A Bold Renovation Reinvigorates This Landmark Chicago Home

A quiet, leafy North Shore enclave of Lake Forest holds a surprising secret—a precious trove of homes by midcentury modern architect I.W. Colburn. Breaking away from the pure minimalism of his peers, the design vanguard seamlessly married modernism with classical forms and proportions. 

Built in 1964, one such abode tantalized designer Megan Winters, awed by its brick-clad façade merging rectilinear purity with Colburn’s gothic-inspired buttresses perforated by arches and oculi. “This is not a cookie-cutter midcentury modern house,” the designer notes. “It has so much personality and international flavor.” Turning this time capsule into her own family summer home proved too tempting. “You could see the bones were just dying to sing again,” she says.

Later additions, however, had skewed Colburn’s Palladian sense of order, especially inside. “If you looked at the original floor plans, they were perfectly symmetrical,” notes architect Susan Chamlin Rolander, Winters’ frequent design partner. She and Winters wanted to “bring it back to its streamlined, simple open plan.” 

They first harmonized the disjointed two-story entrance added in the 1990s. Replacing a conventional solid front door, a new all-glass design blends into the windows above. The result creates a seamless tower of glass that restores the façade’s focal point, complemented by a fresh coat of white smoothing over the uneven Chicago brick exterior sporadically patched over the years. Equally symmetrical landscaping by Scott Byron underscores the home’s renewed balance, the central driveway now flanked with a romantic allée of Redpointe maples. “They become almost like soldiers on either side, further emphasizing the geometry of the house,” the landscape architect explains. 

Inside, general contractor Voytek Sobolewski’s crew painstakingly reconfigured the entrance by repositioning an entire staircase and removing a fireplace wall. Now sight lines flow unencumbered through the vaulted living room toward lush views of the garden beyond, guided by a thick sable stripe across the ceiling. This inky line seeps through the abode, wrapping around the ceilings and walls in the dining room, home office and family lounge. “It’s a fun way to play with the eye as it dances across spaces,” Winters says. “It unifies the ceilings on each axis of the house.”

More graphic flourishes highlight Rolander’s simplified layout, achieved by removing excess partition walls from previous renovations to restore intuitive circulation. Winters paired striped carpeting and wall paint to elongate the primary bedroom suite. In the kitchen, black accent trim and paneling accentuate the custom cabinetry. The precise color-block millwork streamlines the once cramped space, now illuminated by a skylight.

Honoring Colburn’s fusion of ideas old and new, Winters fortified the modernist interior with classic finishes. See the herringbone French oak floors and the foyer’s Belgian bluestone checkered with white marble, proof positive that the eloquence of wood and stone belongs to no specific era. “It’s really the architecture that makes it feel modern, not the materials themselves,” she explains. 

In curating each room, Winters liberally borrowed many classic midcentury modern silhouettes popular during Colburn’s heyday—from the dining room’s vintage Cleo Baldon chairs to the spider-style chandeliers and sconces. Other pieces cheekily toy with familiar forms. “You want the eye to be comfortable but also intrigued,” Winters says.

Crisp geometry defines the living room, featuring parallel-striped sofas and a custom table of intersecting circles—a visual “wink and nod,” Winters says, to Colburn’s oculi and buttresses. Meanwhile, the powder room embraces more free-flowing silhouettes with its undulating mirror and globular-print wallpaper. In turn, scalloping at the base of the daybed and on the custom-upholstered headboard infuse a whimsical verve in the guest bedroom. 

A measured palette of black, white and taupe wrangles everything into pleasing visual harmony. “But I used different tones and depths, because exact tone on exact tone is exactly boring,” the designer remarks. Warm shades comfortably live alongside cool, like the ebonized oak breakfast table paired with warm charcoal-striped linen chairs. Different textures also add complexity to similar hues, like the living room’s earthy layers of grass-cloth wallpaper, jute rugs and wood-and-rush nesting stools.

By any measure, this house has reclaimed the emotive dimensions Colburn so valued, now fully animated with color, texture and light. And Winters enjoys every delightful facet. “I’m completely taken aback by how beautiful it is,” she gushes. “It just feels like home.”