Illinois Gallery

IL01	Queen Anne Palatine, IL	This handsomely maintained Queen Anne in Palatine, IL, is now a law office. One has a tendency to be cynical about lawyers (One lawyer in a town, the lawyer starves. Two lawyers in a town, they both get rich.) but I think any lawyer with enough taste to place his offices in a house as nice as this can't be all bad.
IL02	George Clayson House Palatine, IL	This lovely little Second Empire House was built in 1873 by George Clayson, a prosperous farmer. The house is now owned by the Palatine Historical Society and is open to the public. This is one of my favorite show houses, because the staff is very friendly and allows you to wander through the house and look at the Victorian furniture and memorabilia without supervision. There are no ropes, chains, or plastic shields to block your view. The house itself is rare in that it is built in a Second Empire style of the highest sort, yet it is only a modest-sized farmer's house, not a grand mansion. The Second Empire style with this level of detail tends to be seen only on very substantial houses.
IL03	Queen Anne Palatine, IL	This sparkling-clean Queen Anne is located just a few blocks from the George Clayson House (IL02). It was built in 1892, according to a plaque beside the front door.
IL04	Queen Anne Palatine, IL	This Queen Anne mansion in Palatine, IL, is a good deal more imposing than the photo might suggest. Alas, it is set on a very large lot – and surrounded by walls of hedges, bushes, and trees, of course – so it is very difficult to get a suitable shot of it from the street. A waitress at a local cafe told me that it is still owned by the same family that built it in 1896.
IL05	Italianate Palatine, IL	In view of its pitched roof, it could be argued either way whether this is an Italianate house or just a Folk Victorian with some gingerbread. I think the heavy Italianate bracketing, classic three-window symmetry, and the bay window at the right, settle the matter. It's Italianate. One has to make some allowance for the Chicago winters! The detailed painting of the cornice and window surrounds is very nice – and certainly demonstrates what the owners of the more expensive Italianates in Evanston are missing by uniformly painting theirs a boring white.
IL06	Romanesque Revival DeKalb, IL	This Romanesque Revival mansion is now a commercial building. It houses an optometrist, a hearing aid store, and several other small businesses. It is only a few blocks from the much, much more famous Ellwood Mansion – but whereas the exterior of that house is a remarkably boring neoclassical affair, this Romanesque Revival house has exactly the rugged look that one associates with classic late-Victorian mansions. I took several photos of this house, but only one of the Ellwood Mansion.
IL07	Queen Anne DeKalb, IL	This beautiful brick Queen Anne is also (like the previous house in this gallery) only a few blocks from the Ellwood Mansion. It is much more modest than the Ellwood Mansion, but I like it much better (on the exterior, at least) because it is much more architecturally authentic. This house, unlike the Ellwood Mansion, is not trying to look like a classical something else. It is exactly what it appears to be: an American Victorian home. This house is similar in size and style to one in Fayette, MO, but is in much better condition.
IL08	Ellwood Mansion DeKalb, IL	This DeKalb landmark was built in 1879 by barbed-wire inventor Isaac Ellwood and is open to the public. The interior is very impressive (Bob Vila featured it in his tours of the historic houses of America), but the exterior doesn't do much for me. It was originally a Second Empire house, but a Classical "upgrade" turned it into what you see now. Maybe it comes from living on the North Shore of Chicago. I have seen so many ersatz Greek temples / French chateaus / Tudor castles – as huge, gaudy, pretentious, and tasteless as they come &ndash that one more just makes me yawn. I almost didn't bother taking a photo of it. Then I shrugged and took just this one, because I figured I couldn't visit DeKalb without taking at least one photo of the legendary Ellwood Mansion.
IL09	Queen Anne Springfield, IL	This splendid brick Queen Anne is a familiar sight to motorists driving along Interstate 55. It sets just off the highway, about 20 minutes south of Springfield. It was not always thus. The 1888 mansion had been abandoned and had fallen into total ruin by the 1970's. It was a utter wreck, with the roof missing in places and an interior ravaged by insects, rot, and even by cattle wandering through from neighboring fields. The only thing that saved it from being razed was its location in the middle of the countryside: it was too remote to bother tearing down. It was finally purchased by a Springfield antiques dealer, who has spent many years in lovingly restoring it, inside and out. One of his shops is located near the mansion, and visitors are allowed to see some of the interior rooms on certain days of the year.
IL09	Queen Anne Springfield, IL	A side view of the Springfield Queen Anne mansion.
IL10	Queen Anne Wheaton, IL	I found this rather peculiarly restored Queen Anne in Wheaton, IL. At the time I photographed it, the house had obviously been reshingled and resided with cedar in the recent past. I don't know if the owner intends to paint the house later on or not – but I suspect not, since I can't see any point for the extra expense of putting cedar siding on a house if you are going to paint over it anyway. As it now stands, this house reminds me overpoweringly of those unpainted Victorian doll houses that one sees in the crafts stores.
IL11	Gage House Wilmette, IL	The Gage House (built in 1873) is a remarkable Italianate located about ten minutes from my home. I like to drive visitors down the street this house is on, and tell them to keep their eyes open for the "Victorian" house. The street has many turn-of-the-century houses on it, so this usually produces a certain amount of confusion – until the Gage house comes into view. No one ever has any problem distinguishing this beauty from some hulking mass of Colonial Revivalism. There is a gorgeous full-page photograph of this house on page 151 of the book America's Painted Ladies. The exquisite, almost microscopic detailing along the crown of the tower and in the window surrounds really stands out in that photograph, which was taken with a professional-quality 4 X 5 flat camera.
IL12	Folk Victorian Wilmette, IL	The inclusion of this little house in my gallery is a whim, I admit. The house is located along Sheridan Road in the north Chicago suburbs, a part of town which today is one of the most affluent neighborhoods in America. Unlike most of the Victorian houses in this Web site, which eclipse the rest of the boring modern boxes on their street like the sun glaring down on a Christmas tree bulb, this house seems so small and plain compared to its hulking, ostentatious neighbors that you could almost mistake it for a child's playhouse, or perhaps the butler's cottage. I would guess from the Italianate-style detailing on the windows that the house dates from the 1870's. As far as I know, it is the only surviving Victorian for about a mile in any direction, in a neighborhood which must surely have been graced with many fine Victorian homes at one time. So I include it here, alongside the elaborate mansions of the governors of Missouri and Minnesota – as my salute to a survivor.
IL13	Folk Victorian Wilmette, IL	I'm not certain that this house in suburban Wilmette, IL, is Victorian. Some of the stone work and other aspects of the house look turn-of-the-century at the oldest, and they may only date to the 1920's. But the spirit of the house is certainly Victorian, with the elaborate bracketing around the second story and the wonderfully whimsical steam-boat-style corner tower, so it has earned a place in my gallery.
IL14	Queen Anne Elgin, IL	This turn-of-the-century Queen Anne in Elgin, IL, is in stunning condition. The elaborate detailing you can see above the front steps is repeated on a large side panel on the house's south side, just visible at the far left of the photo. This house is a real knock-out in a second way: it has a corner lot, and the owners have not planted one tree, not one bush, on any part of its large lawn. In other words, the house is spectacularly visible. The owners clearly understand that there is nothing they can do to beautify their property more than simply letting everyone see their house. Bravo!
IL15	Queen Anne Elgin, IL	This beautifully restored, classic 1880's Queen Anne is located in Elgin, IL. Elgin has quite a few Victorian houses that might best be called "poor country cousin" Victorians, because their style is more-or-less Queen Anne, or maybe Italianate villa, at least to the extent that they have a tottering tower or two perched on them – but the houses are so small and ill-proportioned that they just look goofy. Elgin is an old blue-collar town, and those houses were built by yeoman carpenters, or perhaps even the home-owners themselves, in an attempt to emulate the much more expensive, architect-designed houses of the well-to-do. Such as this one.
IL16	Queen Anne Dixon, IL	I spied this lovely Queen Anne in Dixon, Illinois, when I pulled into a MacDonald's for lunch. The house was across the street. Dixon's main claim to fame is that Ronald Reagan lived there as a boy.
IL17	Italianate Dixon, IL	This is one of those Victorians that has obviously seen some pretty bad days, but whose design is so magnificent that you can practically feel the elegance it must have had. The house looks considerably worse in person than it does in this photo. Almost all the woodwork needs stripping and painting, it is covered with old, sloppy brick-and-plaster patches, there is an ugly addition in the rear, etc. But, it is still standing. The house is now occupied by an architectural firm, which is (apparently) in the process of slowly renovating it. I applaude their efforts. For you photography buffs, I took this photo with the 800-speed film (Gold Max) that Kodak is promoting for the home 35mm market. In perfect lighting, every shot I took with it turned out as mediocre as this one – and the film did a lousy job under low light conditions, which is exactly the opposite of what you would expect for fast film. I had to toss almost every cloudy-day photo I took with the stuff.
IL18	Second Empire Glencoe, IL	This house in Glencoe, IL, was a doughty apartment building until mid-1997. Then suddenly scaffolding went up and workers appeared and voila! A new single-family home emerged from the construction dust, spectacularly renovated. There are certain features of the house (particularly the placement of the doors) which lead me to suspect that this building may well have been originally constructed for use as a boarding house by the Victorians. If so, the house is now a single-family dwelling for the first time in its history. I would be very surprised if the original house had a large wrap-around porch on it, however – even though the previous apartment-building version of the house also had a (much more poorly constructed) porch.
IL19	Jacobs Henry Mansion Joliet, IL	If there is any house in the Chicago area which deserves a panorama of photos from three sides, this is surely the one. This spectacular Second Empire Palace is located in Joliet, Illinois, in a section of town which circa 1890 was home to the absolute top of Joliet Victorian society. Today (alas), except for this amazing exception, most of the surviving Victorian homes in the area are run-down, seedy-looking apartment houses, if they are occupied at all. (But there are some signs here and there of renovation going on, so maybe the area is about to enter a renaissance. We can always hope.) This house is by far the most splendid house in the city, so at least the best has been saved. I am informed that the house has always been owned privately, and is today used mostly for weddings and other receptions.
IL19	Jacobs Henry Mansion Joliet, IL	View of the left side of the mansion.
IL19	Jacobs Henry Mansion Joliet, IL	View of the right side of the mansion.
IL20	Hiram Scutt House Joliet, IL	This house was built in 1882. It is a fine house, although it pales in comparison with the Jacobs Henry Mansion. The house is not very close to the Jacobs Mansion as it is set on the other side of the Des Plaines River, which runs through the center of Joliet. Like the neighborhood around the Jacobs Mansion, however, most of the Victorian houses around the Scutt house are also in bad shape. The Scutt house appears to be in pristine condition, but it isn't. Close, but no cigar. I have a historic photo of the Scutt house, and that shows that the facade has been stripped of quite a bit of its decoration: the elaborate flanges on the upper-story windows, the grillwork on the porch roof and the decorative balcony, the window surrounds on the third-floor tower windows, and the decorative insets on the tower cornice, all are missing. However, given that the house is still standing (especially in view of the decay of the area around it), this is only a purist's grumbling.
IL20	Hiram Scutt House Joliet, IL	Historic photo of the Hiram Scutt House.
IL21	Italianate Winnetka, IL	This Italianate in Winnetka was not especially dazzling, and the porches added to the front and the left second story were not especially graceful and certainly not original to the house – but the cornice decoration was intact and very neatly painted, and the house successfully maintained a comfortable, small-town Victorian feel, so I gave it a place in my gallery. In early 2001, new owners bulldozed it flat and constructed a new house on top of it.
IL22	Gothic Revival Winnetka, IL	This classic Gothic Revival Cottage is (or was) next door to the previous house in this gallery. There is also an Italianate house across the street from these two (not included in the gallery – it looks almost exactly like house IL21, except it is painted yellow). Once upon a time, these three houses must have made up the most prestigious neighborhood in town. Since this photo was taken, new owners have added a huge wing on the left side of the house. The wing is reasonably sympathetic to the Gothic architecture, but I'm glad I got a photo of this house before the wing was added, just the same.
IL23	Queen Anne Kenilworth, IL	Kenilworth is probably the most expensive town in Illinois, and that's saying something, considering how much money there is along the North Shore of Chicago. This quite striking transitional Queen Anne, dated 1893 in the window decoration above the front porch, is set in a neighborhood of very large, very expensive, and alas, mostly very tasteless mansions. It is the only true Victorian in the area, and does it make its neighbors look sad. It is a mystery to me how anonymous, often self-taught Victorian architects could design beautiful houses like falling off a log, when highly educated, modern architects armed with an arsenal of the latest CAD software can only design ill-proportioned, pretentious hulks.
IL24	Second Empire Highland Park, IL	Highland Park is the famous suburb where many Chicago sports stars live. The good news is, this house is nearing the end of a wonderful restoration and it looks simply splendid. (Notice in particular the very fine detailing around the dormer windows.) The bad news is, the house is completely surrounded on all sides by an impenetrable, absolutely solid, ten-foot-high jungle which hides the house so well, the only thing you can see of it from any direction is the very top of the tower — except for this view right in front, which I took through a two-foot-wide slit in the hedge. If these people put in a gate and block even this tiny portal, it would serve them right if their trees got Dutch Elm disease.

Contact me by e-mail at: David Taylor All photos in this web site (except as specifically designated) are copyright 1997 and 2001 by David Taylor.  Permission to use them for one-time private or educational use is granted.  All commercial use without permission is prohibited.

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