On a bright Wednesday morning, recently, Jeanette Fields stood at Lake Street and Auvergne Place in River Forest, watching flowers and grasses being planted in front of a pair of white limestone columns anchoring large wrought-iron fencing.
The Waller Gates stand sentry at the entrance to Auvergne Place, the remnant of a once grand and luxurious estate created by Edward C. Waller in the late 1800s.
Elderly now, and leaning on a cane, Fields smiled as she observed the final touches on the restoration and rebirth of what will become River Forest’s first historic landmark.
Back in 1986 the village was planning on tearing this down. That April, Fields, a longtime architecture columnist and contributor to Wednesday Journal, learned that the Waller Gates were threatened with demolition by a planned village street improvement program which called for the significant widening of Lake Street.
Current Public Works Director Greg Kramer, then the village engineer, suspected the gates might be historically significant. As Fields put it, “Kramer couldn’t identify Mr. Wright from Mr. Wrong,” but he suspected there was more to the dilapidated structures than met the eye. So he contacted Fields.
“I said, ‘Ohhh, nooo! You can’t do that.'” The Waller Gates, she told him, were the first independent design commission by a then 24-year-old Frank Lloyd Wright.
At the time it was easy for people to miss the significance of the structure-decades of neglect had left the gates broken, with sections of limestone lying on the ground, sections of fencing badly rusted or missing, and the Wright-designed lanterns that once crowned each pier long gone.
After recovering from her shock, Field mobilized the community.
“Like a Pauline Revere, I spread the alarm,” Fields wrote in her Journal column in April, 1986. Faced with a slew of letters and the testimony of eight people at the April 14 board meeting, trustees voted to pave but not widen Lake Street.
Field’s job was just beginning, though. With a small group of like-minded colleagues, including architect John Thorpe, Lucille Klein and Faye Devine, eventually some $20,000 in private and public funding was secured.
“We formed a committee, and we did the fundraising, and we raised the money,” said Fields. Throughout the years, she said, she never got discouraged.
“I knew we were going to do it.”
The one element not restored were the missing wrought iron gates. “John was able to have them reproduced,” she recalled.
The effect, admirers say, is striking.
“There’s no street in most communities that has an architectural statement like this,” said Frank Lipo, executive director of then Historical Society of Oak Park-River Forest. “You can’t miss it. It’s distinctive.”
Laurel McMahon, a longtime River Forest preservation advocate, former Historical Society president and current chairman of the Village Historical Preservation Committee, lauded the restored site as River Forest’s western gateway.
She also praised the woman she refers to as “The mother of preservation in River Forest.” Fields, she said, was a treasure trove of historical and architectural information.
“She’s been the go-to person for as long as I’ve lived in the area. Without Jeanette, we would have no preservation ordinance.”
Recently the Waller Gates were chosen for a special honor.
“The trustees of River Forest have voted unanimously to submit the gates as the very first River Forest landmark falling under the Historic Preservation Ordinance,” McMahon said.
As she posed for a photo, Fields was asked how it feels to see her project completed, her vision confirmed and championed by another generation of preservationists.
“Wonderful. It feels wonderful,” she said, beaming.