"Mayo and Mayo were among the foremost residential architects on the North Shore, equally proficient in a variety of French and English revival styles. While Winnetka has a handful of other houses by the father-son team, including the Chateauesque Windsor house at 419 Sheridan Road, their home town of Evanston has over 35 examples of their work.
Born in Birmingham, England in 1864, Ernest Mayo immigrated to Chicago in 1891 and established the firm of Mayo and Curry. They designed factories, hotels, and office buildings, and Mayo worked on administrative buildings for the 1893 Worlds Columbian Exposition. But he split with Curry, and when his son Peter was born in 1895 he was working on his own. Peter joined the firm in 1919 and was made a name partner the following year.
Whereas his father received his architectural training through apprenticeship in England, Peter received his degree from Yale University and furthered his design education with night classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. He served as a lieutenant in the army during World War I (his draft records note, “tall, slender, blue eyes, auburn hair”), and he graduated from the Ecole d’Artillerie in Fontainebleau, France. Thus it is not surprising that the firm of Ernest Mayo and Mayo (the father’s first name was later dropped) switched so easily from English to French styles."
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