Ragdale Enjoys Continuous Cycle of Creativity

By Carol Summerfield

Inspired by Europe, American art colonies began in the late 19th century as havens from rapid industrialization, allowing painters, writers, and composers to live communally, pioneering a new era of American artists. The first residential programs developed on the East Coast, such as Cos Cob (Greenwich, Conn., 1890) and Byrdcliffe (Woodstock, N.Y., 1903), the oldest continually operating artists’ colony in America. As train transportation to the west became easier, Taos and Santa Fe followed with artists’ retreats by the 1920s.

Alice Judson Hayes founded the Ragdale Foundation in 1976, transforming her family’s summer estate into a working community for artists. The large estate grounds of Lake Forest and Lake Bluff provided tranquil settings, surrounded by vast natural landscapes, which were well suited to artistic communities. But Ragdale also required supportive residents, who believed in the arts enough to be patrons and supporters. Beginning in the 1910s, Lake Forest and Lake Bluff provided that successful combination, which has endured now for more than a century.

Architect Howard Van Doren Shaw purchased land west of Green Bay Road in 1897. By 1898, he had completed his new home, Ragdale, in the Arts and Crafts style. His intention was to use the property as a summer retreat for his young family, as was much the custom along the western side of Lake Forest. Summer retreats from the pollution and heat of Chicago created a community of seasonal residents, who enjoyed the open prairies, riding trails, and convivial summer atmosphere of Lake Forest in the turn of the century.

As the use of the estate expanded, so did the number of buildings. To Shaw, the name and the style of Ragdale implied informal country surroundings rather than a well-groomed estate. His daughter Evelyn thought the name “suggested a sort of cultivated shabbiness, which subsequently proved appropriate.” To granddaughter Alice Ryerson Hayes, it meant “plain living and high thinking.”

By 1912, Shaw created an outdoor theater on the property, for his artistic wife and daughters, who created plays, dances, and festivals for themselves and their friends throughout the summer. In that space, the Ragdale Ring was born. The family staged plays for the Lake Forest community as well as artistic friends and collaborators like Carl Sandberg, Vachel Lindsay, and Harriet Monroe. The mingling of Lake Forest denizens with artists also led to collaborations like that of Monroe, a frequent guest and occasional resident at Red Bird Cottage on the Aldis Compound, and resident Hobart C. Chatfield-Taylor, writer and patron of the arts, to create Poetry Magazine -- still in publication today, 114 years later. Frances was a key early supporter of the magazine.

In an era when women were typically considered amateurs, Howard Van Doren Shaw’s mother Sarah was a serious and proficient painter. Her commitment to her art set the tone for the rest of the family, establishing a creative atmosphere that permeated the family’s Lake Forest home. Sarah lived at Ragdale with the family every other summer, spending alternate years traveling and painting abroad. While she was at Ragdale, she would regularly use her daughters and grandchildren as models for her bucolic paintings.

Frances was a published poet and playwright. Howard built a cottage for her to use as a writing studio in 1915. The family was fond of silly nicknames -- a common habit in the late Victorian era. Howard called his wife “Wog,” and this was her den. So, this little cottage was named Wogden.

Howard and Frances’s daughter Sylvia trained at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and abroad, becoming a celebrated sculptor, known especially for her garden pieces. In the 1930s, she returned to Ragdale and established a studio there, turning the family landscape into a place of sustained artistic work. Her sculptures of children and animals—including Bird Girl and The Little Gardener—extended the Ragdale tradition into gardens and public spaces. 

The fourth generation, Sylvia’s daughter Alice Judson Hayes, inherited not simply a house but an idea: a place that could nurture creativity. A poet, writer, and social activist, Alice founded the Ragdale Foundation in 1976, transforming her family’s summer estate into a working community for artists. What began as a private retreat became, through Alice’s vision, an enduring public resource for creativity that constantly reshapes its artistic inheritance.

Alice led Ragdale in those early years, alongside a group of dedicated volunteers, and in 1986 donated the land and buildings to the City of Lake Forest to preserve the organization’s future. In building off Alice’s gift and the legacy of the Shaw family, the Ragdale Foundation remains committed to her spirit of courageous creativity and inclusive community, guided by a deep commitment to historic preservation and environmental stewardship.

From the first Shaw family residents until today, Ragdale has established a continuous cycle of creativity that has remained unbroken for nearly 130 years. Over the past 50 years, more than 6,000 writers, dancers, choreographers, architects, musicians, composers, and visual artists have found community, time and space to explore their work at 1260 N. Green Bay Road in Lake Forest.

To find out more about Ragdale and the Shaw Family history, including the history of Bird Girl, check out the exhibition at The History Center of Lake Forest-Lake Bluff. The exhibition runs through mid-April 2027. Find out more at lflbhistory.org