Oak Park is expanding the Frank Lloyd Wright Historic District, which was recently named one of the great neighborhoods in the nation.
Elected officials gave the go-ahead last week to widen the boundaries of the area, adding 444 new properties.
The village had already expanded the neighborhood’s national historic district borders a couple of years ago, and now they want to make the local historic district boundaries match. The national designation is more of an honorary designation, while the local version requires that any demolitions or exterior alterations at homes be first reviewed by staff at village hall.
“The purpose of the expansion is to maintain the neighborhood’s historic character by providing protection to those areas from significant, inappropriate alterations and demolitions and to correct arbitrary boundary locations,” according to village documents.
The district is loosely bordered by Division, Lake, Ridgeland and Marion and includes about 1,934 homes after the expansion. Much of the new properties are located at the northwest corner of the district.
One property owner, Bill Dawson, spoke out against the expansion, worried that it might become too onerous to update his property now that it’s part of a historic district. But the board voted 5-0 in favor of the change.
Back in 2010, the American Planning Association, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that focuses on community planning, named the Wright Historic District as one of the 10 “great neighborhoods” in America, calling it a “virtual living museum.”