Nice Italianate mansion on Lake St. in Hanover Park

Abandoned Italiante home on Lake St in Hanover Park.

 

We drove past this wonderful old house hundreds of times going to and from work in the 70’s and 80’s. We so wished that someone would rehab it. The dormer in the roof is unusual for this style of house.

 

Here is an old picture of it. When it was originally built it was in Ontarioville, not Hanover Park.

 

Click here to read some history on the house.

Notice it originally had shutters.  I’ll bet they were green. The old-timers did not have fine-trimmed lawns like we do today. They would let it grow long and then cut it with a scythe.

In the 70’s the home was the center of a huge sod farm.  The land east of it was always filled with beautiful green sod.  We stopped there once and asked the owner if we could go inside the home as we are old house enthusiasts.  He said we could not as his migrant workers live inside.

In 1987 we were redoing our bathroom.  My wife wanted a fancy ornament for above the tub.  In driving past the home she realized their porch frieze would be ideal.  We stopped and since no one was around we just traced it.  Here it is in our bathroom.’

The porch on the east side of the house where we traced the element is completely gone as shown below.

 

Here is the frieze from the front porch.  

The side porch did not have the little applique on it like the front porch has as shown below. We did not notice or we might have added it to the one in our bathroom.

Here is a picture showing a wonderful medallion and plaster cornice that is still in the foyer of the house.

 

Here is a picture of just the very unusual and wonderful medallion.

Here is the original interior balustrade that has been removed.

Here is another view of the balustrade.

Notice the original doors were false grained. All of the trim was also false grained which is very common in houses of this era.  False graining was actually more prestigious than having actual hardwood.

The entire house was gutted some time ago.  They were going to rehab it. A transom window above a wide door between the two parlors is very unusual.

The bay window had some wonderful details in including rope twists on the corners. The brackets and window hoods are wonderful.

Every window on the house had a large hood with little brackets.

The house had wonderful panels and brackets in the cornice.

Here is a picture of some old wallpaper left in the house.

This house did not have any fancy fireplaces which most houses of this era and stature had. Our own home is an Italianate of the same era and has four fireplaces.  The house has a chimney in every room showing a stovepipe hole so each room had a potbelly stove for heat.

They have removed all of the exterior fancy details getting ready to demolish the house. I imagine they were sold to an architectural salvage. Such a crime!