1890-1953 - Lee Sturges lives in Elmhurst

Etcher Lee Sturges (1865-1954) lived in Elmhurst from 1890 to 1953. Starting in 1892, he and his wife Mary lived at 280 Cottage Hill Avenue in a yellow mansion that would be his studio and the home where he and Mary would later raise three children. Sturges himself designed the house and directed an architect through the entire construction. The house, which he named “Shadeland,” is still there today (pictured above). Sturges was born and raised in Chicago and studied art in the 1880s at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In 1916, he invented the personal-sized etching press (one of his twenty patented inventions), which contributed to a revival of etching. The bulk of Sturges’ etchings were made from the early 1920s to the mid 1940s, during his time in Elmhurst. A recurring subject in his work is outdoor scenery, many taken from his observations in Elmhurst, and he was considered a master at capturing the essence of a scene. Being an internationally recognized artist, Sturges won many awards for his work including the Logan Award from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1923. He also had a solo exhibition at the National Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. in 1927 and published articles in many art journals. Sturges Parkway, right off of St. Charles Road and parallel to Cottage Hill Avenue, is named after Lee Sturges.