Elawa Farm Park Pavilion

Lake Forest, Illinois

The picnic pavilion, with its corn crib walls and massive stone fireplace, uses the typical materials and forms of Midwestern farm out-buildings to evoke the agrarian heritage of the park's site: Elawa Farm, a 128-acre estate farm in Lake Forest designed in 1917 for A Watson Armour by Alfred Hopkins and David Adler. Woodhouse Tinucci Architects created a master plan that envisions the careful restoration of the Elawa Farm's Georgian Colonial Revival buildings and their adaptive re-use as a community center for the surrounding 576-acre Middlefork Savanna nature preserve, Elawa Park and a planned community of 60 single-family homes. The first phase of this staged master plan has restored the buildings’ exteriors, created a public events and education space in the farm’s main barn and the city’s wildlife education center.