The people who run Babson Farms today.

At seventeen, Henry came to the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, where Louis Sullivan's colorful Transportation Building stood out among the white exhibition halls of the “White City.” As the family tells it, years later Henry overheard architects grumbling that even “the master” couldn't find work. He asked who that was, and in 1907 he hired Sullivan to design the house on his 23-acre country estate in Riverside, Illinois. It was one of the few homes Sullivan ever designed.

Elmslie's touch

Much of the design, including the built-in and freestanding furniture, came from Sullivan's gifted draftsman George Elmslie, who later partnered with William Purcell; Henry went on to give Purcell & Elmslie ten significant commissions. The main house was finished in 1907 and 1908, and a stable followed in 1910.

In 1912 Henry asked Elmslie to enclose the sleeping porch off the master bedroom as a sitting room. The architects disliked the idea but carried it out with tall, wide leaded-glass windows that became the house's signature; the house had about twenty leaded-glass windows in all.

The Tall Clock

That same year Elmslie added eight pieces of furniture, among them the Tall Clock, with works and nine chimes imported from Germany, hands by the Chicago metalsmith Robert Riddle, and a mahogany case made with the interior designers Niedecken-Walbridge.

The service buildings and grounds

By 1915 Henry, an early car owner, needed a “working plant” for the estate. Purcell & Elmslie designed a U-shaped group of three low, red-brown brick service buildings northwest of the house, holding a garage, stable, greenhouse, repair shop, storerooms, and staff quarters under broad gabled roofs, with terraces and gardens opening onto a central court.

The landscape

Elmslie also drew elaborate plans for paths, arbors, and gardens, but Henry found them too costly to build and keep up, and hired the landscape architect Jens Jensen instead. The service buildings were finished in 1916, ending Purcell & Elmslie's work on the estate.

Leaving Riverside

Betty spent her first ten years here. After Billy died in 1925, the family left Riverside and eventually settled on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. In 1960 Henry gave the house to the village of Riverside in Billy's memory; it was later demolished, and its leaded-glass windows and ornaments were salvaged. In 2017 Taylor found one of the original windows at an online auction, and it now hangs in his office.

The service buildings today

Henry's house has been gone since 1960, but the service buildings remain, now three private homes. The original address, 283 Gatesby Lane, has become 281, 277, and 275 Gatesby Road. The north building (281) last sold in 2003 and the south building (277) in 2012; the center building, once the Babson service garage, appears to have been sold along with the south residence.

The current owner of 277 Gatesby Road is an avid gardener who shares the property on the Facebook page “KDayCo Gardens at the Babson Estate 2.0.” Inside, the remodeled kitchens and living spaces still have their original leaded-glass windows, and a cutting board in the kitchen proudly reads “The Babson Estate 2.0.”

From Kernels of Learning: Q4 2017, October 2021, October 2022, and October 2024.

1242 North Lake Shore Drive

Around 1935, Henry and Laura rented a thirteenth-floor apartment at 1242 North Lake Shore Drive, in Chicago's Gold Coast neighborhood. The 27-story neo-Gothic building had been completed in 1929, and the apartment rented for $350 a month, roughly $6,840 in today's dollars.

Nancy and Libby remembered their grandparents' home well. There was the “Black Room,” with black walls, silver furnishings, and a chess set Henry had brought back from China, and a front hall with a fountain and koi pond at the end, where Henry sometimes practiced casting his bamboo fly rods. The apartment was full of fine stone and woodwork, wall-length mirrors, and Chinese and English antiques. From the windows the family watched sailboats on Lake Michigan and could see the skyline from the pier at North Avenue to the curve at 999 Lake Shore.

1500 North Lake Shore Drive

Ted and Betty Tieken lived just down the street at 1500 North Lake Shore Drive, a 23-story limestone-and-brick building in the French Renaissance style, completed in 1929. It was designed by the New York architect Rosario Candela, known for some of Manhattan's most coveted co-ops, and its residents included the Wrigleys, McCormicks, Fields, and Donnelleys.

Zeff, Dave, Taylor, and Tim all have fond memories of time at the apartment, and of their grandmother Betty as a great storyteller: down-to-earth, and someone who treated everyone equally and with respect, no matter their background or status.

From “Life On Lakeshore Drive,” Kernels of Learning, October 2021.

The Edison Shop, at 229 South Wabash in the Chicago Loop, is a newly rediscovered piece of family history. Owned by Henry Babson and finished in 1912, it was a four-story commercial building where Edison phonographs were sold. It went by several names: the Edison Building, the Edison Phonograph Shop, and the Babson Brothers Building.

The architects

It was designed by William Purcell, George Elmslie, and George Feick, with interiors by George Niedecken, and it was the only Chicago office building these architects ever designed. Its façade resembled Louis Sullivan's Gage Building on Michigan Avenue; Sullivan and Elmslie had worked together on several projects, including the Babson house in Riverside, and Niedecken also helped make the mahogany case for that house's Tall Clock.

Inside the shop

The shop was built for customers' comfort rather than for display. It was furnished with upholstered wooden armchairs, tables, sofas, and rugs, with almost no merchandise in sight beyond a couple of tall phonographs in the first-floor window. The first and second floors had private listening booths, and the first-floor Concert Room, with wicker furniture, a small stage holding an Edison upright cabinet phonograph, and a mural of tree branches and hanging lanterns, was used for performances and auditions. Edison's “Phonograph with a Soul” advertising dared listeners to tell a live opera singer from an Edison recording.

A landmark lost

The building was named a Chicago Architectural Landmark in 1959 and described as “a place of dignity and beauty,” but it was demolished in 1967. The site is now a parking area behind the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, beside DePaul University's College of Computing and Digital Media, under the “L” tracks.

From “Uncovering Babson History,” Kernels of Learning, October 2022.

Henry had an eye for beauty, design, and function in everything from architecture to machinery to horses. At the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, the same fair where he met Thomas Edison, he saw Arabian horses for the second time in his life and vowed that one day he would breed them.

Thirty-seven years later he began. After a two-year search in England, France, and Spain turned up nothing good enough, he traveled to Egypt in 1932 and brought home two stallions and five mares. In 1938 he also imported Polish Arabians, just ahead of World War II.

The farm

He built the Arabian Horse Farm at Grand Detour, Illinois, with its log cabin and cedar barn, and Homer Watson managed it. The stallion Fadl and Henry's favorite mare, Maaroufa, founded the Babson Straight Egyptian Arabians, a bloodline that went on to have a worldwide impact. Henry later named his sailing ketch after Maaroufa.

The stallion and the goat

The family still tells the story of a stallion who kept kicking his box stall to pieces. Henry, Betty, and Homer Watson drove Henry's brand-new car to fetch a goat to keep him company. The goat behaved perfectly on the ride home, the two became friends, and the kicking stopped.

The legacy

After Henry's death, the farm and horses were eventually sold in the mid-1990s, ending more than sixty years of the family's breeding program. Devoted breeders kept the line alive, and more than one hundred Babson Arabians existed as of 2014.

From “A Remarkable Man, Extraordinary Horses,” Kernels of Learning, Q1 2018; verse from Arabians from the farm of Henry B. Babson, shared in Q4 2017.

In the 1950s, Ted and Betty Tieken bought a second home in Grayslake and Libertyville, Illinois: an estate of about 150 acres, with land and houses on both sides of Almond Road, that gave them a getaway from their home in Chicago. For the next seven decades it was the family's beloved country gathering place, and after Ted and Betty were gone, the third, fourth, and fifth generations kept coming back to “Libertyville” to make memories of their own.

Libby's sheep

Libertyville is also where Libby's sheep business began. One Christmas when she was a girl, Libby found no presents waiting and thought, “I haven't been that bad this year.” The family then drove from the city to Libertyville, where she was given a ewe and her lamb, Topsy and Turvy. Libby had researched the idea and presented a business plan to her parents beforehand, and it proved a success, in the entrepreneurial spirit the family has valued since Henry Babson.

The West Side

The West Side (32070 and 32146 North Almond Road) held the main house and the caretaker's home. In 2004 Libby bought the property, held in Almond LLC, as part of closing Betty's estate, and after Libby died in 2018, her son Tim bought it. Dave and Becky Quist cared for the property for more than 25 years; while deep-cleaning one day, Becky found two old watches under a bed, a small but priceless find from the family's past.

Among the West Side's treasures were a Victorian jockey scale by Medhurst of London, a J.T. Seeburg Piano Company nickelodeon with an automatic music roll in an oak case with stained-glass doors, and a carved wooden mural in the upstairs master bedroom.

Betty's folk art

Libertyville was a happy place, and its art made people smile, especially Betty's folk art collection. She had no rule for what she collected except that it had to make her smile: countless Adam and Eve pieces, Spanish conquistadors, acrobats, and plenty of papier-mâché. Betty designed needlepoint rugs showing the Libertyville house, Libby's sheep, horses, and many American flags, and every stair riser carried a needlepoint of a different archaeological dig she had worked on, her way of remembering them.

The carnival

The star of the collection was a whole folk-art carnival, with moving parts, music, and lights.

Tapestries

Io the cow

Out on the grounds stood Io, a painted cow sculpture named for the figure in Greek myth, by the artist James Mesplé. Io first stood outside the Wrigley Building in Chicago, where the BFI offices were, before moving to Libertyville.

The East Side

The East Side (32055 North Almond Road) was usually called “Teddy's House.” Teddy renovated it and lived there part of the time, alongside his homes in Chicago, Colorado, and Virginia.

Saying goodbye

In 2023, with all of the third generation gone and the fourth and fifth generations living across the country, the Kirkpatricks and Wheelocks made the hard decision to sell, since the cost of upkeep no longer made sense. The West Side was sold in 2024.

From “The Legacy of Libertyville” and “The Lure and Levity of Libertyville,” Kernels of Learning, July 2025; with stories from Q4 2017 and Q2 2018.

The family began summering at Charlevoix, Michigan in 1946, the year Ted joined Babson Bros. Co. as general counsel and Libby was born. Summers there centered on the Chicago Club.

Christmas vacations in Boca Grande, Florida, and the family magic show.

The fishing club at Coleman Lake, Wisconsin, where the family's fishing traditions run through five generations.

Henry first bought land in Hayden, Colorado in 1918, believing a railroad would one day make the coal fields valuable. He was among the fundraisers for Hayden's “Hospital on the Hill,” which opened in 1923, and in 1933 he deeded the coal land to the library, keeping a ten percent mineral royalty, the arrangement that became the Babson-Carpenter Foundation.

Libby, a lifelong lover of open land, made the Flattops Ranch near Toponas her own. After her death in 2018, Tim and Cho moved to the ranch and renamed it Hummingbird Acres.

Tim lived much of his adult life in the Yampa Valley, first as a fly-fishing guide and later as the owner of The Steamboat Flyfisher. It was there that he met his wife, Cho.

After Libby's death in 2018, Tim and Cho moved to the family ranch in Toponas and renamed it Hummingbird Acres. Their commitment to the community led them to purchase the historic Antlers Café & Bar in Yampa.

Libby's Denver home, which she rebuilt around nature in 2004 and lived in until she passed away in 2018. It is now the home of Taylor, Molly, and Henry Kirkpatrick; Taylor returned to Denver after working in Boston and became president of Babson Farms in 2011.

Where Dave, Mary Jane, Mary Elizabeth, and Sarah live. Dave works with the Collegiate Licensing Company in Atlanta, and Mary Jane, Mary Elizabeth, and Sarah carry on the family's love of riding as Saddlebred champions.

Where Zeff, Andronica, and JT live; JT competes in eventing.

The family's roots run back to Massachusetts, too: Henry's father, Gustavus Babson Jr., headed west from Gloucester in 1872.

Henry loved the water and designed sailboats with Philip Rhoades. His first boat was the Maruffa; the Maaroufa was his ketch. Sailing ran through the family: Ted was an excellent sailor, and Teddy's Maaroufa Press carried the name.

The family has also sailed the Greek Isles together, most recently in June 2025.