Local architect and historic preservationist Frank Heitzman has been living and working in Oak Park since 1975. Since 1977, he has used a number of local buildings for his architectural firm’s offices.
When in 1991 he and his late wife Sandy came across a building for sale at 111 N. Marion, they thought it would be a good investment. The two-story building had commercial space on the first floor and an apartment on the second.
“When my wife and I bought the building, it was used as a jewelry store,” Heitzman recalls of the first floor. He opened his architectural office on the second floor.
They later filled the storefront with the Cain Gallery, a locally owned and well connected art gallery. Priscilla and John Cain were the gallery owners. Heitzman recalls attending art shows there on Friday nights, a social event for the town that was perhaps a precursor to Downtown Oak Park’s Thursday Night Out.
Heitzman says the building was constructed in the 1890’s. When he bought it, a huge steam boiler in the basement was providing heat to his second-floor unit as well as the music store renting the adjacent apartment.
He removed that connection and patched up other connections between the two units. On the first floor, there was a large, steel-doored vault made out of brick that Heitzman estimates measured 10 by 10 feet.
As an avowed preservationist — Heitzman formerly chaired the village’s Historic Preservation Commission — he had to make a few changes to the building’s interior to make it more usable. The vault was out.
On the exterior, he initially left the building as it was at the time of his purchase.
Heitzman thinks that sometime in the 1960’s someone covered the façade of the building with panels over painted brick.
Recently, those panels were starting to fall off, and Heitzman took the opportunity to do a full-scale restoration of the exterior. He says that when he looked underneath the panels, he discovered a glazed brick of a dark brown color.
“It must have been spectacular,” he says of the original façade.
When all of the panels were removed, he could see the ghost of a large bay window that had been taken off at some point in the building’s history.
Armed with some historic photos from the Oak Park River Forest Historical Society, he set about to return the building to its original appearance. He designed and constructed a bay window for the front façade and utilized materials that might have been there when the building was first built. Today, the copper accents brighten the trim.
“The copper contributes to the beauty of the building,” Heitzman says.
He points out that at the time he bought the building, the jewelry store’s sign was flush with the building and states, “There was an ordinance enacted when the area was made into a mall that all of the signs on Lake and Marion couldn’t project. They had to be flush.”
His current tenant on the first floor, Colleen Fitzgerald of Fitzgerald’s Fine Stationery, added to the style of the renovation with a new sign. “I really love the sign that Colleen designed with the gold script on a black background. She has a great eye,” said Heitzman.
As the project is wrapping up, Heitzman is pleased with the results. “It was the worst building on the street, and now I think it’s the best,” he says.
