When Sarah Coleman and Abe Chernin bought their Oak Park home in 2014, they knew right away that they were buying a home with an interesting history.
“The former owners were great stewards of the house,” Coleman said. “When we bought the house, they gave us everything that they had on the history.”
The C.H. Hill house was built in 1903 and designed by Patton and Miller, according to the information they received about their Georgian Revival-style home.
The couple learned that their new home had once served as a boarding house for men who worked at the Oak Park Club a few blocks away. They also learned that their home had once had a wide front porch that spanned the width of the house.
Coleman said that it had always been in the back of their minds to restore the porch, but they first tackled more pressing renovations, like the kitchen.
A window of time finally opened up, and they turned to Oak Park architect Kim Smith to design a porch that looked like it always belonged on their early 20th Century house.
Smith came highly recommended by friends who had hired her to work on their historic district home in Oak Park. The Coleman/Chernin home is also in the Frank Lloyd Wright Historic District so renovations on the front exterior needed to go before the village’s Historic Preservation Commission for approval.
“I didn’t have a strong sense of whether this would be a heavy lift with Historic or not. Kim was an obvious choice,” Coleman said.
Smith, who was previously a member of Preservation Chicago and who has worked in Oak Park for 19 years, said her work is classically grounded, making her a natural choice to work on the area’s historic homes.
Her design for the new porch was based on a photo from the Oak Park River Forest Historical Society. Although the photo is not dated, there is some consensus that it represents the original design of the porch.
The C.H. Hill house in 1903. Credit: The Historical Society of Oak Park & RiVer Forest 
The C.H. Hill house in a 1940 real estate listing. Credit: The Historical Society of Oak Park & RiVer Forest 
The C.H. Hill house in a 1990 real estate listing. Credit: The Historical Society of Oak Park & RiVer Forest
“You can see that’s all we’re doing right now- putting back what was there,” Smith said.
Susie Trexler, Urban Planner in Historic Preservation for Oak Park, said in an email that the commission reviewed the project in 2022 and “felt it was a fantastic restoration effort on a block with a lot of history.”
“We’ve seen a number of porch restorations, which are always great projects,” she said. “Usually, you can get a good understanding of the footprint from historic maps and draw on style details of the house. But this was a rare case in which the homeowners found a historic photo, which allowed them to replicate many of the historic details like the paired columns at the stairs.”
Smith looked to the historic photo to inform her choice of the ionic capitals used atop the columns. She also matched the original columns’ shape as best she could.
Both Coleman and Smith noted that this was one of the first times the HPC has approved the use of composite columns on an historic district home. Smith said the columns are “better for weather and longevity.”
Coleman added that beyond being more durable and more sustainable, the composite columns have another big advantage over wood columns.
“We have a dozen columns. It was going to be around $50,000 with an additional $5000 in delivery costs if we used wood. It really opened things up for us to be able to use these.”
She also said she thinks the longevity of the composite columns will preserve the home’s historic façade for future owners.
“My understanding is that the reason so many porches aren’t around anymore is because they rot. We’re trying to be good stewards of the home and make sure it’s sustainable for the next family that lives here.”
During the construction process, which Coleman said has taken longer than expected, they hit some bumps in the road.
Smith said there were soil issues, which are likely the reason the original porch failed. The construction work also uncovered some serious damage to the siding, likely from a fire in the 1930s or 1940s.
While remediating these issues prolonged the rebuilding of the porch, the end is in sight and Smith praised Coleman and Chernin’s dedication to getting things right.
“They’re just wonderful stewards,” she said. “We’re all here to be good stewards to these buildings that will be here long after we’re gone.”
Smith said she sees the HPC as a great partner in the work she does on historic homes and said that respecting the HPC process is vital.
“I’m a true believer. The rules are there for a reason,” she said.
“We have people coming from all over the world to see us. It’s because of our zoning and because of our landmarks. People want to see what’s here because of our historic housing stock.”
