The story of 1120 Forest Avenue begins in 1902, when English-born architect Ernest Mayo designed the house. Mayo had started his career in South Africa before immigrating to Chicago in 1891. There, he formed the firm Mayo and Curry, designing factories, hotels, and office buildings and contributing to the administrative buildings of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Although the house was designed in 1902, its building permit wasn’t filed until 1907. Contractor Harry S. Gilbert completed construction in 1909.
The first owners were Ernest and Catherine Reckitt. Like Mayo, Ernest Reckitt was born in England. He immigrated to the United States in 1889 and built a career as a certified public accountant and president of the Keystone Feldspar & Chemical Company. In 1908, he also helped establish Northwestern University’s School of Commerce.
During the Reckitts’ decade in the house, 1120 Forest Avenue became a setting for charity events, family milestones, and gatherings connected to Chicago’s cultural life. In 1910, the family hosted a Christmas party for children from the Illinois Children’s Home.
The following year, they gave a dinner for Maurice Browne, who had recently arrived in Chicago from Florence and was beginning to make connections within the city’s literary community. In 1912, Browne would help establish the Chicago Little Theatre, an influential early force in the Little Theatre Movement.
The Reckitts’ daughter Dorothy was formally presented to society as a debutante in 1911. Two years later, she became engaged to John A. Schrieber of Michigan, whom she married in 1914. The house continued to appear in society pages through the decade.
It hosted a benefit for St. Margaret’s Guild in 1914 and, in 1915, a luncheon honoring the Comtesse de Hemptinne of Ghent, Belgium. The event raised money for Belgian women lace workers affected by World War I. In 1917, the family marked another wartime milestone when John Schrieber was commissioned as a second lieutenant.
In 1920, the house passed to Lina Jackson and publishing executive Henry Haven Windsor. Windsor had founded the Street Railway Review in 1892, but he was best known as the founder of Popular Mechanics, first published in 1901. He also published Cartoons Magazine, which described itself as “a symposium of world caricature.”
Windsor died in 1924, but the family retained the house for several more years. In 1927, his son, Henry Haven Windsor II, then managing editor and president of Popular Mechanics, married opera singer Louise Hunter.
That same year, Arthur and Mary Gertrude Dole purchased 1120 Forest Avenue from the Windsors. The Doles would own it for nearly three decades. Arthur, president of Hooker Glass & Paint Manufacturing and vice president of the Dole Valve Company, died in 1947. Mary Gertrude Dole died in 1952.
In 1955, the house entered an unusually diplomatic chapter when it became the official residence of the Japanese consul general. Wataru Okuma lived there from approximately 1955 to 1957, followed by Akira Sono from 1957 to 1959.
Who occupied the house during the next three years remains unclear: the Japanese consulate had relocated to Michigan Avenue, while the family later associated with the property was still living on Aspen Street.
Harold Yepsen took ownership in 1962.
The house returned to the market in 1965 and was purchased by Sherwin Eller. Eller and his wife, Rosemary, had married in 1948. Under their ownership, a major restoration began in 1972. By August 1992, Rosemary held the house on her own, and she conveyed it into the Rosemary Eller Revocable Trust - a deed that records her as "Rosemary Eller, also known as Rose Myrta." She borrowed $100,000 against the property in April 1997.
Rosemary listed the house in October 1997 at $1,400,000. It didn't sell quickly. The following spring, while she still held title, 1120 Forest Avenue was selected as the Illinois chapter of the American Society of Interior Designers' 31st annual showhouse. The 1998 event, fittingly titled "Landmark Legacy," ran from May 9 to May 31 and invited Chicago-area designers to reinterpret the rooms of one of Evanston's architecturally significant homes.
The house finally sold on January 19, 2000, for $1,300,000. The buyer was Terry Fryer, a Chicago-area composer, producer, and keyboardist whose career stretched across rock tours, recording studios, advertising campaigns, and live production.
Fryer had toured with the Ides of March shortly after graduating from North Park University. From the 1970s through the 1990s, he became an in-demand studio musician, working with performers including Whitney Houston, Smokey Robinson, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Reba McEntire, Melissa Etheridge, Styx, and Anthrax. He played on recordings by Natalie Cole and the Manhattans, contributed to Ramsey Lewis’s The Electric Collection, and appeared on the Groundhog Day soundtrack.