Marble fireplace mantel. Sleeping porch. Hand-turned spindles. True, divided-light windows. Milk-glass doorknobs. Built-ins galore. Cedar closet. Bead-board ceilings.
“You don’t find these things in new homes, unless you pay an enormous amount of money,” says Jennifer Sullivan of Geneva, who bought a 147-year-old Greek revival home with these frills and more.
Although she admits she would have preferred to buy an older home that had been restored, Sullivan doesn’t regret spending 1 1/2 years with her contractor, Kevin Penzato of Penzato Remodeling & Restoration in Batavia. “He brought it back to its original glory,” she says as Penzato completes the project this spring.
Sullivan figures she can recoup the cost of the restoration, which included everything from stripping the clapboards to uncovering the original fir floors. The home sits atop a generous, corner lot in the heart of Geneva’s historic district, where others of its size and condition have sold for $600,000 to $700,000. But she has no intention of selling her pride and joy, built by a cabinetmaker named David Martin. “I’m going to grow old here,” says Sullivan.
While contractors race to transform the farm fields that surround the Tri-Cities into grids of new homes and buyers flock to their sales trailers, the Jennifer Sullivans prefer older homes.
“These are people who have respect for the gracious, genteel lifestyle that the older houses personify,” says Realtor Barbara Steele of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in St. Charles. “They walk into them and tell stories about their childhood.”
They are far outnumbered by the new-house crowd, Steele reports. “Especially among the transferees, most want new homes that take care of themselves,” she says.
So strong is the preservation ethic in the Tri-Cities, the old-house buyers here have their own support group, hosted by the non-profit Preservation Partners of the Fox Valley.
“They share ideas, challenges, stories, contractors’ names,” says Liz Safanda, executive director of the St. Charles-based organization. “They tour restored old homes and bring in speakers who talk about restoration projects. One recent speaker, for example, talked about designing period gardens.”
The vintage-home buyers also find support at City Hall, where the planners consider historic preservation a win-win situation for residents and business owners.
“In Geneva, it’s important to preserve the older buildings not only because of the history but because this is what gives Geneva its character,” says Doug Kaarre, city planner.
Kaarre’s guidebook is the city’s 1987 historic preservation ordinance, amended in 1994.
The ordinance gave city officials the tools to create the historic district, a 69-block area outlined by Seventh Street to the west, Stevens Street to the north, the Fox River to the east and the Metra train station to the south. The district includes homes built from 1838 to 2000, in a smorgasbord of styles–Italianate, Queen Anne, Greek revival, Gothic revival, prairie-style (including one designed by Frank Lloyd Wright), bungalow, Colonial revival, Cape Cod, Romanesque revival and shingle-style.
Before homeowners can demolish or remodel in this district, their plans are subject to review by a historic commission created by the ordinance.
While some other Chicago suburbs lose chunks of their histories to tear-downs of older buildings (replaced by newer, larger ones that don’t necessarily jibe with the neighborhoods), Geneva is not threatened by the trend.
“Overall, tear-downs haven’t been an issue here,” says Kaarre. “But it could be more of an issue in the future as vacant land runs out.”
Nor have tear-downs wiped out the old-home collection in St. Charles, where a few demolition permits won the Historic Preservation Commission’s approval since it was formed by a preservation ordinance because the properties lacked structural integrity. St. Charles’ ordinance was passed in 1993 after some residents’ unsuccessful attempt to block the dismantling of the historic Farnsworth mansion.
St. Charles’ historic district encompasses 300-plus buildings in the downtown district and its older residential neighborhoods, from Fifth Street on the west side of the river to Sixth Avenue on the east. A second district, in the proposal stages, would include another 300 newer homes west of Fifth Street.
“Our preservation efforts played a big part in our winning the national Great American Main Street Award this year,” says St. Charles’ historic preservation coordinator, Kim Malay.
The last of the Tri-Cities to join the historic preservation bandwagon was Batavia, which recently drafted a preservation ordinance proposal. Its old-home collection is smaller but no less impressive than St. Charles and Geneva.
“We have them dating back to the 1840s, including Queen Annes, Italianates, bungalows and some prairie styles,” reports Batavia’s planner and zoning officer, Rick Smeaton.
“The Batavia Historical Society (put its plaques on) many of the old houses, but that doesn’t prevent anyone from tearing them down or altering them,” says Smeaton. The ordinance would allow the city to review demolition permits. Smeaton is optimistic about its chances of passing.
“Overall, this town is pro-restoration,” he says. “About one-fourth of the old homes are rentals and aren’t all in mint condition. But we also have a lot of people who go to Chicago salvage yards to find just the right doorknobs.”
Unlike the other collar counties, Kane County has a team of preservationists in its Community Development Department that supports the municipalities’ efforts and oversees preservation in unincorporated areas. It has designated one historic district in LaFox, a speck on the map just west of Geneva, plus 30 individual historic sites including homes, farms, churches and cemeteries.
“Education is a big part of our job,” says Scott Berger, the department’s project administrator. “We encourage people to be sensitive to a house’s integrity and character, regardless of its age. A house may not be that old but may be significant because of its history or from an urban planning perspective.”
When the calendar flipped to the year 2000, preservationists had to redefine “historic,” reports Berger. “It has generally meant more than 50 years old, which meant the pre-war homes,” he says. “Now it includes homes from the late ’40s. Soon, it will include the ’50s ranches, which we don’t tend to think of as architecturally significant. What you appreciate depends on when you were born because people think of grandma’s house with nostalgia. In the ’70s, everyone wanted a Victorian because, to that generation of home buyers, they were like grandma’s. Then everyone wanted the craftsman and the bungalow. Now, you have buyers in their 20s who remember the ’50s house.”
