Breckhurst
Queer Places:
115 E Oak St, Chicago, IL 60611
Breckhurst, WI-59, Evansville, WI 53536
Elton Theodore Breckenridge (October 12, 1904 - January 10, 1984) was an interior designer who was on the faculty of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He designed the enlargement of Breckhurst, in Cooksville, in ca. 1952. He used the residence as a second home for more than 20 years. He also laid out formal gardens with attractive planting and eclectic objects which interact well with the site.
Elton Theodore Breckenridge was born in Liscomb, Iowa, the son of George W. Breckenridge and Laura A. McDaniel. Breckenridge first visited Cooksville in 1938 and fell in love with it. He was friends with Marvin Raney and Chester P. Holway from the House Next Door. He had lived in an old mansion on Oak Street in Chicago from the mid-1920s. With his arrival in Cooksville he became the village’s most overtly eccentric resident, one of several Chicago transplants who gave the phrase Chicago people a distinctly artsy/queer connotation among the locals. When Breckenridge sold the house in 1976, the original house was just one of seven rooms, as Breckenridge had continued to design and build additions.
Breckenridge died in Chapel Hill, NC.
Breckhurst
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