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Name of Building or Business Northwest Hill Country Club House
Address 600 S. SeeGwun
Built 1929
Demolished 2003
What is currently at that address Mount Prospect Golf Club House
The Country Club was built by Axel Lonnquist, the developer who originally laid out the golf course and the neighborhoods surrounding it. He was one of the largest developers in Mount Prospect’s first real estate boom in the 1920s. The golf course was constructed first, then a children’s playhouse and finally the clubhouse. Originally, the country club was built as an incentive for real estate speculation. It was operated as a private club and membership was restricted to those who bought property in Lonnquist’s development. The original 1929 building was the showpiece of this early suburban housing development. Lonnquist helped to redefine the village of Mount Prospect and, in a small way, suburbs nationally. In the 1920s, when Lonnquist came to Mount Prospect, cities were beginning to be seen as threatening, rather than places of opportunity. Lonnquist played off of this and the history of the glorification of nature, the role of domesticity, and the idea of the home. This, tied to the investment in transportation and the technological advances in housing construction, made it the right time and the right place for a person like Axel Lonnquist.
His development in Mount Prospect was different from
earlier subdivisions in town. He purchased the farms of Fred Schaefer and Henry
Mensching in 1925 and planned "a luxury community." He planned to utilize both
the natural beauty of the area and the modern ideas of suburbs for this
community. In his advertisements, he heralded the semi-rural landscape with the
proximity to the scenic Weller Creek, safe from the hectic pace of the city. He
also advertised the numerous trains in and out of the city for working
professionals. This was meant to be a push and a pull with the ideas of escaping
to the bliss of the quiet country home while needing top get your family away
from the pace and corruption of the city. He specified that the lots in the
development were to be large enough to support both a comfortable home and
good-sized yard. The crowning glory of this development however, was to be the
Northwest Hills Country Club. His idea was that membership in this would be
associated with owing a lot in his development. He opened the Country Club in
1926, although it was then only a nine-hole course. He later expanded it to an
18 hole course and, in 1929, opened the clubhouse.
Although Axel Lonnquist was able to redefine Mount Prospect, he was
not able to make a lot of money on the endeavor. Due to the timing of his
investment, he was not able to sell most of his land before the crash of 1929
and the depression that followed. He sold his property in Mount Prospect at huge
discounts in 1931 to cover debt. In the time that he owned the land, he had been
able to plat the streets, build the country club and a few demonstration homes,
but he built very few homes that are standing today. The Country Club was then
sold to a man named Harold Wilson who changed the name of the club to the more
familiar Mount Prospect Country Club. He made it a semi-private club with annual
dues and held onto it until 1950, when he sold it to Henry Sophie. Sophie ran
the club until 1958, when he sold the course to Richard Hauff, who was a
suspected member of the mafia. Hauff was very controversial, but redesigned the
course, hosted the Women's Master's PGA tournament in 1959 and then declared
bankruptcy in 1960 and put the course up for sale. After an involved fight to
pass a referendum, the Mount Prospect Park District finally purchased it in
1961. Over the years, a number of additions were put onto the clubhouse leaving
hard to recognize any historic value in the building. The structure was
eventually demolished in 2003 although when it came down, a time capsule was
found in the corner stone. This held a little glimpse of the glamour and luxury
that this building had once represented.
Share your memories
Let us know about what you remember from this building. We will include your thoughts in our research files and may put them on-line as a part of our structural memorials.
You can also contact The Mount Prospect
Historical Society through:
Mail at: 101 S. Maple Street Mount Prospect, IL
60056
Telephone at: (847) 392-9006