Nearly 150 years ago, Schaumburg’s big white Winkelhake farmhouse loomed over an untouched prairie that stretched for miles.
Then came progress, and with it the subdivisions, strip malls and four-lane highways that eventually surrounded the wooden house on a patch of farmland a mile from Woodfield Shopping Center.
It was progress again Thursday that overcame the two-story house, as the claws of a yellow bulldozer ripped through its walls, leaving behind a cloud of dust and a heap of giant splinters.
It took less than a half-hour to demolish the last farm in Schaumburg.
The demolition ended an era in a village settled by German dairy farmers but is now known as the epitome of developed suburbia–with miles of strip malls, chain restaurants and even a prefabricated downtown now under construction.
The house was the last tangible legacy of what Christophe Winkelhake started when he paid $1.25 for his first acre of farmland in 1850.
The bulldozer plucked away windows and walls and dropped them to the ground on the southeast corner of Higgins and Plum Grove Roads. It plowed over a barn and silo, reducing them to rubble. It tore through the cream-colored cowboy-and-Indian wallpaper of Ron Winkelhake’s boyhood bedroom.
“It’s a little disheartening,” said Ron Winkelhake, who was raised in the house and farmed the surrounding land. “Of course, it’s progress, and it has to be.”
The original 160-acre farm had been sold off bit by bit for several years. It was owned by Ron’s father, Herman Winkelhake, who died in 1995, and Herman’s brother, Louis Winkelhake, who lives in Wisconsin.
But Herman Winkelhake was steadfast in his decision to live out his years in the farmhouse, at 801 E. Higgins Rd., where he was born. After his death, Ron and his cousin Larry Winkelhake decided to sell the remaining few acres where the house stands because it was too difficult to farm in the busy suburb.
On the land where the farmhouse and barn once stood will rise Morningside, a development of 32 upscale single-family homes built by Cambridge Homes of Libertyville. Morningside is just one development planned for the land, which will net the Winkelhakes $250,000 to $400,000 an acre. The entire 160-acre farm cost their great-great-grandfather a meager $200.
“It’s the final transition from being a rural community, which Schaumburg was for a long time, to a full-scale, suburban-edge community,” said Steve Hovany, the village’s former planning director who now owns Strategy Planning Associates in Schaumburg.
Hovany said the farm’s demolition means passersby no longer will have a tangible remnant of the village’s history.
“It’s always kind of interesting to watch the last parts of the old go away,” he said. “So much of the nostalgia and history gets redone in caricature.”
That’s exactly what’s happening a mile south of the Winkelhake farm, where the replica of an old-fashioned working farm is under construction at the Spring Valley Nature Center.
“It’s kind of ironic that we’re trying to rebuild a historic farm at the same time this one is crumbling to the ground,” said Dave Brooks, manager of conservation services at Spring Valley, 1111 E. Schaumburg Rd.
Spring Valley workers went to the Winkelhake farm several weeks ago and took antiques such as door hinges and bushelbaskets, with the blessings of Cambridge Homes, that could be used on the new historical farm.
Spring Valley also had planned to take some of the timbers from inside the old Winkelhake barn, which were cut from nearby Busse Woods more than 100 years ago. But workers found much of the wood unsalvageable.
“It’s a shame more of it couldn’t be saved, but most of it we really didn’t have the need for or it was in poor shape,” Brooks said.
Tom Koenig, land planning and project-approval manager for Cambridge Homes, said he offered the structures on the farm to “all the preservation groups I was aware of in the community.”
But besides Spring Valley, the only takers were the Schaumburg Fire and Police Departments, which conducted several basic training exercises inside the large home before its demise.
In 1985, Ron Winkelhake left his sales job in Mississippi and moved back to the area to help his father farm the 62 acres of Winkelhake land that hadn’t already been sold.
“It was probably as much work to farm the 60 acres left as to work 300 or 400 acres somewhere else,” he said.
Higgins Road divided some of the Winkelhake acres, posing problems for the farmer who had to drive his tractor across the speedway.
“It’s not fun. People are coming up behind you honking,” he said.
In order to get a tax break, Ron Winkelhake still must farm 47 nearby acres that have been put up for sale until developers close on pending deals. Those deals eventually will bring a bank, a restaurant, some offices and town homes to the property.
The sight of bulldozers on the couple of acres of property near the farmhouse conjured up early memories of driving a tractor across the same land at age 8, Ron Winkelhake said.
“I used to work that land,” he said. “Once the earthmovers start in, there’s a mind-set that comes into play that it’s over with.”
But Ron’s cousin Larry is less nostalgic about his boyhood home.
“I’ve said my goodbyes already,” said Larry, who lives in Milwaukee. “I don’t look at that with mixed emotions. It’s progress, you know.”
