Almost one and a half years after it arrived in pieces at its new Evanston home, the historic John S. Van Bergen house that once stood on Wilmette’s Isabella Street is ready for its close-up, and will be open for a public tour on Sunday.
The Aug. 28 tour, from 1-4 p.m. at 2771 Crawford Ave. in Evanston, is not only a chance for potential buyers to view the Prairie Style home, it will allow people who have followed the house’s fate since it was first targeted for demolition back in 2012 to catch up with its current condition, Winnetka architect Chris Enck said.
A 4 p.m. reception after the general tour is also scheduled for people from across the North Shore and beyond who own Van Bergen homes themselves, he said.
“The house will be on the market soon, and this is kicking that off. But there’s been a lot of interest in the project since it began because it’s been so visible,” he said. “The house has had two big moves, and in between it was sitting in that parking lot on Green Bay Road.”
The modest two-story frame and stucco building was designed by Van Bergen, who once worked in famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s studio and whose own designs made him a Prairie School luminary. But the house, built in 1928 at 1318 Isabella St. in Wilmette for James Irving, seemed destined for demolition when a housing developer bought it in 2012.
Worried preservationists, including those at the Landmarks Illinois council, eventually convinced that developer to market the house instead. Their relief was short-lived; they learned in early 2014 that a second developer now owned the property and planned the same fate for it.
That’s when Enck, a restoration architect with ties to Landmarks Illinois, decided to step in. He bought the 1,588-square-foot house for $10 and a promise to the developer to get rid of it for free.
In October 2014, Enck had the house carefully split into three sections. Each was moved via tractor-trailer down Isabella to the then-shuttered former Dominick’s grocery store on Green Bay Road, just south of the Wilmette-Evanston border.
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The house segments, covered by tarps, stayed in the parking lot all winter. Once Enck got the necessary permits and bought the Crawford Avenue lot, they moved again, south on Green Bay, then west on Evanston’s Central Street, attracting crowds and media attention as they rolled along at a glacial pace.
It cost Enck about $85,000 to purchase, dissect and move the house, he said in March 2015. To date, reconnecting and renovating it have brought project costs to where he thought they might be, he said.
“The house sold right before we became involved, as a tear down, and the cost was, I think, about $565,000. My goal going forward was to do the move, find a new lot, get all the permits and do the remodeling for basically a total of around that much. We’re basically right at what we hoped,” he said.
Reconnecting the segments was relatively easy, he said, estimating that the actual work took only two to three weeks, although that was accomplished over a period of several months. Thereafter, he focused on returning most of the interior to its original design, as well as updating the house’s kitchen and baths.
Enck said the connection and remodeling took so long because he was doing it in his spare time, and because it was the first time he had acted as the lead on such a project. He credited Landmarks Illinois staff for helping him find the resources for the project.
Twitter: @pioneer_kathy