After Oscar Taylor and Malvina Snow were married in 1842, the couple first made their home in a cottage on Adams Street in Freeport. Oscar was admitted to the bar in 1850 and opened a bank in 1851. In 1857, Oscar hired Otis Wheelock of the Chicago architectural firm of Boyington and Wheelock to design a home for his growing family. Wheelock also designed Freeport's Brewster House Hotel where Abraham Lincoln stayed when in town for the Lincoln Douglas debate. The Taylor home was built was built from locally quarried limestone with walls two feet thick. The property was originally 17 acres (now 3 acres) and the Taylors planted many of the trees and shrubs that remain today. The home was dubbed "Bohemiana," a name that reflected the free-spirited and artistic souls who lived there. It was dedicated on a Sunday night with the famous abolitionist singers, The Hutchinson Family, singing "Home, Sweet Home." The thick growth of ivy visible in this photograph has since been removed to protect the stone walls.

Horace Mann, educator
Horace Greeley, founder of the New York Tribune
John G. Saxe, humorist and poet
Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist, poet and philosopher
Edward Everett Hale, clergyman and author
Edith Hibbart, critic and poet
Bayard Taylor, writer and traveler
George Sumner, Ambassador to France
James Russell Lowell, poet, essayist and diplomat
N. Artemus Ward, humorist
Jane Addams, of Hull House