With the Burton F. Hales house going on the market recently, we figured our HomeFront readers would be lining up to place bids on the $2.95 million historic home.
Or at least take a peek inside.
The Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest can help you do just that. The society is offering a tour of the Hales mansion, 509 N. Oak Park Ave. (northwest corner of Chicago and Oak Park avenues), as a follow-up fundraiser to last year’s successful tour of the Grunow-Accardo home in River Forest.
And because the 1905 Tudor Revival home is for sale, “We thought maybe the homeowner would be up for a sales tool,” said Kelli Kline, president of the Historical Society’s board of directors.
The society offered a similar fundraising tour of the Hales Mansion eight years ago, after Japanese fashion designer Kanae Ikai moved out, Kline said. But since then improvements have been made to the house, “so we thought it would be great to get back inside,” she said.
Like the Grunow-Accardo tour, actors playing historical characters-Burton Hales’ family and servants-will be stationed around the house to lead the tour and tell guests what it was like to live and work in the home in 1910. The servants all lived in the mansion or its former coach house, found behind the mansion to the west. The coach house was legally divided from the main property in 2000.
The mansion’s owner, Dr. Leah Urbanosky, paid about half of today’s asking price when she bought it in 2003. But she’s made a lot of improvements to the home, said Marcee Gavula, one of two agents listing the property. (ReMax’s Gary Mancuso is the other.)
In the past three years, the home was tuckpointed under the direction of a preservation architect, the electrical system modernized, and new doors installed to allow easy access to second-story balconies. Inside, woodwork around the doors matches seamlessly with the original wood-maple, mahogany and quartersawn white oak.
“Every owner needs to add something before leaving the house, and she’s done that,” Gavula said.
Urbanosky donated a preservation easement (protecting the facade) to the Historical Society, while the previous owner created a similar easement to protect the south lawn from being developed, according to Historical Society documents. But inside, the kitchen and five bathrooms have all been modernized.
Entering the home from its eastward-facing main door, you walk through a foyer with a mural painted by Oak Parker Mary Jo O’Hearn when the Hales mansion was featured as the ASID Showcase House in 2000.
The foyer leads you to the reception hall, with floors and wainscoting in the original quartersawn white oak. Dead ahead, pocket doors separate the reception hall from the dining room, complete with one of the home’s many fireplaces and mahogany woodworking, including original built-in hutches. Period-appropriate Bradbury & Bradbury wallpaper hangs in the dining room, and the pocket doors, in case you were worried, are clad in mahogany on the dining room side, and oak on the side facing the reception hall.
Many of the home’s light fixtures are original.
Going back to the entrance and turning left in the reception hall to circle the first floor layout clockwise, you first enter the living room that leads into an area that once served as a chapel. Jesuit priests (who taught at St. Ignatius High School) bought the home from Mrs. Hales in 1940, and enclosed an original patio to create the chapel. Services were held in the space, at the southwest corner of the first floor. Ikai, the Japanese fashion designer, thoroughly de-sanctified the space, turning the marble-floored room into a sunroom with a wet bar.
You pass again through the dining room to reach the kitchen, also rehabbed during Ikai’s ownership from 1990 to 1998. There’s nothing antique about the kitchen, with a giant sub-zero double-side refrigerator freezer, Thermador cooktop, twin dishwashers, four sinks, granite countertops and newly enlarged west-facing windows that bathe the space in light on sunny afternoons.
Past the kitchen are the maid’s and cook’s quarters: two bedrooms and a bathroom. Gavula said the nearby separate entrance would make the space ideal for either a home office or an in-laws suite.
Heading back near the main entrance and reception hall, the billiards room-or library, as it’s now called-offers overstuffed furniture and a mural around the room painted by Allison Meyer for the 2000 ASID Showcase House.
Outside the library, a staircase leads to the second floor. Original lights and stained glass adorn the climb.
Most of the bedrooms are found on the second floor, including the master suite, which stretches from the front of the house to the back at the south end. The bedrooms are numbered, an artifact from the Jesuits’ time, Kline says.
The second floor offers five walk-out balconies and good views of the nearly acre-sized property.
One oddity on the second floor is a tiled shower room big enough to be a walk-in closet. One side of the room has a standard shower head with separate hot and cold handles. The opposite side has temperature handles and a bathtub-like spout. No one has been able to explain that setup, Kline says.
The third floor, originally a ballroom, is now more of a rec room. A really big rec room.
Outside, a carport to the north of the house keeps the elements away when going from house to car and back. A three-car garage is planned, and will be built before the house is sold, Gavula said.
Urbanosky proposed a garage design that would have needed a zoning variance, but the proposal was denied by the village’s Zoning Board of Appeals earlier this year. Oak Park restoration architect John Thorpe is working with Urbanosky to explore other designs, he said.
The original four-car garage went with the coach house when the properties were separated.
Henry G. Fiddelke, the architect of the Hales home, also designed the original Holmes Elementary School, the Hemingway Boyhood Home (on North Kenilworth) and many other notable Oak Park structures.
CONTACT: dcarter@wjinc.com
