By Judy Carmack Bross
Janys and John Notz from the Classic Chicago Magazine archives, seen at an Alliance Francaise de Chicago Gala
“….every story of bygone Chicago will be missing the part that only John could have told you.”—Chicago historian Celia Hilliard and close friend of the late John Notz.
“Who are you researching and writing about now?” Conversations with Chicago and Lake Geneva historian John K. Notz Jr. usually skipped the hello-how-are-you greeting because Notz was always writing about architects like William Le Baron Jenney to intriguing leaders like Charles Crane, a Chicago diplomat and businessman who made a huge impact in the Middle East. If you were lucky, he would show you his office in Wisconsin, where files on all his topics abounded like the boats on a summer’s day on Lake Geneva. Still luckier, he would drive you around town, telling you all about the Black Point Historic Site, the Oak Hill Cemetery and on to Yerkes Observatory, many sites where he conducted official tours.
Celia Hilliard whose reflection above began our story, also remembered visits with John.
“John’s love of our city’s past was unbounding. If Chicago history was on the program, John was in the audience – when he wasn’t speaking himself! And he could always tell you something new – some fresh fact or little-known story that would transform the whole subject. I remember a meandering walk with John around Oak Hill Cemetery in Lake Geneva, a beautiful rolling expanse where members of so many notable families are buried. It is a picturesque setting. As we passed the weathered headstones and grand monuments with their famous names – Crane, Sturges, Chapin, Sears – John would talk about these folks as if they had just stepped off the porch after a long afternoon visit. He was familiar with all. ….every story of bygone Chicago will be missing the part that only John could have told you.”
John Notz’s death last week signaled a great loss not only for the many friends that he and his wifeJanys, his perfect partner and non-profit leader, cherished, and to the information flow we all need about Chicago legacies. He was the person you called if a friend needed information about who to reach about Graceland Cemetery where he served on the board, and to learn more about any architect who made Chicago the crown of international design.
Notz was the proof perfect that a passion for what you love never fades even if you are in your nineties. There was always the new paper to write and deliver to the Chicago Literary Club, founded in 1874, governance work for the Society of Architectural Historians and tour guide assignments. Other more formal obituaries will detail all the major organizations in both Chicago and Lake Geneva that he led, but marvel how he managed to balance his career as a lawyer with his zest for history.
A former neighbor who lived in the same building where he andJanys raised their two children, Jenny and Johnny, remembered that he was always “a lovely gentleman”. Soft-spoken and interested in what interested you. And how much better if it were Chicago history!
William Tyre, Curator and Executive Director at Glessner House, told us more about their shared bond through history:
I first met John in the early 2000s, shortly after I was hired as comptroller for the Society of Architectural Historians and he was serving as treasurer. We quickly developed a good rapport when we discovered mutual interests in a number of topics relating to Chicago history. And thus began many years of sharing bits and pieces of our research with each other on everything from landscape design and architectural history to Graceland Cemetery and the Prairie School architect Robert C. Spencer. He was especially interested in the career of William Le Baron Jenney, and when he learned I was researching Elmer C. Jensen, who became a full partner in Jenney’s firm shortly before the latter’s death, John arranged for me to see the archives of the successor firm, where I was able to view many items created by Jensen, as well as original ink-on-linen drawings of Jenney’s iconic Home Insurance Building. It was a memorable day!
Our shared interest in Geneva Lake and Prairie Avenue and their many connections resulted in John leading an all-day bus tour to the lake for Glessner House. At a different time, he provided an opportunity for me to visit his good friend Bill Petersen, who was still residing in his ancestor Conrad Seipp’s lake house, Black Point, prior to its conversion to a historic house museum (the difficult process of which John was deeply supportive). I learned a great deal about John’s ancestors in Chicago, from his great-grandfather Edward Uihlein (vice president of the Schlitz Brewing Company), who gave landscape architect Jens Jensen his first private commission, to another great-grandfather, John Martin Kranz (source of John’s middle name), the proprietor of the famous Kranz’s candy store at 126-130 N. State Street that opened in 1873 and operated for decades.
Martin Kranz’s State Street candy store. He was a great-grandfather of John Notz.
I’ll greatly miss our calls and email exchanges, which invariably led to deeper and thought-provoking discussions. I am grateful to have enjoyed and benefited from that collaboration and friendship for more than two decades.”
Laurin Mack who relaunched Conrad Seipp Brewing Company in 2020, more than 150 years after her great-great-great-grandfather started the business in Chicago, learned much from John, a family member and mentor:
“Like so many, I feel extremely fortunate to have known John Notz. Not only did we share a familial connection but also a commitment to preserve and protect history in Chicago and Lake Geneva. He embodied what it means to care deeply about people and places. Each time we were together, from family dinners to working on preservation projects, I was grateful for his mentorship and wry sense of humor. I admired his intellectual curiosity and undaunted spirit, like taking architectural historians on all-day tours around Lake Geneva into his 90s. He was truly unique and a dear friend.”
Minnie Marie Hayes is a longtime member of the Chicago Literary Club and remembered his influence there:
“The Chicago Literary Club sadly misses John Notz who devoted 39 years of the historic club’s 151 years as member, officer, and sharer of his lifelong interest in the history of Chicago. From 1997 to 2025, he benefited the CLC with 18 pristine papers which presented a kaleidoscope of the city and opened a door of interest to many.
“A classic Renaissance man, John grew up as a boy pre-television, running around outside and figuring out how things worked there. Graduating from college he became one of our country’s warriors and ‘soon put in the 11 months in Korea that I had intended to avoid, but it was a blessing in disguise. Having been assigned, unwittingly, into an unusually difficult role in the U.S. Air Force HQ for Korea, I matured fast, and, leaving Korea, I spent the next 16 months of my tour of duty based in and about Tokyo, troubleshooting assignments in Japan and everywhere in the Pacific Air Command, other than Hawaii. I matured further. Home to law-school, ‘I found myself . . . in the securities industry, and soon in the newly developing futures industry. An occasional case took me to the U.S. Supreme Court.’
“John’s perfect intellectual orientation led him—as a Chicago John in Wonderland—to find each research door opening into a new room. In a book on memoir-writing used while publishing a memoir of his famous great-grandfather—Georg Karl August Uihlein, a German brewer (1842 –1911)—he noticed a comment about ‘construction of truth’ and immediately synched it with what he’d seen in court. He noticed much and wasted little.”
Photo of John Notz from the Library of American Landscape History.
Hayes continued:
“Memory played a part in an intense commitment Notz had throughout his life to ‘place,’ an affinity for landscapes. He recalled looking back at a description of his mother’s, about their home in Lake Geneva. It reenvisioned for him a remembered brook carving throughout the landscape her grandfather had commissioned from Jens Jensen. His mother wrote, ‘The terrain formed a wooded valley, through which a lovely brook hurried to join the lake.’
“A careful literary craftsman of landscape himself, Notz distinguished ‘preservation’ from ‘conservation’: ‘(Preservation) suited the active pursuit of true restoration,’ while ‘conservation’ described ‘the passive acceptance of natural change.’ He once said, ‘A really good landscape design will of course change, but it will maintain itself as a work of art. You can witness that having happened in the works of Jens Jensen, O. C. Simonds, and Frederick Law Olmsted Sr.’
“Similarly, his omnivorous curiosity about Chicago’s story, art and architecture, led him to walk through open doors to sparkling new rooms. Research motivated him to create and enrich Chicago institutions and landmarks, particularly Chicago’s famous architecture. He formed fast friendships with many architects and their firms. His ingrained interests also led him to become a backbone for, among others, the Chicago Historical Society, and Graceland Cemetery—where many of his family members are buried.
“He described the door he entered into the Chicago Literary Club: ‘. . . having become, at the suggestion of a friend of my father, a member of The Literary Club of Chicago, functioning since 1874. The weekly after-dinner delivery of formal essays by one member to his fellow members and guests turned out to be a format that I enjoyed. One of my first essays was a study of the earliest years of private practice of a landscape architect, famous still in the Midwest—Jens Jensen. I had deduced that one of my great grandfathers had been Jensen’s first private client and that the success of that project, on Geneva Lake, Wis., brought Jensen the greater part of his design business in 1899-1921.’ The publication of that essay in The Wisconsin Academy Review opened the door for me into the leadership of The Society of Architectural Historians.’
“John Notz’s Chicago Literary Club papers offered much to many, but he said, ‘I don’t write professionally; I write for pleasure, which is the case of most of the CLC.’ Essays Notz has written are archived on CLC’s website—www.chilit.org.”
Janys and John Notz in Lake Geneva, taken by their longtime friend Alyce Sigler.
Alyce Sigler recalled her longtime friendship:
“John and Jan Notz have been friends for 45 years and for that entire time John has been my greatest resource and expert on innumerable topics. From landscape architects to architecture, libraries, cemeteries, gardens and great writers–as he was himself–and Lake Geneva families and history. He had an insatiable curiosity and a very wide range of expertise.
“My days spent with John and Jan, including this past June in Lake Geneva, were always full of learning about an immense variety of things. John loved to continue to learn and to help others learn also. He loved to inquire and correspond and help his multitude of friends on every topic. He will be immensely missed.”
These friends speak for all of us who will forever long to ask John our questions about the places and people that made Chicago significant. And remain forever grateful for the wisdom he shared.
