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The Chicago Bears training facility and headquarters, Halas Hall,
opened in 1997 in west Lake Forest, and the Chicago Fire now train at
the Bears' previous facility located on the campus of Lake Forest College.
Robert Redford filmed Ordinary People, the story of a Lake Forest family,
on location in 1980, and the movie went on to win Best Picture at the
Academy Awards. Actor Vince Vaughn graduated from Lake Forest High School,
as did author Dave Eggers and musician Andrew Bird.
Most Lake Forest residents attend Lake Forest School District 67 and
Lake Forest High School. Lake Forest High School serves Lake Forest as
well as neighboring Lake Bluff and Knollwood.
The Montessori School of
Lake Forest and Forest Bluff School (in Lake Bluff) both serve ages two
through 14, and are both accredited by AMI (Association Montessori Internationale);
the latter is nationally known from the writings of founder and former
head Paula Polk Lillard, and is often cited as one of the leading Montessori
schools in America. Lake Forest Academy, a boarding and day school on
the west side of Lake Forest, is considered to be one of the best college
preparatory and boarding schools in the Midwest, and attracts students
from across the country and around the world.
Lake Forest Country Day
School was recently lauded by Chicago Magazine for its use of technology
in the classroom. East Lake Academy and the School of St. Mary are the
two private, Catholic schools located in Lake Forest: East Lake Academy
is a newer elementary school started in 2001, and the School of St. Mary
was established in 1917 and is a Catholic institution in Lake Forest.
Lake Forest is notorious for its strong stance against commercial development.
High property taxes have driven out many businesses, especially car dealerships,
to neighboring Lake Bluff. Most notably, Lake Forest Sportscars, one of
the only Ferarri dealerships in Illinois, moved from downtown to its current
location on Waukegan Road in Lake Bluff, just across the street from Lake
Forest. The McDonald's in West Lake Forest was approved only after significant
appearance changes, giving it a "barn-like" appearance. There
were plans for a Costco to be built on Illinois Route 60, near the Tri-State
Tollway in 2005. However, these plans were canceled due to opposition from
the city government, local citizens, and the Chicago Bears.
Lake Forest is famous in Chicago for its history of polo, being once the
farthest-west establishment of the sport in the US. It was home to the "East-West
clash of 1933" in which a team of "Westerners", today Midwesterners,
challenged the best of the Eastern US polo teams, winning two of three
matches. Box seats sold for $5.50 and the general public was admitted for
$1.10. The Chicago press covered the match extensively, right down to the
arrival of every horse and player, the color of the horseflesh and the
color of the goalposts. The match was described as a "gleaming moment
in American polo, if not the very zenith of the game in this country." Today,
Lake Forest continues the tradition, and polo is played yearly throughout
August. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby, Tom Buchanan's
polo ponies are said to have been bred in Lake Forest. |
