Another old house was razed in Chicago. One of many the city has lost to floods, fires and now, ubiquitously, wrecking crews sent by savvy developers.
The light blue Victorian two-flat was bulldozed with little fanfare. Crowds did not gather to lament a lost piece of history. No one protested. Few knew the former inhabitants or the story of the immigrant family that purchased the original gray painted lady back in 1886 and resided there for four generations, until 1972.
Nor did anyone know there was an attic hideaway, painted and wallpapered by two young sisters, who thought of it as a haven from the outside world from a stock market crash and the Great Depression. No one in the neighborhood knows that the granddaughter, whose bedroom was on the second floor, sat at the window seat during winter, scratching etchings into the single-pane frosted window while listening to muffled clangs of the streetcar from Clark Street and the foghorn bellowing in from Lake Michigan.
In its final years, up until its demise on March 26, 825 W. Buckingham Place was, well, out of place and time. Wedged between goliath brick multifamily complexes, the home was set farther back from the street. Prettier and more ornate than its dull, hulking block mates, the house looked fragile, like it was being taunted, bullied by its bulkier neighbors in a game of Squeeze the Lemon.
She held her own. But with no dramatic escape, as in the movie “Up,” the old gal was delivered a knockout blow by a yellow Kobelco excavator. My sister Darlene was there to snap pictures, salvage pieces of exterior trim and send my mom, my sister Sandy and me texts with updates and photos of the demolition.
My mother, Gale Ann Barnes Anderson McKinley, lived in that house. Her great-grandfather Edward O’Dea, an Irish immigrant laborer from County Galway, purchased the home from Clarence Buckingham and the Baird & Bradley Real Estate and Loan Agency. At the time my mother moved in, she was 7 years old, sent to live with her Nana, Irma Roach O’Dea, because her mother, Frances (Nancy) O’Dea Barnes, had died delivering her third child.
Gale Barnes attended Our Lady of Mount Carmel school, an eight-minute walk, just around the block on Belmont Avenue. She lived in the same bedroom her late mother grew up in, played games with the neighborhood children and frolicked in the vacant lot next door.
“I was just thinking about that place and the good times living there,” my mom said to my sisters and me via text. “It was a classy house for the age. I often thought of living back there.”
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Her father died of a stroke in the 1960s, months before I was born. She married, divorced, worked as a secretary while raising four kids, remarried, became a widow, lost her baby sister, Nancy, seven years ago and most recently lost her brother, Mike. She’s endured two knee replacements, several spine surgeries, ankle surgeries, atrial fibrillation and debilitating arthritis. Stoic beyond reason, my mom is the most optimistic, kindest soul I know. But the isolation is wearing on her, on us all.
Having seen her only once since Christmas, at her suburban condo outside on the deck or just inside as I stood near the open patio door, I realize I have taken my 82-year-old mother and her stories for granted over the years. During the COVID-19 pandemic I’ve kept my distance, dreading that I’d unknowingly infect her. I have missed seeing her and hearing her tales in person. And when we’re both fully vaccinated, I plan to plop right next to her on the sofa, flipping through photo albums, listening to more stories from her life. Her generation has unfairly borne the brunt of this pandemic, leaving so many families with stories that will no longer be told by those who lived them.
The old lady at 825 W. Buckingham Place will be missed by only a small few, and soon forgotten when the lot fills in with a less poetic replacement, one of which my mom would not approve. A house can reveal its decor, its insect infestation, its age. But its walls do not speak.
“I have lots of stories about that place when you want to hear them,” my mother said to my two sisters and me through text.
Yes, Mom, I want to hear them. I want to hear them all.
Karen Anderson is a Chicago-area freelancer.
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