A visitor approaching 1524 North Lake Shore Drive today encounters one of Chicago’s most unusual architectural puzzles. The elegant, neoclassical facade, with its perfectly proportioned columns and refined limestone details, appears to have been transported directly from the gardens of Versailles. This is no mere stylistic borrowing – the building is an almost exact replica of the Petit Trianon, the intimate palace built for Louis XV’s mistress and later associated with Marie Antoinette’s fateful retreat from reality, with a few key alterations. Yet this architectural time capsule now serves a decidedly different purpose: housing the International Museum of Surgical Science, where the tools of healing and medical progress are preserved for public education. The transformation from an aristocratic house to a house of knowledge represents one of Chicago architecture’s most poignant second acts.
1524 Lake Shore Drive’s first act was as the Countiss Mansion, built for Eleanor Robinson Countiss in 1917. Eleanor was not merely another wealthy Chicago patron commissioning a grand home – she was a woman with specific architectural vision and the financial independence to realize it. Born in Chicago as the heiress to the Diamond Match Company fortune and married to Frederick Downer Countiss, president of the Chicago Stock Exchange, Eleanor possessed both the social position and personal wealth to undertake one of the city’s most ambitious residential projects. She even notably paid for the house herself, demonstrating an unusual degree of financial autonomy for a woman of her era.
Eleanor’s vision for the mansion was extraordinary: she wanted not just a house inspired by the Petit Trianon, but an exact replica – with one crucial modification. As documented in the Commission on Chicago Landmarks report, she insisted on adding an additional story to the original’s proportions, creating what the report describes as “almost an exact replication of an extant building” rather than the “extrapolation from various periods of history” that was commonplace in Chicago at the time. This decision reflected a uniquely American pragmatism: if you’re going to copy a palace, make it even bigger.
The resulting mansion demonstrated Chicago’s post-Great Fire ambition to establish itself as a sophisticated cultural center. Eleanor’s Lake Shore Drive address placed her among the city’s elite, in what the Commission described as “the last generation of elegant single-family mansions built on Lake Shore Drive.” Her architectural choice sent a clear message: Chicago could create spaces as refined and culturally significant as anything on the East Coast or in Europe.
Howard Van Doren Shaw, the architect of 1524 Lake Shore, approached Eleanor’s commission with the same philosophy that had made him one of Chicago’s most sought-after architects. Born to a wealthy family and raised in the Prairie Avenue neighborhood of Chicago, Shaw earned a B.A. from Yale in 1890 and then completed a two-year program in architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in one year. Howard Van Doren Shaw became so significant in Chicago that his work is documented in “Two Chicago Architects and Their Clients,” an examination of the two preeminent 20th century Chicago architects – Shaw and Frank Lloyd Wright. One of Shaw’s key markers, as documented in the text, was to be “the model of the cultivated eclectic. His object was always to give the client what he wanted in terms of the most suitable historical precedent.”
Shaw’s Chicago practice included some of the city’s most significant buildings: the Fourth Presbyterian Church on North Michigan Avenue, the Lakeside Press Building on South Dearborn, the Quadrangle Club at the University of Chicago, and McClintock Court and the Goodman Theater at the Art Institute of Chicago. These projects demonstrated his ability to adapt historical styles to contemporary Chicago needs while maintaining their architectural integrity and grandeur.
The Countiss commission required Shaw to solve uniquely American challenges. The mansion was built on piles driven deep into the sand, with a foundation designed to support an additional ten floors should the need to expand upward arise – a characteristically Chicago blend of ambition and practicality demanded by Eleanor Countiss. He specified Indiana limestone for the exterior work and imported Italian marble for the interior floors, creating a 12,000 square foot mansion with 30 rooms and 12-foot ceilings that brought a touch of European grandeur to serve Chicago’s modern society.
Even in an era of architectural eclecticism, the project proved controversial. Frank Lloyd Wright, Chicago’s champion of organic American architecture and Shaw’s counterpart, was reportedly appalled by such literal copying of the Petit Trianon. Yet Shaw’s approach reflected a broader Chicago architectural philosophy of “building within context” as described by the Commission: “Architects such as William Kendall, Benjamin Marshall, and Howard Van Doren Shaw always designed a building in context, always factoring in its relationship to the street and its ultimate effect on its neighboring buildings.”
After serving as a family home, the Countiss House’s transformation began in 1950 when the International College of Surgeons acquired the building. The Museum officially opened on September 9, 1954, following an extensive conversion process, led by Dr. Max Thorek’s vision, wherein Eleanor’s private entertaining spaces were transformed into public galleries dedicated to medicine and surgical knowledge.
This transformation represented more than adaptive reuse – it embodied a fundamental shift in Chicago’s relationship with its architectural heritage. A building commissioned for private use and cultural sophistication became a space dedicated to advancing public knowledge and medical education. Today, the International Museum of Surgical Science stands as a testament to Chicago’s architectural ambition and adaptability. Eleanor Robinson Countiss’s controversial replica and Howard Van Doren Shaw’s skilled execution created a building that has successfully served two distinct purposes: first as a symbol of Gilded Age aspiration, then as a vessel for medical knowledge. The mansion demonstrates how Chicago’s architectural heritage can evolve while preserving its essential character – from private palace to public institution. Shaw’s careful attention to context and Eleanor’s bold vision created a building that continues to serve the city, proving that even the most literal architectural copying can find new purpose when guided by evolving social needs.
Sources
- Seven House on Lake Shore Drive, Commission on Chicago Landmarks, 1989
- Two Chicago Architects and Their Clients: Frank Lloyd Wright and Howard Van Doren Shaw (1969)
- Petit Trianon: Description, History and Architecture of the Castle and Gardens, Chateau de Versailles, https://versailleschateau.com/versailles-petit-trianon/
- The Cultural Landscape Foundation, Howard Van Doren Shaw, https://www.tclf.org/pioneer/howard-van-doren-shaw
Sofie Hatto is the Summer 2025 Marketing and Operations Intern at IMSS. A Chicago native, she is currently a Senior at New York University studying Creative Production, with a focus on architecture and urban design, and German Language/Culture. She is a museum enthusiast and is particularly interested in the reuse and adaptation of special older buildings, like IMSS!