Cypress Log Cabin

Interior of the Cypress Log House

The Guest House was added to the Home and Industrial Arts Group for the 1934 exposition year. It was used as a display building showing historic uses of cypress, such as a 150-year-old Seminole Indian canoe, 200-year-old Spanish prison stock and a 120-year-old French water main from New Orleans .[4] The Guest House was one of several changes in the Home and Industrial Arts Group landscape for the 1934 season.

In the winter and spring of 1934, sixteen buildings barged and trucked to Robert Bartlett's subdivision at Beverly Shores, Indiana. In an attempt to capitalize on the fairs success, Bartlett reestablished a small exhibition of model houses along Lake Front Drive in Beverly Shores. Depression-era America had responded the Chicago Century of Progress exhibition and Bartlett hoped to transfer that positive interest to his development.[4] The Cypress Log Cabin was moved to Lake Front Drive in Beverly Shores along with four other houses from the Home and Industrial Arts Group. The exhibition site had been landscaped by the James W. Owen Nurseries. Robert Bartlett planned "to reconstruct and landscape them for sale exactly as they were on the Fair grounds." Bartlett neither replicated the fair landscape nor did adapted individual themes for each house. The by grouping the house along Lake Front Drive, Bartlett managed to recreate a sense of an "exhibition group".[4] Three of the exhibition homes were lined up on the south side of Lake Front atop a dune. A retaining wall was created to run the length of Lake Front from the Armco-Ferro House, past the House of Tomorrow to the Cypress Log Cabin. A flight of twenty-seven stairs in front of each house leads to the yard in front of each house with a walkway connecting all three.[3]

Cypress Log Cabin

Floor Plan

The house is an intentionally rustic mountain cabin set in a picturesque, asymmetrical landscape. In contrast to many of the model houses that featured modern building materials, the Cypress House was intended to exhibit the diverse possibilities for building with a traditional material. The house was meant to be a display space rather than a model home arranged to look as if someone lived there. Ironically, the Cypress House was the only building in the Home and Industrial Arts group that actually served as a home; the ell was occupied for both seasons by the house's sponsor and his wife.[4] The Cypress House had a complex landscape scheme formed from an assemblage of fences, arbors, bridges and decorated cypress knees used to create a mountain lodge atmosphere. For the 1933 season of the fair, the only major outbuilding was a greenhouse built by Lord & Burnham. For the 1934 season, the Southern Cypress Association applied for additional land in the former Dahlia Garden to construct a second greenhouse by Lord & Burnham's main competitor, the American Moninger Company. This request was denied and the most of the Dahlia Garden land was given to the Kohler company. The Lord & Burnham greenhouse was removed for the 1934 season and a new building was built that extended slightly into the Dahlia Garden. This may have been the Guest House, then functioning as a cypress workshop.[3]

Guest House floor plan

An outbuilding of the Cypress Log Cabin, the Guest House was originally a part of the Home and Industrial Arts Group at the 1933-34 Chicago Century of Progress Exposition. The structure was moved to Beverly Shores, Indiana by Robert Bartlett, a real-estate developer who purchased the houses after the close of the fair

Cypress Log Cabin - Guest House

Restoration efforts on the Cyprus Log Cabin were started in 1997. The home is now fully restored and occupied by long-term renters who obtained a 30-year lease from the park service in exchange for restoration and maintenance of the home.

• "A Century of Progress Paradox: Whose meat and whose Poison?", Architectural Forum 61; November 1934; pgs 374-379.
• Boyce, Robert; Keck & Kock; New York; Princeton Architectural Press, Inc.; 1993
• Cahan, Cathy and Richard; "The Lost City of the Depression." Chicago History, Winter 1976-77; pg 233-242
• "Catalogue of A Century of Progress Exposition." Introduction p 1-5; Special Collections, Richard J. Daley Library, University of Illinois at Chicago; Chicago
• "Cypress Cabin at World's Fair Sold for Home." Chicago Daily News; November 3, 1934
• Horrigan, Brian; "The Home of Tomorrow, 1927-1946"' Imaging Tomorrow, ed. Corn, Joseph J.; pg 137-163' Cambridge, MA; MIT Press; 1986
• Lohy, Lenox R.; Fair Management: the Story of A Century of Progress Exposition; Chicago; Cuneo Press, Inc., 1952
• Pecky Cypress: Its Nature and Uses."; Jacksonville, FL: Miller Press, 1933. Chicago Century of Press Exposition; Special Collection, Richard J. Daley Library, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago.
• Raley, Doroty, Ed.; A Century of Progress: Homes and Furnishings; Chicago; M.A. Ring Company, 1`934