Wherever you go in haute suburbia, from Naperville to Winnetka, the Georgian House, a sturdy, symmetrical brick or frame two-story with a classical doorway, is king.
”In Naperville, it`s Georgian, Georgian, Georgian,” complains Kenneth Mitchell, a Naperville builder most known for bucking that tradition with his gingerbready Victorian creations.
But along Wendy Road in Naperville`s Breckenridge Estates, where the 1990 Cavalcade of Homes sponsored by the Northern Illinois Home Builders Association is being held, different strains are mixing with the old sweet song of Georgian. Several of the Cavalcade`s 15 homes reflect a new note of boldness in design and use of materials.
The Cavalcade is the annual building bash in which members of the Northern Illinois Home Builders try to engrave the images of their houses and the sound of their names on the public mind.
”I want to sell houses from this house,” is the concise formulation of Donna Stevenson, owner with her husband, Hal, of Stembridge Builders.
Creating a marketing splash, forming the special picture that will stay with a visitor, impels the builders to go all out to do something distinctive. ”The house makes a statement. That`s what the Cavalcade ought to be, something you can`t see any place else,” said Steven Wiercioch, president of Marc Builders of Naperville.
The current softness in the housing market, which has particularly affected upper-bracket homes, may have accelerated the builders` desire to stand out from the competition.
The uncertain market has resulted in some price moderation, with the $400,000-$600,000 price range down from last year`s Cavalcade at the Stonebridge Golf & Country Club in Aurora, where top prices were pushing $800,000.
But prices are still higher than originally planned.
”At our first meeting, we were told to keep prices from $250,000 to $400,000,” said Joseph Cassano, a partner in Joseph Norman Homes of Naperville. ”But we kind of lost sight of that. When you get a bunch of builders together, the competitive edge comes out.”
The need to shine can sometimes take builders from the sublime to the submerged. ”You want to take chances but not overdo things,” said Andrew Kobler Jr. of Naperville`s Kobler Builders, Inc. ”You can really go crazy, and nobody will buy it.”
Creative or crazy, this year`s group of Cavalcade Builders is younger and more daring. For most, it is their first Cavalcade. For one, Mark Riordan, of Fox River Builders, the show home is only the second one he has built, although he has a background in commercial construction.
There is a Georgian or two among 15 show homes, as well as that other staple of suburban presumption, the French chateau: You can tell it by the turret. And there are the hybrids. Blink once it`s English, blink twice it`s French.
But on several sites are designs that flout, here timidly, there defiantly, the conservatism usually embedded in Midwest builders like a fossil in limestone.
Clearly the most unusual entry is Marc Builders` $599,000, 4,000-square-foot Emerald Princess, an upthrusting edifice of stuccolike Dryvit with a green roof that would not look out of place in the Emerald City of Oz.
”We feel that we`re the most innovative builder in Naperville,” said Marc president Wiercioch, and while that not may be a boast to shake the nation, the company`s name is a local byword. (”We`ve introduced contemporary touches, but ours isn`t a Marc Builders Home,” said a competitor down the street.)
Wiercioch calls the home`s style neoclassic contemporary, which could mean anything but probably refers to the emphasis on strong geometrical shapes, particular the diamond.
The diamond motif is stated in a massive window high above the entry and carried through in a host of other features, including a marble inlay in the foyer, the angles of the main staircase and a design at the head of it, a built-in desk in the den and a sink in the powder room.
Stepped shapes are another strong architectural element, found in ceilings, stair railings, windows and glass-block dividers. Glass block is used amply throughout the home to create sleek, sharp accents, a revelation to anyone who associates glass block with the ugly, clunky insertions in cheap 1950s homes.
In a powder room, for instance, a line of white marble on the floor meets a line of clear glass block going up the wall to form a continuous band.
Functional as well as architectural ingenuity is evident. A family room includes a deeply sunken sofa pit facing a fireplace and a giant-screen television that can be viewed from both levels.
Behind the garage is a laundry/hobby room-with built-in counter ending in a diamond-shape-so that washing the clothes can be combined with supervising the kids in arts and crafts.
The master bedroom closets have dressing areas with built-in dressers so that the bedroom can remain clean and uncluttered. In the bathroom, a whirlpool tub, his and hers showers and two vanities are combined in a single symmetrical unit.
Though the spaces are angular and clean, Wiercioch has tried to avoid starkness, using warmly toned maple on the floors. He calls the decor ”soft contemporary.”
One factor that gives a different flavor to this Cavalcade is the extensive use of Dryvit on the exterior of five of the homes. In last year`s show, the homes all used of brick or wood siding.
One of the Dryvit homes, Steve Carr Builders` 6,300-square-foot, $545,000 Ambiance, is less assertive than the Marc home but equally contemporary in its emphasis of clean, almost sculptural lines on the inside.
”My trademark is really bright homes, lots of volume, light colors, lots of windows and quality materials,” Carr said. ”It`s contemporary in a way but not too far out for some people.”
Rooms are broad and open; spaces flow into each other; ceilings leap to the roof line; white walls accentuate the amplitude. A living room fireplace is flanked by smooth, soaring columns made of foam covered with a Dryvit product like that used on the exterior.
The den, a room which in the other houses is generally panelled in dark wood for a heavy, masculine look, is as light as the other rooms, its main window to the front surmounted by a large, single triangular pane.
Appropriately for the home`s bold architectural values, a draftsman`s table sits by the window.
The purity of the lines emphasizes the materials. The wood trim is oak, varnished but unstained. The family room fireplace is made of rough-cut silvery grey marble slabs, which throw out sparkling glints.
While the upper floors have a formal air, the light and space perfectly suited to an art collector, a 1,700-square-foot walkout basement with family room provides a place for the youngsters to romp.
Decorating is held to a minimum to maintain the focus on shapes and materials.
”It`s very lightly done, just suggestive,” Carr said. ”I know there are people who do a very heavy job of decorating. There always are in the Cavalcade.”
Carr believes the sophistication of his approach will appeal to the many transferees who end up in the Naperville area and along the high-tech corridor of the East-West Tollway.
”When people transferring here from the Southwest and California see a standard two-story Georgian, then this, they find this more interesting,” he said.
A different look of a more traditional kind is offered by Kenneth Mitchell, like Carr a Cavalcade first-timer, in his 4,100-square-foot (5,700 including finished walkout basement) $575,000 Lorraine.
A front porch with ornate railing plus a lacey wood trim around the gable eaves announce a strong pitch for the booming market in Victorian nostalgia.
Elaborate use of wood also marks the inside, with oak-inlaid ceilings in the foyer and dining room, a custom oak fireplace surround and a beamed ceiling in the study.
Mitchell does not skimp on the details. Where Carr`s house is stripped to the bone, Mitchell`s is loaded with decor: ”I wanted there to be something in each room that has architectural interest.”
The same lavish hand has been laid on the plumbing, with five full bathrooms, each with a whirlpool, in a four-bedroom house.
The complexity of the detailing gives the home an appropriate Alice-in-Wonderland intricacy. One of the features that seems particularly
Victorian, perhaps in the sense of secrecy it conveys, is a private stairway from the first-floor study to the master bedroom suite.
A simpler home in a quieter historical style is Stembridge Builders`
4,300-square-foot, $489,900 Churchill. The home has a solid, composed English country facade enlivened with decorative brickwork and a few subtle wrinkles within.
One wrinkle really wrinkles: a serpentine corridor leading from the second-floor landing to the secondary bedroom. In fact there are curves, soft arches and rounded places throughout the house.
”I`m so tired of square rooms,” said builder Donna Stevenson. ”It`s the same thing all the time. When you see something like this, you realize how tired you are of it.”
Not that the rooms all undulate like snakes. The roundedness is communicated by subtle touches, a curve here and there.
”I`ve found that subtlety feels good,” Stevenson said.
Of course, it doesn`t feel good to everyone.
This Cavalcade, like most show home affairs, has it share of imposing stairways that come at you like rabid dinosaurs, wallpaper that looks like it was made by bumblebees on angel dust and representations of tropical flora and fauna on the bathroom windows.
Cavalcades also have their hot button items. The button with the most heat this year is, appropriately, the sun room.
”Sun rooms are in these days; you`ve got to have a sun room,” said builder Andrew Kobler with cheerful resignation.
”I`ve got one in my own home and I never use it.”
Perhaps the most usable, and largest, sunroom in the show is in Fox River Builders` 3,800-square-foot, $589,000 Caitlin. The 21-by-12-foot space, with skylights and ceiling fans, is defined on one side by a kitchen counter, so the person preparing dinner can chat with people in the porchlike sunroom.
Fox River head Mark Riordan also has jumped on the Dryvit wagon but uses the material on his entry`s facade in a pleasing combination with stone and brick.
Ceiling fans also are obligatory. You used to see them only in the master bedroom. Now every bedroom, and a few other rooms as well, including the sunroom, of course, will have its fan poised on the ceiling like an enormous dragonfly, ready to swoop.
In the pampering category, saunas and steam showers are coming in slowly. In Cornerstone Homes` 3,600-square-foot (5,000 with finished, walkout basement) Xanadu, cocooning is taken to the limit with a sauna and whirlpool in a bedroom/exercise room suite that can be closed off from the rest of the house.
”The owner may choose to keep this retreat his personal secret!” said the promotional copy for the home breathlessly. And if cocooning goes any further, the owner may go in and never be seen again.
