It sounds like a secret compound: a small brick house in Glen Ellyn built with no exterior windows and nearly invisible from the street, nearly swallowed up by the surrounding Victorians, Colonials and McMansions.
Its walls and ceilings are clad in dark African mahogany and the floor is shod in terrazzo embedded with fossils.
A circular brick fireplace stands freely in the living space like a mod troll with a smoking habit. And the word “space” was deliberately chosen over “room” because there are few interior walls, allowing the square footage (about 1,400 in the original/main part of the house, 800 in an addition) to simply flow.
And then there’s the matter of the koi fish, swimming in a heated pond that’s at once inside and outside the house and no magic was involved in that trick.
They’re in an open courtyard that sits in the center of the box-shaped (single-story) abode. That courtyard, which is ringed in glass, is the focus of the interior. All rooms face it.What it doesn’t sound like is a cozy vintage house that could endear the National Register of Historic Places.
But landmark status? It’s in the works.
And cozy? The house feels like a Japanese cabin set in the North Woods. Visitors are swept into its universe of calm.
In these days of dismal housing news, the story of an absurd little house from the 1950s that could (survive tear-down mania) and an owner who would (pour sweat and tears and money into it) rings especially warm and fuzzy.
Or at least fuzzy and complicated.
“I didn’t fall in love,” says Matt Nordloh, the house’s straight-talking owner of four years. He bought the place (in serious disrepair) from the previous owner’s estate and likely saved it from the wrecking ball.
But Nordloh insists he’s no do-gooder. He didn’t buy the house because he’s a preservationist or even a minor zealot of Midcentury Modern architecture.
Four years ago, he was simply a newly single man who needed a roof over his head and who wanted to stay in this neighborhood, close to his young daughter.
And he was and remains an architectural consultant who knows his way around blueprints. His hobby happens to be rehabbing and selling houses, although he intended to live in this one.
So when the price came down on this “weird-looking little box” (as Nordloh likes to call it) after months of negotiation, up went his love for it. And suddenly, the man who needed a roof over his head got himself that, plus adventure, plus a budding national historic place, although he stumbled into that last one.
Turning away from traditional
Nordloh knew nothing of the house’s architect, Paul Schweikher (whom the sellers had touted), a Midcentury Modernist of note and a buddy of Mies van der Rohe. Nor did he realize that Midcentury Modern architecture was just coming of age in the world of historic preservation.
“These types of buildings are just turning 50” and that’s generally the age at which a building is considered historic, says Kate Keleman, guest curator with the Chicago Architecture Foundation and an enthusiast of Midcentury Modern architecture. “It’s a movement [in American architecture] that’s loved by some people and ignored by others, but largely unrecognized.”
Keleman (whom Nordloh met when she was a graduate student at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago and whom he hired to write his nomination for the National Register) struggles with a label for this kind of Midcentury dwelling. She settles on the term “Midcentury Atrium House.” And she notes that “inward-looking” houses were an “interesting trend” that showed up after World War II and that as a genre of house, the Midcentury model signaled a major change in what Americans wanted in a home.
“They wanted open space,” Keleman says. They wanted the indoors and outdoors to flow seamlessly. They wanted a total “turning away from traditional styles” — away from all the revival French chateaux and Spanish colonials that were being built in the 1920s and ’30s.
Nordloh just wanted a house he could afford — and understand.
He admits to initial plans for an all-out rehab/redo. He even talked about adding windows.
(A caveat: As odd as it seems today, the original owner, Dr. Alfred Schiller, wanted to be protected from outside views — and thus, Schweikher delivered a house with no exterior windows. A 1960s addition, care of the second owners who lived here for nearly 50 years, added two more bedrooms — and several windows.)
Walls do talk
“But as soon as I moved in, I said ‘What are you doing?'” Nordloh continues, getting emphatic with himself. “The house immediately got a hold of me and spoke to me. This is a different house and it required a whole different approach.”
Nordloh put the skids on his big plans. And instead, he listened to the house, which didn’t always purr softly in his ear.
The house’s state of disrepair quickly turned into a many-headed monster.
The electricity needed upgrading.
The shower in the main bathroom didn’t work; plumbing lines were broken under the concrete slab.
A toilet was broken in one of the two bathrooms in the addition. Walls were crumbling in both those baths.
The roof leaked.
The exterior trim boards in the courtyard were rotted.
And most heinous of all: Both bathrooms in the addition flooded every time it rained. “Water would bubble up through the floor drains,” Nordloh says. “And then the whole floor would raise up with silt. It was gross.”
It was a cracked sewer line under his new driveway.
In the midst of doing house battle, Nordloh managed to find the love — to pursue the provenance of this odd little place. Nordloh “Googled” his way to familiarity with Schweikher, then Keck & Keck (the architects of the addition) and Midcentury Modernism in general. He learned that, like Frank Lloyd Wright who was practicing at the same time, Schweikher was strongly influenced by Japanese architecture.
Schweikher embraced the flow of a Japanese house, the lack of defined spaces, the weaving of indoors and out. And thus, Nordloh came to appreciate his house’s lack of walls and preoccupation with that central courtyard.
Over the course of his research and subsequent encounters with Midcentury enthusiasts, Nordloh learned of the National Register — and his house’s shot for a spot on that esteemed list. If he succeeded, a tax break was possible.
And so, in between fixing that which was broken and bubbling up, Nordloh composed a list of “sympathetic” improvements — changes that would bring critical updates to the house without critically altering its Midcentury soul.
The list was essentially three-strong:
He added a large (8-foot-square) translucent skylight to the living space to bring much-needed light into the interior.
He reworked the entrance into the house, tearing out a closet that closed up and darkened the entry.
And he made the attached garage truly attached, adding a passage between the house and garage. (Although the 1960s addition connected the two spaces, there was no door between them.)
“I think it’s spectacular,” says Andrew Heckenkamp, National Register coordinator for the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, based in Springfield, speaking of the house as a whole.
In December, Nordloh got word that the state of Illinois approved his bid for the National Register. He is awaiting the final nod from the federal government. And that’s all but a shoo-in, according to Heckenkamp, who notes that of the 1,400 Illinois buildings on the National Register, fewer than 20 are of the Midcentury genre.
Schweikher clearly designed this house for a specific client and it takes a “special person,” Heckenkamp says, to move in and carry the torch. “Mr. Nordloh has obviously grown to love it.”
Nordloh doesn’t disagree.
“The project brought me a lot of anxiety,” he says. “But as I got further along and things came to be, it also quieted me.
“There’s really a sense of calm and stillness here unlike any house I’ve ever been in or had or worked on. It just comes over me.”
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About Matt Nordloh’s house
Designed in: 1953
For: Dr. Alfred Schiller and his wife
Location: Winding street near downtown Glen Ellyn
Architect: (Robert) Paul Schweikher, born in Colorado, started studying architecture there. Moved to Chicago in the 1920s, studied architecture here and went to work for several big names of the day, including David Adler and Philip Maher. He established his own Chicago-based firm in the 1930s. Designed upward of 50 (but probably fewer than 100) houses in metro Chicago before taking the job of chairman of the School of Architecture at Yale University, according to Kate Keleman, guest curator at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, who is writing her master’s thesis on Schweikher. The Schiller House was one of his last Chicago designs before his move East.
Design brief: Schiller wanted a house that offered protection from outside views.
Schweikher delivered: A 1,400-square-foot brick box-shaped house with no exterior windows and set on one floor. Think: compound. There is an outdoor courtyard/atrium (13 by 16 feet) set in the middle, as if the house were cored through its center. Floor-to-ceiling glass “walls” line that space. All rooms face it. The house is transparent because of it. The circulation path through the house is next to those glass walls.
Bedrooms: Two in the original part of the house, although Schweikher made three an instant possibility. He ran a track down the center floor of one of the bedrooms so removable partition walls could be inserted to divide the room in two.
Other key features: Walls and ceilings blanketed in African mahogany, which seems to glow at night. Terrazzo floors embedded with fossils, including one notable shark’s tooth. Giant free-standing brick fireplace in the living space.
Touch of feng shui: Koi fish in a courtyard pond.
In the early 1960s, came: An 800-square-foot addition, care of the second owners, a family with five children. The addition, designed by Keck & Keck (another big-name firm of the day), connected the house and its garage — and brought two much-needed bedrooms. It also broke rank with the original part of the house and brought several windows.
Current owner (and only the third in the house’s history): Matt Nordloh
His big triumph: One step away from securing the house’s place on the National Register of Historic Places. It would become one of painfully few Midcentury dwellings in Illinois to make the list. It also would make Nordloh eligible for an eight-year property tax assessment freeze.
— Karen Klages
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kklages@tribune.com
