If Oak Park had a royal family it might be hard to choose between the legacy of Ernest Hemingway and Frank Lloyd Wright, but in the architectural world, it’s an easy choice. Wright is king, and his connection to local homes and buildings is a source of pride for many villagers, the majority of whom have no personal connection to the man.
Arlene Warda, a local architect, however, can claim more than a student’s interest in Wright. For the past several months, she has been working on a project that details her family’s connection to the master architect and in doing so, has discovered quite a bit about Oak Park’s architectural history.
Warda’s great-grandfather was Wilmot Glidden, a contractor for Wright and an inventor in his own right. As Warda researched her family genealogy (in tribute to her recently deceased mother), she came to realize the full extent of her family’s mark on the village she calls home.
Wilmot Glidden
Glidden was the youngest of nine children, and his family lived in Friendsville, Pennsylvania, where he met and married his wife Annie Clifton. They moved to Cincinnati, where they had four children and Glidden worked on patents for a brake system for railroad engineers. They then moved to the Morgan Park neighborhood of Chicago before settling in Oak Park, where they added four more children to the family. The last of the brood was Joy, Warda’s grandmother.
Glidden worked as a contractor for Frank Lloyd Wright from 1893 to 1910, and Warda believes he was one of the first contractors to work with Wright, probably due to his proximity to Wright’s home and projects.
“The Glidden family always lived in a home at 930 North Boulevard,” Warda said. “A son, Ben Glidden, lived in the house next door, and Glidden’s partner and a second son, Charles, lived in another home. Glidden and his business partner, Charles Foster, worked on their plumbing and heating systems in workshops behind their homes.”
Warda notes that the locations of the family homes — in the area that is now the parking lot for Cavalry Church — made Glidden and Foster ideal contractors to work with Wright on one of his most significant village buildings.
Unity Temple
Glidden was a man of many talents. Not only did he and Foster work on plumbing and heating systems, but according to Warda, her great-grandfather also worked with concrete.
“Legend has it, but it is not confirmed, that he contributed to the concrete work for the Green Line [embankment] in Oak Park,” Warda said. “In a photo of Glidden with his children in front of the North Boulevard house, you can see concrete planters that Glidden created. We know that Wright often designed concrete urns for his projects, and Glidden used to build them.”
His ability to work with concrete allowed Glidden to become one of the contractors on Wright’s Unity Temple. Warda believes that Glidden took home discards from the project and used them to create a façade for his own home. Her research provided a direct connection between Wright and Glidden, as she found bills indicating steady work and steady payments to her great-grandfather right up until Wright left the village in 1910. Glidden also worked with Wright as a contractor on the Darwin D. Martin House in Buffalo, New York.
Yaryan heating system
Glidden and Foster worked on plumbing and heating systems for Wright and other architects such as George Maher (who designed Pleasant Home). Warda said Glidden and Foster were also involved in bringing the Yaryan heating system to Oak Park. Invented by H.T. Yaryan from Toldeo, Ohio and brought to Evanston by his son, E.B. Yaryan, the Yaryan centralized heating system piped hot water through a network of underground pipes to heat local homes. Once established in Oak Park, the Yaryan system heated approximately 600 homes in Oak Park in the area bounded by Harlem, East, Chicago and Madison. Warda believes Glidden’s ability to invent and work with mechanical systems was part of his appeal to Wright.
“Unity Temple was a great experiment,” she said. “They were experimenting with different ways of adding mechanics. The four columns used to be for heating ducts, as you can see the vents at the top. ‘Foster & Glidden’ was a very unique company because not only did they do installations of mechanical systems, but they created engineering models and patented the systems.”
Glidden, for instance, invented and patented the central vacuum system as a way to help those in the Victorian Era keep their homes clean. Warda believes the system was put into many of Oak Park’s significant homes designed between 1901 and 1910, including many Frank Lloyd Wright houses.
A new generation
Warda’s mother returned to the village with her and her brother in 1972, allowing Warda to become a third generation graduate of Oak Park and River Forest High School. Her mother lived in a condominium on the site of the Glidden family property, and Warda herself lives within walking distance of many of Glidden’s projects. She likes to think that almost every property on Lake Street has been touched by a member of her family.
In 1986, Warda graduated with an architectural degree from the University of Illinois Chicago and in spite of her family’s connection to the village, she wanted to create her own identity and her own projects. It was not until she lost her mother that she began to think more seriously about delving into her family’s history.
“We’re a family that no one really knows about, but we’ve done so much. Our story is really relevant to the fabric of Oak Park,” Warda said.
In addition to working on residential design projects throughout the village, Warda recently took on a project that connected her to many parts of her past. In redesigning the former Papaspiros restaurant on Lake Street (now Agora), she had the opportunity to work on her mother’s favorite restaurant, a place where the two often shared a meal. In addition, with the help of mechanical engineer Sam Jacob, she worked on the mechanical plumbing and heating designs for the restaurant, essentially continuing the work begun in the village by her great-grandfather so many years ago.
“Even though I now go the restaurant without my mother, it was good to put our family’s mark on The Avenue after 120 years.”
Warda continues to research her great grandfather’s legacy and has begun a Facebook page: www.facebook.com/FosterandGlidden, where she documents her family’s history in the village and shares the results of her research.