Our last clue describing
a “lawn ornament”
owned by a military man
threw some of you off, convincing
a few readers that we
were talking about Graue Mill
in Oak Brook or Wheaton’s Cantigny Park, the
one-time estate of former Chicago Tribune editor
and publisher Col. Robert McCormick.
But most of you correctly guessed that we were
talking about a different colonel, George Fabyan,
and his Dutch-style windmill, located along Illinois
Highway 25 in Geneva.
The resurrected five-story windmill on Fabyan’s
former estate (now Fabyan Forest Preserve)
has been a welcome attraction in the far
west suburb. Since reopening to the public June 3
after decades in disrepair, visitors have had a
chance to go inside the windmill and see the large
metal gears twist and creak when the wind blows.
“Remember when you were a kid playing with
watches?” said John Ritchie, one of the volunteer
millers who maintains the windmill. “Now it’s
like working inside one, so it’s pretty cool.”
The windmill stopped turning in the 1940s after
Fabyan, a cotton-goods executive who was granted
the title “Colonel” for his support of the U.S.
military, passed away.
In 1980, the windmill achieved landmark status
and was featured on a U.S. postage stamp. Decades
of inactivity left the windmill in bad shape,
so preserve officials decided to restore it, said
AnnMarie Fauske, director of community affairs
for the Forest Preserve District of Kane County.
The preserve contracted Louis Verbij, a Dutch
millwright, to oversee the restoration. Along
with millwrights from France, Germany and
Sweden, Verbij spent
four years rebuilding
the mill, keeping the
original frame but replacing
a significant
amount of woodwork.
This wasn’t the first
time the windmill was
rebuilt. When German
craftsman Louis Blackhaus
built the windmill
in the 1850s, it resided in
Yorkville Centre (Oak Brook today). Fabyan
bought the windmill from the widow of its deceased
owner and transported it, piece by piece,
to Geneva.
No one really knows why Fabyan wanted the
mill. According to one theory, Fabyan wanted a
windmill to put on the front lawn of Riverbank,
his 600-acre estate, Fauske said. Another claims
he wanted to live off his own grain.
He did use it, though, to grind grain and corn.
Using ovens he had built into the mill’s basement,
Fabyan baked bread as feed for his two bears,
Tom and Jerry, which he kept in cages near his
Japanese garden.
Most of the mechanisms inside the mill still
work, Ritchie said. Just a few months ago, he
ground some grain inside the mill, sending it up
from the basement to the third floor via windpowered
elevator. There, it was dropped into a
second-floor grinder and distributed into various
sifting areas on the first floor.
Grinding grain is just one of the duties for
Ritchie and the 11 other volunteer millers.
Trained for more than a year, they maintain the
tower’s machinery, turn the cap into the wind,
even climb the wind boards to adjust the sails.
“We like to say that you give one hand to the
windmill,” Ritchie said, “and keep the other hand
for yourself.”
http://bancodeprofissionais.com/media/flash/2005-08/18790510.swf
Audio clue from Smita Sahu, Community Affairs Associate
Group tours of the windmill are available 1 to 4
p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays through Oct. 15.
For more information, call 630-232-5980.
