24 Facts About Lambert Tree

Lambert Tree was a United States state court judge, ambassador, and patron of the arts.

Richard Lambert Tree became a member of the Virginia Assembly in 1629 and 1632.

Lambert Tree's son, Captain John Tree, was a sea-captain and based out of Philadelphia: this Tree is the grandfather of Lambert Tree.

Two hundred years and more after Richard's arrival in America, Lambert Tree was born at the family home in Washington, DC, on November 29,1832.

Lambert Tree was the second, but eldest surviving, son born to Lambert Tree and Laura Matilda Burrows, a granddaughter of Maj-Gen John Burrows, who fought in the Revolutionary War under George Washington.

Lambert Tree's father had moved from Philadelphia to Washington where he lived for over 60 years and worked for the US Postal Service.

Lambert Tree went to the University of Virginia, where he studied law and graduated LLB and was admitted to the Washington bar in 1855.

Lambert Tree practiced law and, in 1870, was elected to the Cook County, Illinois circuit court.

Lambert Tree presided over the indictment, trial, and conviction of corrupt City Council members.

Lambert Tree lost the 1882 United States Senate race by one vote, then fell seven votes shy in 1885.

Lambert Tree then served the shortest tour, less than one month, of all US Ministers to Russia: after his presentation of credentials on January 4,1889, he left post on February 2,1889, not long before the inauguration of President Cleveland's successor, Benjamin Harrison, a Republican.

Lambert Tree was very active in the civic and cultural life of the City as Life Trustee of the Newberry Library, Vice-President of the Chicago historical Society, incorporator of the American Red Cross and founder of the Chicago Branch.

Lambert Tree was for several years President of the Illinois Historical Society and was honoured as Officer of the Legion of Honour by France, Grand Officer of the Order of Leopold by Belgium and was a member of the Sons of the American Revolution.

The house was built first and later, where the stables had been, Lambert Tree built his eponymous Studios.

Seven years later, on 9 October 1910, Lambert Tree died in the Waldorf Astoria New York from heart failure.

Lambert Tree's son and heir, Arthur, was born on the 1st July 1863 in Chicago and died on the 27th September 1914 in Southampton, England, where he had been living near Leamington in Warwickshire at a grand country house, Ashorne Hill House, built with his wife Ethel.

The building is a finely executed house of the late-Victorian period, finished in sandstone and survives in an institutional use, though the Lambert Tree connection is affirmed by the family crest over the main entrance porch and Arthur's initials over the stable yard portico.

Lambert Tree attended Princeton University, graduating Class of 1885, having read history and law, like his father.

Lambert Tree self identified as a horse breeder and farmer, though he was a gentleman of some leisure by all accounts and possessed an ocean going motor yacht of grand proportions.

Josephine in fact died on a liner during passage between Southampton and new York in 1903 and Lambert Tree spent a good part of his final years in England with his son and grandchildren.

The Lambert Tree Studio Building is important architecturally for its picturesque details of the period.

Lambert Tree Studios is one of the nation's oldest such studios, the original portion being designated a Chicago landmark February 26,1997.

Lambert Tree was responsible for the gift to the city of A Signal of Peace, an equestrian bronze by Cyrus Edwin Dallin which he had created for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and erected in the Park along the lakeshore.

Lambert Tree built his own family house at 94 Cass Street, to a design by the eminent Henry Hobson Richardson, one of the greatest of American architects in the latter half of the 19th C Lambert commissioned the Tree Studio Building and Annexes, a surviving example of the work of Parfitt Brothers architects and now on the US National Register of Historic Places.