April Casselberry vividly remembers the first time she saw the 1897 Queen Anne rowhouse at 4942 S. Washington Park Ct. ”A fire had just swept through the place a week earlier and destroyed a good portion of the home,” said Casselberry, 32, recalling their 1989 visit to the house. ”Rain was coming in through the ceiling and there were birds living in the building. It was truly a mess.”
Nevertheless, Casselberry and husband Jim bought the historic home, almost on the spot.
Not many people would recognize it as a diamond in the rough.
”How did we see beyond all the work the home needed?” asked Jim, 31.
”I guess we were just young and foolish.”
Now, $150,000 in renovation costs, tons of elbow grease and two children later, the Casselberrys finally are seeing the results of their restoration effort: They are the proud owners of an urban gem of a Queen Anne-style home. The exterior of the brick yellowstone is accentuated by stone trim and features a rounded bay front that runs the three stories of the home and is capped with a turret.
The home was designed by Henry Newhouse, a prominent 19th Century South Side architect who also fashioned what is now the Operation PUSH building at 930 E. 50th St.
The interior of the 5,500-square-foot home also features many 1990s amenities: 5 1/2 baths, a large master bedroom, central air conditioning, a whirlpool bath and a finished basement. Left from the home`s previous era are five fireplaces, ornate woodwork, 12-foot ceilings and hardwood floors.
”This is now a new house in an old structure, with a lot of the flavor of an old home,” said April, a physician.
The Casselberrys are also residents of a unique Chicago street: South Washington Park Court is one block long and nestled in Grand Boulevard, a South Side neighborhood with strong historic ties. The community was named after the road that later became South Parkway and, after that, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. The Casselberrys` street is named after the spacious city park a block away.
Bordering the historic Kenwood and Hyde Park communities, Grand Boulevard runs the urban gamut-century-old historic homes stand in the shadows of the nearby Robert Taylor Homes public housing project.
The Casselberrys` relationship to their home goes back to early 1989, when the couple were living in a South Shore apartment.
”We decided we wanted to start looking for a home,” recalled Jim, a fixed-income manager for the MacArthur Foundation. ”When we started to look, we got very discouraged at what was available in our price range. We looked in places such as the South Loop and the western and northern suburbs. But the prices for a four-bedroom home were just beyond our reach.”
While looking in the Uptown area, the Casselberrys came across several buildings that had been rehabbed. ”Suddenly, we bought into that idea of a rehab and thought `Why can`t we do this?` ” said Jim.
April is a native of Chicago`s South Side, so the couple began looking for old homes in such neighborhoods as Hyde Park and South Shore.
”We were literally putting on work boots and getting crowbars and flashlights and looking around in abandoned buildings,” said Jim.
In the meantime, the two stumbled across a contractor who was undertaking rehabs on the South Side, including the building to the south of the Casselberrys` future home. The contractor pointed them to the South Washington Park Court home, which had been nearly gutted in a fire a month earlier on St. Patrick`s Day.
One tenant died in the fire and the structure was condemned by the city.
”Over the years, the building had become a rooming house and there were about 28 people living in here before the fire,” said April. ”There were even rental units in the basement. Rooms had been divided and bedrooms were converted into kitchens. When we came through, the building was about 60 percent burned by the fire.”
Despite the damage, the Casselberrys saw potential.
”From the outside, the house was striking because the turret and brick color caught my eye,” said Jim.
”I love old homes,” said April. ”I love a sense of history. And you could sense the beauty that this house had.”
They were also attracted to the historical nature of the street.
”I`m a South Side native, but I had never heard of this block,” said April. ”I was quite amazed at what was here.”
”The street was attractive because it was up for landmark status at the time,” said Jim.
A native of Lake Forest, where his father owned a plumbing company, Jim also thought the home fit his own earlier suburban lifestyle. ”I never thought I would live in the city, but I liked the sense of neighborhood that was found on the street,” he said. ”There are a lot of families on the block and it`s relatively quiet. We are also one of several people on this block who have undertaken rehabs.”
In April 1989, the two purchased the home for $12,000 and hired a contractor. The rehab started with a massive cleanup that included the removal of the destroyed possessions of the previous tenants.
The couple went through three or four Dumpsters just to clear the place out. When they started the demolition on parts of the interior, they pulled up three and four layers of carpeting topping linoleum in certain rooms.
”It was a real mess,” said April. ”In fact, my mother recently told me that after the first time she and my dad walked through the home, she went home and cried. They were totally overwhelmed.”
The Casselberrys started mapping out new floor plans for sections of the home and discovered the gutting by fire was somewhat of a blessing in disguise.
Because the walls were stripped to the studs in several places, heating and air conditioning ducts and new electrical and plumbing were installed easily. Antiquated radiators were removed and zoned forced-air units added.
On the first floor, a small kitchen, which was squeezed into a pantry-size area, was removed and a modern kitchen was added where the home`s kitchen originally stood (it had been converted into a bedroom).
A steep back staircase leading down into the kitchen area also was removed.
On the second floor, the Casselberrys converted three bedrooms into a large master bedroom and a master bathroom complete with whirlpool bath, a second bathroom, walk-in closets and a laundry room.
The front bedroom and connecting dressing area also were restored by removing a small kitchen. The two bedrooms on the third floor also were restored and a bathroom was added.
In the basement, the Casselberrys decided to remove walls that made no sense and free space that might someday accommodate a rental unit.
Throughout the rehab, the couple tried to salvage as much as the home`s original woodwork as possible. In fact, pieces of the restored woodwork still have small scorch marks.
The home`s hardwood floors, unique because the slats in nearly every room had a different width, were ruined in the lower level and in the back of the upper levels.
On the exterior, the fire destroyed tin cornice work that ran across the building and around the entryway. ”It was really, really beautiful but we just couldn`t afford to have it replaced with something like copper,” said April.
For such a project, resiliency and creativity go hand in hand. When they could not replace destroyed pocket doors between the dining room and back parlor, they decided to open up the two rooms to create a great-room effect.
Despite their best efforts, however, the couple still hit a few snags. About two-thirds of the way through the rehab work, in spring 1990, the Casselberrys` contractor went bankrupt.
”We almost gave up on the project at that point because it was becoming overwhelming trying to balance this project with our careers and family,”
said April, who at the time was working on her residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Cook County Hospital.
”At one point, I said, `Let`s just quit, sell the building as it is and take a loss on a it,` ” she said. ”But my husband kept saying `We`re going to hang in here and we`re going to finish it.` He really kept us going.”
Jim recalled: ”We got into the house and with the help of our friends and families, we finished the master bedroom and kitchen. We moved in the home in July of 1990 with the knowledge that we would try to finish the rest of the house while we were living here.”
With additional help from their families, and a new contractor, the Casselberrys slowly brought the rest of the house back to life.
”My dad used to build houses and he was very helpful,” said Jim. ”So we did the lion`s share of the work on our own. The new contractor finished the exterior work and the rest of the structural work.”
To help wrap up the project, the Casselberrys also hired neighborhood people to handle chores such as stripping wood.
By late 1990, the couple felt they were seeing the beginning of the end of their project.
”On Christmas Eve of that year, I began moving in all our furniture to the rest of the house and hung pictures on the walls,” recalled Jim. ”I finished at about 3 p.m. Christmas Day. At 4 p.m., we had about 50 family members come over for dinner.
”They were quite impressed with what we had done. And you know what? I was too. Because it was literally the first time I had seen the house finished as well.”
Actually, the Casselberrys still are facing a bit of work on their rowhouse: Sections of the mechanical systems added by the bankrupted contractor were installed improperly and now need additional work. The Casselberrys are also trying to restore several mirrors from the built-in dining room cabinet. The fire removed the silver backings off the glass pieces.
And although the five wood-and-tile fireplaces found in the living room, dining rooms and bedrooms are wonderful aesthetic touches, they are not yet functional. The Casselberrys learned from the previous owner that the fireplaces haven`t been used for about 60 years.
Despite the frustrations faced by the couple, the Casselberrys say the money and sweat equity they put into the home were good investments.
”It was definitely worth it,” said Jim. ”If you look at it from a pure square footage and amenity standpoint, we couldn`t have touched anything else for the amount of money we invested in this house. And I believe that values in the area are going to increase as more people pay attention to it.”
In fact, the Casselberrys, who have a 2-year-old daughter, Laura, and a 4-month-old son, Jamie, admit they would do it all again. The couple are already considering taking on another rehab effort.
”I hate to tell people that we`re outgrowing 5,500 square feet of space, but I don`t know if we need something bigger compared to something that`s more conducive to our lifestyle,” said Jim. ”Living on four floors is a bit tough for our current family situation.”
”Although this project became tremendously frustrating at times, it was also a lot of fun,” added April. ”And now, we feel that we`ve made quite an accomplishment here. It`s such a nice feeling to hear compliments from the people who visit our home, especially those folks who saw what this place was like when we bought it.”
