Here is a picutre of 14-16 S. Chapel in 1981. It was an all brick building that someone added the stucco and Prairie influenced porch to. In recent times, the apartments were never nice and only attracted desperate people. The Code Dept. cited a deteriorating porch so the owner, working with the city’s Preservation Planner […]
Jill Harkins wrote an article on April 30th for the Philadelphia Citizen. Here are some excerpts from the article. Men’s shed is a global nonprofit making its way across the U.S. It is fighting loneliness and depression in older men by bringing them togetter to build things. Men’s Sheds are gathering spaces in which men get together […]
Mike Howell with Carpentry with Integrity was the winning bidder to rebuild a porch on a wonderful old house. The bases were rotten, the posts marginal, and the terra cotta ionic capitols had so much paint on them they were almost undistinguishable. The floor needed replacing. The owner wanted low maintenance so fiberglass columns were […]
Neighborhood Housing Services came to Elgin in the early ’80s. it was to be a partnership between the city, the banks, and the citizens of Elgin. The Gifford Park Association was instrumental in bringing it to Elgin so three of our board members also board members of Neighborhood Housing Services. People often got the two […]
315 -317 DuPage had been a problem property for decades. Here it is in 1981. Here it is in 2008 Kurt Kresmery, a local investor bought it and rehabbed the interior nicely so it attracts great tenants. Here it is after rehabbing the interior and painting the exterior. Kurt is a friend of mine so […]
A short section of curved porch rail rotted off and the owner replaced it with some terrible workmanship. Notice the two spindles on the right and the one on the far left are upside down from the others. The contractor could not make a curve so he turned it into two straight lines. The poor […]
373 Park was built in 1854 in the Carpenter Gothic style with board and batten siding. By 2000 the house had become a two unit eyesore. A local contractor/flipper bought it and with huge grants from the city rehabbed the exterior and turned it into a single family home. A couple from Boston was looking […]
This home was purchased by Habitat For Humanity as a project house to rehab. They had an architect draw up plans to put back appropriate porches. The Gifford Park Association donated money to buy the materials and I volunteered my labor to make the treads, sawed porch apron, balustrade, newels, finial, frieze and brackets. […]
4 N. Jackson in Elgin started out as a very fancy Victorian/Mansard home built in 1875. W.W. Abell, a very prominent Elgin architect was commissioned to “Modernize” the home in 1897. Here is how it looked a few years ago. Here is how it looks today with a new paint job. You can see the […]
An investor purchased a home in the Historic District and decided to put new steps and balustrade on the front porch. He used store bought newels that are not the correct style and too slight. The lattice on the steps apron is also wrong. The cities preservation specialist informed him that he wold have to […]