Robert D. Krebs, the retired CEO of BNSF Railway, and his wife, Anne, donated their Italian villa-style mansion in Lake Forest to Lake Forest College in late January.
Built by the Krebses in 2003, the 9,217-square-foot mansion on Walden Road has a value of $5.96 million, according to the Lake County assessor. And it long had been the plan of Robert Krebs, 80, and his wife to donate the mansion to Lake Forest College, on whose board Robert Krebs serves, as well as his Renaissance art collection, which the Tribune reported in 2013 was worth even more than the mansion.
In fact, in 2013 the couple sparked controversy when they proposed donating the mansion to the college so it could one day operate as a center for scholarship, classes and lectures that would be named the Krebs Center for the Humanities. The college is in the process of developing the center, which will focus on the humanities and include medieval and Renaissance studies.
That prompted concerns by neighbors, who complained about the possibility of noise, traffic, parking and students on their quiet street, which is a private street about a mile from campus.
“I want to be transparent,” Robert Krebs told the Tribune in 2013. “This is really going to not only preserve the house, but (my art) collection. The college will be a great neighbor.”
The mansion’s construction clearly was a labor of love for Krebs and his wife, who crafted it using imported hand-carved stone shipped from Italy, hand-molded terra cotta pavers from Tuscany and Italian walnut doors that were hand-carved in Italy. The mansion, which sits on 2.6 acres, was awarded the Lake Forest Historic Preservation Foundation’s Historic Preservation Infill Award in 2012.
Ultimately, the couple decided to hold off on seeking a special-use permit from Lake Forest officials that would have allowed the college to hold classes at the mansion. No city approval was needed to allow the actual donation of the property itself.
Now, the donation has taken place, and the mansion is in the hands of Lake Forest College, according to a deed filed with the Lake County clerk’s recording division on Jan. 31.
“The humanities and the humanistic tradition have never been more important,” Davis Schneiderman, executive director of the Krebs Center for the Humanities, said in a statement. “What the humanities can teach us not only about the past but also how to make a better future world will be at the core of future Krebs Center activities.”
The donation is not the first time in recent memory that a high-end North Shore mansion has been donated to a college or university. In December 2020, Rice University took title to a six-bedroom, 8,281-square-foot mansion on a 0.74-acre property on Lake Michigan in Winnetka under a life estate allowing the donors to remain in the home for the rest of their lives. The Cook County assessor assigns that mansion, which was built in 1990, a market value of $7.525 million.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
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