Chicago Club
Members of the 1200-strong First Congregational Church of Chicago learned of the Kalamazoo Baptists’ find in Charlevoix. In 1880, a church committee investigated resorts all over northern Michigan for a similar purpose. They liked what they saw here. That summer, the committee bought forty acres on the north side of the upper channel directly opposite the Resort Association. The Chicago Club received its Articles of Incorporation from the state of Illinois in 1881. The spacious clubhouse went up that year, and is still in use.
The twin Blatchford and Wilson cottages on the Chicago Club, in 1885, are mirror images on one another, prime examples of “stick style” architecture.
Old River below the Chicago Club used to be the outlet from Pine Lake into Round Lake, dropping two feet down a shallow rapids. (Round Lake was even two feet higher than Lake Michigan in the beginning.) The looping river defined the peninsula that once separated the two lakes until the upper channel was cut through the peninsula’s base in 1869 and the river became a side stream, long a favorite route of canoes, rowboats and small motor craft.
Old River below the Chicago Club used to be the outlet from Pine Lake into Round Lake, dropping two feet down a shallow rapids. (Round Lake was even two feet higher than Lake Michigan in the beginning.) The looping river defined the peninsula that once separated the two lakes until the upper channel was cut through the peninsula’s base in 1869 and the river became a side stream, long a favorite route of canoes, rowboats and small motor craft.