Windy Gates estate collection

The Windy Gates estate on Lake Avenue was owned by Joseph Wilcox Jenkins and his wife Ellen Jenkins between 1882 and 1939, and by their grandson J. Crossan Cooper II and his wife Eleanor from 1939 until 1982. Following J. Crossan Cooper’s death, the property was sold to a firm headed by Martin P. Azola and was developed in the Devon Hill community of condominiums and residences.

The landscape of the twenty-acre estate property was the subject of a major design project by the firm of Olmsted Brothers, the successor firm to the landscape architectural practice of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. The Olmsted design was later modified by Thomas Sears, another notable landscape architect. The final version of the estate’s residence was designed by Henry Bacon, an architect famous for his monuments and public spaces such as the Lincoln Memorial.