548 Willow

The beautiful Italianate Victorian at 548 Willow was built around 1870. In the early 1870s, the property was owned by Artemas Carter, who built several investment properties in the village in addition to his own home at 515 Sheridan. Carter was a particularly prominent early settler – he wrote the village’s charter in 1869 and served as the first village president from 1896 to 1872.

It’s likely that Carter built this house – most of his investment properties were Victorian designs in this part of the village. It’s unlikely, though, that he ever lived in it. Instead, the first residents were likely Joseph and Elizabeth Clinton. Records show that the Clintons purchased the property with the existing house on December 30, 1872. Back in that day, Winnetka didn’t have any banks, so the Clintons mortgaged the property directly from Carter, who later transferred the Clinton’s mortgage to Theodore Matchett, his wife’s uncle.

Joseph Edgar Clinton was born near Toronto in 1845. In 1867, he immigrated to the Chicago area and in 1869, married Welsh immigrant Elizabeth Humphrey. While we know the Clintons were living in the Chicago area, the first record of them living in Winnetka specifically was in 1870, when they appeared in the census that year. They very well could have been living in this home by then, first as renters before they mortgaged the property from Carter in 1872.

Relatively little is known about the Clinton’s life in Winnetka. Records indicate that at various points in his life, Joseph worked as both a carpenter and farmer, and he very well may have done both while living here. We do know that, like many, the Clintons experienced financial troubles following the Panic of 1873. As a result, they eventually defaulted on their loan on the property, and ownership was transferred to Matchett, the mortgage holder. The Clintons moved back to Canada in 1876.

While Matchett retained ownership of the house, it’s unclear who actually lived here from 1876 to 1900. It may have been Matchett, or one or more renters. We do know, however, that in 1900, Harry I. and Catherine Orwig purchased the house and lived here until 1950.

The Orwig family first arrived in Winnetka in the 1880s, living in a house on Elm, where Harry was born. He later became a civil engineer and served as president of Winnetka’s board of education from 1896-1898.

According to the Orwig’s son Harold, this house originally had “elaborate rococo decorations of white fleur-de-lis running all the way around the house under the second floor eaves.” The Orwigs also added a second-floor sleeping porch in the early 1900s, but it was later removed. Between 1910 and 1912, a carpenter from Chicago lived with the family while he single-handedly completed the small addition on the southwest corner and relocated the main entrance to the Poplar side of the house, yet the address remained on Willow. Harold also recalled “giving up the old kerosene lamps” when his brother, Sherman, and a friend wired the house for electricity.

Since the Orwig’s sold the house in 1950, it has changed hands several times. Thankfully, the subsequent owners have retained several of the Victorian details, including the bay windows, beautiful lattice ornamentation on the front porch, and the clapboard siding.