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Edgecliff (Winnetka, Illinois)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 12, 2026
Entity authorityQ60748004
Source-derived summary

Edgecliff (aka the Max Epstein House) is a Samuel Abraham Marx–designed estate in Winnetka, Illinois, in the wealthiest region of Chicago's prestigious North Shore suburbs. It is notable for once having the highest residential property taxes in Cook County, Illinois.

History

Edgecliff was commissioned by Max Epstein when he became chairman of General American Transportation Company in 1929. The building was completed in 1930 by Samuel Abraham Marx.

Nathan Cummings, whose business became Consolidated Foods Corporation and then Sara Lee Corporation, purchased the building in 1954 from Epstein's estate. He, his daughter and son-in-law lived there until 1961 when Cummings relocated to New York after remarrying. His son-in-law, Robert Mayer, acquired the house in 1961 and added a 10,000-square-foot (929 m2) art gallery along the south end of the estate. The property had several galleries when it was owned by Buddy and Robert B. Mayer. Terry McKay acquired the property in 1995 for $4.6 million. By 1996, he had removed the art gallery.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Edgecliff (Winnetka, Illinois)” as open-knowledge reference entry. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Edgecliff, Winnetka and Illinois.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1929, 1930, 1954, 1961—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Edgecliff, Winnetka and Illinois providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Edgecliff (Winnetka, Illinois)”, the useful work is to connect “open-knowledge reference entry” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q60748004. Authority coordinates are 42.117, -87.734. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1929, 1930, 1954 and 1961.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Edgecliff (Winnetka, Illinois)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.