Eagle's Nest Art Colony
Size: 37 items (on partial microfilm reel).
Summary: Black and white photographs copied from original lantern slides and photographs include portraits of many colonists, the interiors and exteriors of their cabins and group pictures of costumed campers in pageants and processions.
Eagle's Nest Colony was established in 1897 as a summer home by a group of Chicago artists and writers led by Lorado Taft. Artists Ralph Clarkson, Nellie V. Walker, Charles Francis Browne, and Oliver Dennett Grover; writers Hamlin Garland and Henry Blake Fuller; poet Harriet Monroe, and architects Allen and Irving Pond were among the residents who shared 13 acres of forest on a Rock River bluff. The campers staged outdoor plays, lectured, and contributed paintings to exhibitions at the local library. Lorenzo Taft's "Black Hawk," a reinforced concrete sculpture, was a gift to the colony. Taft's 1936 death ended the colony and the camp was acquired by Northern Illinois State Teachers College (now Northern Illinois University) in 1950.
Lent for microfilming 1987 by the Taft Branch Library, Northern Illinois University, Oregon, Illinois.
Microfilm reel 4180 available at Archives of American Art offices and through interlibrary loan.
The Archives of American art does not own the original papers. Use is limited to the microfilm copy.
Eagle's Nest Art Colony photographs, [ca. 1897-1936]. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
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