Black Point Estate
Executive Director Search
Summertime at Black Point
"The Big House"
Each summer the Big House was open by Memorial Day and closed by mid-October. The women, children and Chicago staff came for the entire season , while the men of the family normally commuted to the estate each weekend. As their train from Chicago reached Williams Bay, the estate's steamer, the Loreley, met the men and the guests to transport them to Black Point.
Each summer the Big House was open by Memorial Day and closed by mid-October. The women, children and Chicago staff came for the entire season , while the men of the family normally commuted to the estate each weekend. As their train from Chicago reached Williams Bay, the estate's steamer, the Loreley, met the men and the guests to transport them to Black Point.
From the beginning Black Point was meant to be a retreat- a place where an individual's (especially a child's) personal development could be best cultivated and honed. Days were filled with sailing, swimming, riding, tennis, gardening, golf, playing games, a great deal of reading and time with the tutors who taught a variety of subjects incuding German, Latin, Botany and other sciences.
"In the early days, wrote Clara (in 1938), " we but rarely left the grounds, trips on the steamer 'Loreley' being the exception. How you would laugh in the excitement of a Friday afternoon in the gay nineties and the turn of the century! All of us in our prettiest gowns, large hats, parasols and silk gloves.
