The Eagle's Nest Art Colony, the site known in more modern times as the Lorado Taft Field Campus, was founded in 1898 by American sculptor Lorado Taft on the bluffs flanking the east bank of the Rock River, overlooking Oregon, Illinois. The colony was populated by Chicago artists, all members of the Chicago Art Institute or the University of Chicago art department, who gathered in Ogle County to escape the summer heat of Chicago. The colony complex has been used as a field campus for Northern Illinois University since of Lowden State Park were turned over to the university by the state of Illinois.
History
The Eagle's Nest Art Colony Association was founded in 1898 by American sculptor Lorado Taft on the bluffs flanking the east bank of the Rock River, overlooking Oregon, Illinois. The colony was populated by Chicago artists, all members of the Chicago Art Institute or the University of Chicago art department, who gathered in Ogle County to escape the summer heat of Chicago.
The colony was started by eleven men, all artists, architects and art lovers affiliated with Taft in Chicago. The original members were: Taft, Ralph Elmer Clarkson, Oliver Dennett Grover, Charles Francis Browne, Henry B. Fuller, Hamlin Garland, Horace Spencer Fiske, James Spencer Dickerson, Allen Bartlit Pond, Irving Kane Pond and Clarence Dickerson. The original members first lived in tents at the colony, later, after the association's constitution was written, charter and regular members were allowed to build summer homes.
The group began their search for a summer reprieve from Chicago a few years before the site along the Rock River was chosen. Their first colony, at Bass Lake, Indiana, ended after a malaria outbreak. As the colony founders searched for a home for their colony Chicago attorney and patron of the arts Wallace Heckman purchased the land that would eventually become the Eagle's Nest Colony in 1898. Taft and his peers looked toward Wisconsin after leaving Bass Lake, but Heckman invited the group to his home in Ogle County for the Fourth of July. Heckman offered to let the group set up camp there and they signed a lease for the site the same week. The lease provided of land for US$1 per year with the stipulation that each colony member give a free lecture or demonstration in the area.
Other famous writers and artists who visited the colony include: James H. Breasted, Charles R. Crane, I.K. Friedman, George Barr McCutcheon, John T. McCutcheon, Harriet Monroe, William Vaughn Moody, Elia W. Peattie, Lucy Fitch Perkins, Bert Leston Taylor, Nellie Walker, and Donald Peattie.
Taft campus
Leslie A. Holmes proposed a "field campus" for Northern Illinois Teachers College in his inaugural address as president in 1948. On August 7, 1951, Illinois governor Adlai E. Stevenson II signed a bill into law which transferred ownership of a section of Lowden State Park to the college, now Northern Illinois University (NIU). The land encompassed the former site of the Eagle's Nest Art Colony and its buildings. The Black Hawk Statue was not included in the land transfer. The campus was named after Lorado Taft and is now known as the NIU Lorado Taft Field Campus.
The buildings of the art colony, long neglected, were restored under the supervision of Paul Harrison, a professor at the college. By 1954 work was completed on the Browne House, Poley Hall (also known as the Camp House), and the Taft House. Harrison then served as field campus director from 1954–65. In October 1965 the campus was augmented by the addition of .
Buildings and structures
Taft Cottages
Studios
Taft's original studio at the colony was a converted barn northwest of the present-day Director's House. A small wooden building, the studio had a highly sloped roof which allowed large figures to be built inside. A skylight poured natural light into Taft's work area, and a concrete porch on its exterior. The first working models of the Black Hawk Statue were created inside the studio. Taft's original studio is no longer extant, and the present-day craft shop was built on its site.
Ralph Clarkson had a small wooden studio at the colony as well. Clarkson's studio was located about northeast of the Taft House and was well fenestrated, with many windows on three of its four facades. Clarkson painted several portraits in the studio including the likenesses of Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison, and University of Chicago President Harry Pratt Judson.