Lavertia Gaetz paints a word-picture that stretches back nearly a half-century–to a day in the fall of 1949 when she moved into her new home.
The road leading up to the brand new Homestead Apartments in La Grnge Park was little more than a dirt trail, she recalls, and farm fields blanketed the landscape north of the complex. The entire place was so new that Gaetz and her husband had to struggle along makeshift wooden walkways to carry their belongings into their building.
Today, the scene she so vividly recalls is difficult for a visitor to imagine. The Homestead Apartments have the look of a century-old college campus, the ivy-covered red brick buildings surrounded by undulating lawns and stately oaks and maples. The farms to the north have long since yielded to stores, a bank and block upon block of neat brick ranches and split levels. In short, everything has changed–except for one thing.
Lavertia Gaetz still lives here, in the same apartment.
For Gaetz, the Homestead Apartments was and is home, a home where she lost a husband and raised a daughter.
In fast-moving times that see some people change addresses almost as often as they do favorite TV shows, apartments are frequently viewed as mere way stations on the road to other apartments or homeownership. That makes it all the more remarkable that a few Chicago-area renters’ roots have stayed planted 35 to 50 years or more.
Fern Littlefield and Virginia Hurley, for example. In the 47 years she has lived at 1350 N. Lake Shore Drive, Littlefield’s southwestern exposure has afforded a window on the spectacular ascent of Chicago’s skyline. And an exhilarating vista over Belmont Harbor has helped keep Hurley happily ensconced in her one-bedroom apartment at the Belmont House for more than 35 years.
What forces compel renters to stay in one place for such a long time? To hear them tell it, it’s upkeep, convenience and, above all, familiarity.
“The neighborhood has held up quite well,” said Hurley. “I’m five blocks from my church, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, and five blocks from St. Joseph Hospital. So I feel all my bases are covered.”
“It’s home to me–I do feel that way,” said Littlefield. “My family in Michigan wants me to move, but as long as I’m as healthy as I am, I’m going to stay.”
“They’ve kept it up very nicely,” declared Gaetz. “They’ve done a beautiful job on the bushes and lawns. And they keep up the apartments and redecorate.”
Gaetz was 33 when she, her husband, Howard, and their infant daughter, Pamela, now 50, moved from La Grange to the 366-unit cluster of 16 two- and three-story apartment buildings at 443 Sherwood Rd. in La Grange Park. Their rent was $100 a month.
“It was just a new place, and exciting to live in,” recalled Gaetz, 82. “In our younger years, we had lots of good times here. There were empty fields around and we’d have cookouts on Friday nights.
“We were all young people and we all had small children. One year the men took up a donation and had a fireworks show north of here, just north of where the Jewel-Osco is now.”
Shortly after the Homestead Apartments opened, owner Charles E. Joern built the adjacent Village Market shopping center, a still-thriving retail mecca that was one of the first such centers in the nation, reported son and current Homestead Apartments co-owner Charles E. Joern Jr.
In addition, recalls Gaetz, the senior Joern sponsored a bowling league for the women of the apartments, which survived for 15 years.
After a few years in their apartment, the Gaetzes looked forward to moving to a home in the Springdale neighborhood of Western Springs. They had purchased a lot and planned to build a house. But in 1957, Howard Gaetz died. Gaetz and 9-year-old Pamela decided they would stay at the Homestead.
“Today, there’s not too many young people and very few small children,” Gaetz observed. “So many (neighbors) that I really liked moved or passed away.”
Still, she can’t envision leaving.
“I would hate to pack up and move,” she said. “My daughter lives in Wisconsin and she says, `Why don’t you come up here and live?’ And I say, `No, I’m comfortable here.’ “
Littlefield and her husband, Harvey, were living in an apartment near South Shore Country Club in 1951 when they heard about construction of 1350 N. Lake Shore Drive, on the site of the former Potter Palmer mansion. They rode north on public transportation that summer to take a look at the fast-rising lakefront structure.
“We signed a lease before we even saw the apartment here,” Littlefield remembered. “We wanted a top floor if we could have it. At least we wanted a good view.”
The Littlefields got their wish and moved to one of the top floors on the southwest corner of the building in the late summer of 1951.
“At that time, we had a magnificent view. We could see Clark Street, before they built Sandburg,” referring to the massive Sandburg Village project built as a middle-class link between public housing and the Gold Coast. “Even the Schiller Building (which now stands to the west) was a vacant lot or a lower building. We watched the John Hancock go up, and all these other buildings.”
The chance to make new friends added to the couple’s contentment.
“We knew everyone on this floor and enjoyed their company,” Littlefield said. “We’d celebrate the holidays together. Many of them moved in at the same time, or within a month or two. They (stayed for years) on this floor, until they transferred, retired or passed away . . . We enjoyed every day, except for the sad times when we lost neighbors who passed away.”
Littlefield lost her husband in 1968, but has remained at the 740-unit Draper and Kramer-managed building for its central location and sense of openness.
“One thing I like about this area is that it’s right on the lake, so you don’t feel so closed in,” she noted.
In 1963, when Virginia Hurley and her husband moved from the West Side to what was then called the Belmont Hotel, at 3170 N. Sheridan Rd., the rent for their ninth-floor, one-bedroom apartment was a then-pricey $350 a month. But because the building was an apartment hotel, residents got a lot for their money, including the services of a maid, bellman and houseman.
“You could pick up the house phone and say, `Send up the bellman, the houseman or the engineer,’ for whatever you might need,” Hurley remembered. “With all the services, it made for nice, lazy living.”
She and her husband, Jason, who died in 1980, quickly came to love the view from their two huge picture windows overlooking Belmont Harbor, as well as their high-ceilinged apartment, the exquisite lobby of the building and the neighborhood.
Finding “lazy living” left her plenty of free time, Hurley signed on as a volunteer at the Rehabilitation Institute, where she recently received an award for 35 years of service.
In November 1995, Wexenthaller Realty Management bought the building, which was constructed in 1923 and has 12 floors and a penthouse level. The following month, the company launched an $18 million historic renovation of the property.
The restoration, along with the abundant transportation and fabulous harbor view outside her front door, should keep Hurley at the Belmont House for years to come. Besides, like others who have rented the same apartment for decades, she has another great reason for staying.
“It’s my home,” she said.
