SOLD! An Incredible, One-of-a-Kind Organic Modern Home in Lake Forest by Robert Rasmussen

I suppose it’s no surprise that some of my favorite homes that I’ve seen over the years are homes that architects designed for themselves and their families. Maybe it’s because when doing so, architects tend to incorporate all of their best ideas. Whatever the reason is, I now have another home to add to that list.

I had driven past a curvy, stone & glass house in Lake Forest many times before I ever saw the inside of it: An occasion which took place years ago, at a Chicago Bauhaus & Beyond event, in the fall of 2019.

The main event that day in September was to visit the home of group members Sandy Reese & Will Wiegler, who had purchased a beautiful mid-century modern home in Lake Forest’s Whispering Oaks subdivision: A neighborhood of winding streets and gently rolling hills.

Sandy & Will had learned of what would become their house through other group members, and fell in love with it. It’s a fine example of mid-century modern architecture designed by Norman Millett, with walls of glass and beautiful, natural materials.

“We found out about our current, authentic Lake Forest MCM home in 2017,” says Sandy, “after friends of ours, Frania and Phillip Ross, told us about an amazing mid-century house they had just seen that afternoon. Phillip, who is a brilliant photographer, showed us pictures of the house that was going on the market the next day. It appeared to be our dream house and of course we went to the open house and as soon as we pulled into the driveway, we knew we were in trouble and would wind up purchasing the house.

Chicago Bauhaus & Beyond held the September 19th event at Sandy & Will’s home, and they invited their neighbor, Bob, to attend the event. Bob was gracious enough to allow us to visit his home toward the end of the event.

That house next door is 1120 Grandview Lane: The curvy stone house I’d driven past so many times over the years and had been so curious about. And it turns out that Robert “Bob” Rasmussen wasn’t just the neighbor who happened to live in the house next door, but he was also the architect who designed & built it for his own family.

Bob was an apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright from late 1956 through 1957. Just seven years after studying with Wright and leaving Taliesin, Rasmussen would begin work on a home for his family, to be built on this beautiful, gently sloping lot in Lake Forest, just 5 minutes from Lake Michigan.

“We moved into our house in Lake Forest in November 2017,” says Will. “Although we would see Bob out in the yard, getting his mail or snow-blowing his driveway, we didn’t officially meet him until the following late Spring / early Summer, when we hosted an outdoor musical event at our house and invited him to attend.”

And while they didn’t meet Bob until some time after they’d moved into the house, they had an amazing view of his home. Although the house appears somewhat imposing from the street, given that the front elevation is 2-stories and is largely stone, from the vantage point of Sandy & Will’s house, the Rasmussen house appears mostly long, low and graceful.

Built primarily of “uncoursed” limestone (limestone of random sizes rather than cut to be a specific size) and glass, Rasmussen’s design favors sweeping curves over right angles. He designed the home to appear as a stone outcropping on a hill, and the home’s graceful curves are both inviting and intriguing. 

“We were awestruck by Bob’s house!” says Sandy. “The house we live in has floor-to-ceiling windows that look out at Bob’s house, and we couldn’t ask for a more beautiful view. From the street side, it looks somewhat like a modern castle, with a turret and winding stone staircase leading to the front door. But the view from our house shows a more sweeping, sinuous shape with an endless row of windows and a sculptural roof line. Regardless of where you view the house from, it’s immediately obvious that this is a one-of-a-kind home.”

This brings me back to what I mentioned before, about architects often incorporating all of their best ideas into their own homes. In this case, they include things like the way the roof eaves curve up to meet the roof itself; the Wright-inspired light fixture built into the front door that coordinates with the light fixture at the end of the driveway near the street; the beautifully designed sculptural pieces near the front door and the covered patio that were created to prevent the Rasmussen’s cat from walking along the window ledges; how Bob created a loose “patio” out in the yard made up of square pavers, spaced generously apart with grass growing between them; and, of course, how the home’s window lines are really only broken by the stone towers that visually anchor the home to its site.

Inside, things get even more interesting.

“The first time we went inside,” says Will,” we were really taken with the warmth, quiet and peaceful feeling of the house. It felt like a big hug. All natural materials and soft curves enveloped us, and the nature of the interior layout revealed itself as we walked through it. There were delightful surprises everywhere.

Bob was of Danish descent, and his cultural background is reflected in the house and the furnishings. The Danes have a concept of ‘hygge’ which is a feeling of contentment and coziness which is felt in the house, especially when sitting by the massive stone fireplace that Bob designed.”

Once you walk through that front door with the sculptural light fixture built in, you’re facing the combination dining area and living room, but it’s not until you start to walk around to the right that the wonderful details of this large, open space become apparent.

Of course there’s the massive stone fireplace that Will mentioned: Arched at the top and set inside one of the home’s two towers behind a cantilevered limestone hearth, it’s the focal point of this space. Next to the fireplace is a run of cabinets that extend out under a row of windows, and it hides swing-out bar shelves and a flip-open bar counter with recessed bottle storage inside.

Beyond the cabinets begins a series of built-in benches that runs underneath the windows into the corner, with its mitered glass window, and they continue out the other side of the corner back towards the dining area and the sliders to the covered patio.

In front of the fireplace is set a free-standing curved sofa that Bob designed and built using “leftover” walnut from other projects in the house – there’s an extraordinary amount of walnut used in the home – and that is said to have come from trees in Ford County, Illinois near Bob’s childhood home.

More beautiful walnut lines the wall at the back of the dining area in raised panels that reveal recessed areas between, above, and below the panels that are also walnut.

Outside of the dining area is a covered patio, perfect for outdoor dining or relaxing, accessible through sliders from the dining / living room, and for privacy when desired, all the windows have their original Knoll fabric multi-colored curtains, which are simply wonderful (and will quite possibly have you questioning why nobody makes anything that beautiful anymore).

Turn around from the dining room, and you’ll enter one of the most unique kitchens you’ve ever seen. Set inside the front tower, the kitchen follows the round lines of the tower, which includes all of the cabinetry. Note that the cabinet faces and drawer fronts are not flat wood set in a circular fashion, but are actually curved. Bob did much of the woodworking and construction of the home himself, making it all that much more impressive.

The backsplash throughout the kitchen is comprised of tiles of varying, coordinating colors arranged in vertical rows, following that sweeping curve from one side of the kitchen to the other, including around the angled wall that follows the curve of the built-in grill, where the tile continues both above the grill and below the counter top.

Other fantastic kitchen details include the working NuTone built-in food center and the NuTone intercom system with integrated, flip down phonograph, and the giant, round skylight that doubles as a light fixture.

Heading toward the back of the house, you’ll find yourself in a hallway with a staggering 19 walnut double-door cabinets and closets of varying depths, under an equally expansive line of windows (and those same Knoll fabric curtains) above. These cabinets & closets start just to the right of the front entry door and run the entire length of the bedroom hallway past the bedrooms, bathroom and even continue into the den / 4th bedroom at the end of the house, where there are an additional 3 cabinets.

The first rooms you come to in the hallway are the “twin twin bedrooms” – two bedrooms that are mirror images of each other, each with two built-in twin beds, built-in cabinets with mirrors and overhead lights, built-in wardrobes, and built-in desks that join in the middle and can be closed off with a sliding walnut panel on a track in the ceiling. It’s a clever and striking arrangement. 

Between the two twin rooms, accessible from the hallway, is a full bath that Bob remodeled in the earlier part of the 2000’s and acts also as a public bathroom for guests.

Next down the gallery hallway is the Primary suite, which you enter between built in walnut wardrobes that, themselves, have built in organizers and drawers. Above the wardrobes are panels that can be opened up to bring in borrowed light from the gallery hallway (these panels are also used in the twin bedrooms).

One side of the bedroom is made up of the same limestone found on the exterior of the home, and you see that this is also where the second round tower can be found. Set in between the tower and the back wall of the bedroom where the windows are is a built-in walnut desk, and then inside the tower is the bedroom’s en-suite bathroom, itself a feast for the eyes.

The floor of this round bathroom is terrazzo, with a built-in eye-shaped, sunken tub & shower area made of the same, continuous terrazzo. Behind the tub / shower area are floor to ceiling rows of different colored tiles, similar to the tile in the kitchen, but using a different color palette and in a different repeating pattern. Overhead is another large round skylight, and at the right side is a curved double vanity with tile backsplash that continues from the other side of the room, and alternating mirrors and light fixtures above the vanity.

It is easily one of the most spectacular and architecturally / aesthetically interesting bathrooms I’ve ever seen in a home.

Finally at the end of the gallery hallway is the den / 4th bedroom, where you enter between the cabinets / closets and the round limestone wall of the Primary bedroom’s en-suite bathroom. Echoing the other end of the house, the windows come together in another mitered glass corner here, under those graceful, upswept eaves.

To be honest, there’s so much to look at and enjoy in every space on the main level of the house that it takes quite a bit of time to take it all in.

“I love the uniqueness of the design,” shares Sandy, “the craftsmanship of the interior and exterior features, and the way that each of the design elements contribute to the whole in a holistic way.”

Downstairs, at the front of the house, are the garage and mechanicals. There’s also a laundry area and a recently-remodeled powder room, both of which share some dazzling tile, in shades of orange and yellow…on the wall in the laundry area, and on the floor in the powder room.

Next to this is a workshop / hobby area, and then further back is a spacious rec room with an alcove that could be used for a TV area, dry bar, serving area and more. At the back of this space is a curved wet bar, and there’s even a casino table designed & built by Bob. 

Behind the wet bar is a round space that could be used for wine storage, but is plumbed for a full bathroom. And then at the very end is a large storage room that was originally designed by Bob as a tornado shelter.

Around the corner from the bar is a door leading outside to a stairway up to the side / back yard, and it’s here, much like from Sandy & Will’s vantage point next door, that you can really see the curving elegance of the house as a whole and how Bob sited the house on its lot.

“There are so many features of the interior that I love,” says Will, “such as the circular kitchen and the long, curved gallery hallway. But outside, I really appreciate the way the house fits into the landscape.”

The approximately half-acre lot is cradled on two sides by mature trees, with more peppered throughout in various places, while still having large lawn areas for relaxing, family gatherings, games and more.

Bob lived in the house until into his 80s, but at some point had to go into hospice.

“Bob was a private man,” says Sandy, “but we got to know him as a neighbor and had him over to our house several times. We would talk about gardening and landscaping, and of course, about his house and his life experiences. As he got older and less independent, we talked with his two grown sons and offered to keep an eye on him, checking in on him periodically.”

“When Bob passed away,” adds Will, “we were concerned that a developer might buy the property, tear it down, and build something on the land. So we reached out to Bob’s family and asked what they planned to do with the house. They didn’t have any immediate plans, so we told them that if they considered selling it, please let us know and perhaps we could purchase from them with the intent of preserving both the house and Bob’s legacy. They eventually decided to sell it, and we purchased it directly from his estate.”

As such, the home has never been on the public market before.

“For all its beauty,” continues Will, the house needed some attention, and we knew we would have to invest in some deferred maintenance and cosmetic items, which we have since done.”

Now, Bob’s amazing home at 1120 Grandview Lane in Lake Forest is for sale for the first time on the open market. It’s an incredible residence, and one that Sandy & Will hope will find new stewards to cherish and preserve the home for themselves and future generations to come.

This home sold on April 22nd, 2025.

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