival mansion, which has red brick walls, stone trim, stucco, half-timbered gables, a slate roof and tall chimneys with ornamental pots. Inside, carved woodwork, strapwork ceilings, marble floors and stone fireplaces survive largely unchanged. The estate once covered 848 acres meant as a horse farm. After Peabody died in 1922, the Franciscan Order acquired it in 1924 and used it as a retreat center, adding a compatible retreat wing in 1952 and later selling off most of the land. Today about 90 acres remain, including two lakes, oak groves, prairie, wetlands and stone entrance gates. The property was recognized for its architecture and for what it shows about the grand country estates built around Chicago in the early twentieth century.