Over the summer, north Oak Park’s bed-and-breakfast was sold when longtime Bishops Hall proprietor Charles Tupta left the inn-keeping business to pursue religious studies.
But, most returning guests to the home will notice little change under the new management, with the exception of the four frequent guests who decided to tackle a new endeavor and run the business themselves.
Built in 1916, the Georgian Revival-style home originally contained two bedrooms and living quarters for four or five servants. The Bishops Hall nickname is relatively new. The Midwest Diocese of the Orthodox Church of America purchased the home at 605 Iowa St. as a residence for their bishop in 1990.
Tupta bought the home in 1998 and took on extensive renovations and restoration, which included modernizing the mechanical systems and refinishing many of the home’s original details which were covered by years of updates.
When he was finished, he had created two guest suites and a guest bedroom in the main portion of the house, along with a separate owner’s suite complete with its own kitchen and living area. Tupta listed the home for $2.5 million in the summer of 2018. Public records indicate it sold for $1.4 million in August.
New owners Rick Sander and his wife, Fiona Harrison, purchased the house fully furnished and jumped into small business ownership. Sander, a law professor at UCLA, has roots in the Chicago area and had previously been a guest at the B&B.
He worked as a community organizer in Chicago from 1979 to 1989, and also worked on Chicago Mayor Harold Washington’s campaign in 1983. As a law professor, he remains steeped in the housing issues that he worked on while living in Chicago.
“I’m interested in Chicago as a microcosm of many issues in the country,” Sander said. “Last year, I published a book on housing segregation. There’s a lot of consensus in the field now about how housing segregation is a key driver in racial inequity.”
When Sander became involved in a national movement to combat racial segregation in housing, he came to Oak Park to meet at the Oak Park Regional Housing Center. During that visit, he was a guest at Bishops Hall and got to know Tupta, who told him the home and business were for sale.
“The Chicago initiative was taking root, and I figured Bishops Hall was a good place to center all the different chemical elements coming together,” Sander said.
Sander, whose wife is an astrophysicist at Cal Tech, remains based in California, so he and Harrison looked for someone to take on the day-to-day operations of the bed-and-breakfast. Tupta was able to recommend a suitable couple in Nora and Peter Bouchard, also frequent guests of Bishops Hall.
Nora Bouchard had lived in Oak Park for more than 25 years, when a job transfer moved her out of state. In her work as an executive recruiter, she travelled back to the area frequently to work with clients and stayed at Bishops Hall on a regular basis.
“I was there almost every other week for three years,” Bouchard said. “I got to know the house and Charles very well. My husband and I used to tease Charles when the house was for sale and asked him to let us buy it for a buck. In June, he told us about Rick and Fiona and their plan to buy the house, and asked if we were interested in being the onsite caretakers.”
Bouchard says it’s been a dream come true to live in the house. She enjoys living in the house as a resident rather than a guest, and says making breakfast and getting to know the guests are some of her favorite parts of each day.
“The guests are fascinating,” Bouchard said. “Most are totally surprised by the beauty that is inside the house.”
She says that much of the guest experience remains the same, but she is enjoying tweaking the menu a bit and trying new recipes. Current favorites include her famous French toast and an avocado mash served on a bagel with an egg.
Sander notes that guests continue to use the B&B as a launching pad for work travel, jaunts to Chicago and to view local architecture, but says he and the Bouchards have plans to invite more people in to take advantage of the spacious entertaining rooms of the home.
“We see potential here because there aren’t many places in and around Oak Park that have this serene environment for gatherings,” Sander said. “The first floor is generally underutilized. We want to open that up to the village.”
To that end, they are opening the home’s common spaces for small event rentals and recently hosted a retreat for a local university’s sociology department. Bouchard says a music recital is on tap for this winter as well as a fundraiser for local nonprofit Beyond Hunger. She says the home lends itself to wedding showers, luncheons, holiday parties and other community events.
Sander, who returns to the area eight or nine times a year, hopes to host some events related to the anti-segregation effort in the future, and says he is looking forward to weaving the house into the Oak Park community.
“We want it to be a resource for the community,” Sander said. “The notion is to match community needs with what we can offer.”