Each of the five homes and four gardens on the second annual House and Garden Walk sponsored by the Palatine Historical Society had features worth boasting about.
About 400 people toured homes with arched doors, gingerbread trim, pine floors and oak doorways. They also viewed perennial gardens.
New on the walk this year was the First United Methodist Church, which features an 1895 sanctuary with stained glass windows.
One of the people enjoying the walk was Laura Davis of Palatine, who lives in a restored historical home that was on the house walk last year.
“I appreciate the time people took to display their homes and their collectibles, which showed their family history,” Davis said.
The $4,000 raised by the recent walk will go toward improvements at the society’s Clayson House and adjacent Carriage House, said museum coordinator Marilyn Pedersen.
Cathi and Tom Fisher’s Victorian home “was tastefully and architecturally done,” said Dolores Campagna, who owns a restored home in Palatine. “They did an excellent job of preserving the original woodwork and flooring of their 1904 home.”
The 1916 farmhouse of William and Sharon Sickal blended the old with the new, as refurbished maple floors helped modernize a kitchen and bathroom.
“I especially liked the Sickals’ home because even though they had a number of antique collectibles, the home was still functional,” Davis said. “These homes showed me that you can make an older home fit with your lifestyle today.”
“If I had my choice of houses to live in, it would be the English Tudor-style home with the slate roof that was built in the late 1920s,” Campagna said.
The red brick English Tudor home features copper gutters, an arched entranceway, a brick driveway, a three-flue chimney and eight-panel doors.
Ruth Bjorvik has lived in Palatine since 1936 and was interested in seeing the inside of homes she has gone past for years. “I was particularly impressed with the English Tudor home,” she said. “The whole layout was much more grand than I expected.”
The house, owned by John and Donna Kavenaugh, also showed a stunning display of perennials, along with a fish pond built by the original homeowner, Frank Danielsen, a former Palatine mayor.
Pedersen said the most authentic home on the tour was the Victorian gingerbread home built in the 1870s and owned by Don DuPont. It has tin ceilings, a mansard roof, stained glass windows and grooved bull’s-eye woodwork around the doorways.
One garden invited visitors to move about on stepping stones and view the Shasta daisies, coreopsis and day lilies. A cobblestone patio built underneath a grape arbor faces a replica Irish log cabin that owners Stan and Ulla Moe built.
