Lake Ivanhoe is a

census-designated place A census-designated place (CDP) is a concentration of population defined by the United States Census Bureau for statistical purposes only. CDPs have been used in each decennial census since 1980 as the counterparts of incorporated places, such ...

in the Town of Bloomfield, Walworth County,

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

, United States. It was developed in the 1920s as a resort community for middle-class

Black Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white have o ...

Chicagoans. Its population was 461 as of the 2020 census.

History

In 1926, Jeremiah Brumfield, Frank Anglin and Bradford Watson purchased an 83-acre farm on Ryan Lake to develop a resort community for other middle-class

Chicagoans. A white real estate agent named Ivan Bell brokered the deal, and the community was named Lake Ivanhoe in his honor. In addition to private lots for cottages and summer homes, the resort included a music pavilion that opened in 1927 with a performance by

Cab Calloway Cabell Calloway III (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, conductor and dancer. He was associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, where he was a regular performer and became a popular vocalist ...

. The resort also hosted fishing contests, beauty pageants, and boxing matches. Lake Ivanhoe was successful until 1929, when property sales declined during the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

. In 1934,

Chicago Bears The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) North division. The Bears have won nine NF ...

player

Edward Sternaman Edward "Dutch" Sternaman (February 9, 1895 – February 1, 1973) was an American player and owner in professional football for the Chicago Bears of the National Football League (NFL). During the 1910s, Sternaman and George Halas excelled on the ...

began purchasing unsold property at Lake Ivanhoe with the intention of turning the community into a white resort. He built fences to restrict Black residents' beach and lakefront access, but when the residents filed a civil suit, a judge ruled that the lake was a public good, and Sternaman abandoned his plans and left the area. Black families continued to move to the area after World War II, making it a year-round community by the 1970s. A government housing program in the 1990s brought new white and Latino families to Lake Ivanhoe, changing the demographics such that African-Americans only made up 9 percent of the community's population at the 2020 census.

Demographics

References

{{authority control Census-designated places in Walworth County, Wisconsin Census-designated places in Wisconsin Populated places established by African Americans