Six homes will be featured Sunday, May 4, when the Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest hosts its 21st spring housewalk.
The featured homes are south of the Eisenhower Expressway, in the neighborhood bounded by Maple Park along Home, Wisconsin, Wenonah and in between Lexington and Roosevelt.
Frank Lipo, executive director of the OPRF Museum, which houses the Historical Society, predicted that people attending the walk will enjoy the wide range of architectural styles, including Victorian, Gunderson and classic Chicago bungalow styles. Beyond architecture, he said that the Historical Society always aims to tell the stories of the residents of the homes on the walk.
“Every one of these houses has had four, five or six owners over the years. We try to bring the different layers together in one story,” he said.
He added, “It’s nice to go to an area where we haven’t had a big walk before. This year we have six very different houses with six very different stories.”
Lipo noted that the locations of the ticketed walk are rotated each year between River Forest and Oak Park and that a “fun point is that last year we were in far southwest River Forest, and this year we’re in far southwest Oak Park.”
Some of the featured homes are in Oak Park’s first Gunderson district. Lipo noted that around 1890, Sievert Gunderson and his partner purchased a lot of land in the area. They held the land until 1905, and between 1905 and 1908 built a subdivision of roughly 67 homes. Just like today, development is often driven by transportation, and the business partners waited until the five-cent street car arrived on Roosevelt Road around 1905 to start their development.
Around the same time, the Rehm family was building another subdivision in the area. Arthur Rehm was elected to the first board of the Park District in 1912, and today, the “South Park” is renamed in his honor.
One of the notable homes on this year’s walk is the boyhood home of McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc.
“His family moved there when he was five or six, and he graduated from Lincoln School,” Lipo said. “He later attended OPRF High School but never graduated.” Instead, much like another famous graduate, Ernest Hemingway, Kroc left high school to serve as an ambulance driver in World War I.
People from outside of the area might associate Oak Park solely with Frank Lloyd Wright, but Lipo says there’s more to our history than that.
Before You Go
Proceeds of the housewalk support the Oak Park River Forest Museum: the home of the Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest, a not-for-profit, independent community organization that relies entirely on donations, gifts and fundraisers.
Tickets can be purchased in person at the OPRF Museum, 129 Lake St. in Oak Park, during business hours; over the phone at (708) 848-6755 or online at www.oprfmuseum.org. Tickets cost $35 in advance or $40 the day of the walk.
Tickets are $30 for members of the Historical Society.
Pick up will be between 12:30 and 4 on the day of the walk and will include the addresses of the six homes. The walk is open between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. No children under the age of 12 will be admitted.
“You can lose some of the richness if you focus only on one story. There are many interesting stories and people to learn about.”
Each year, Lipo says the housewalk draws people to one walkable neighborhood for a variety of reasons. Some attendees want to see the renovations that their neighbors have done; some are from a different part of Oak Park and River Forest and want to see a new neighborhood; some are relatives of former owners of some of the homes or grew up in the neighborhood.
“It’s really fun to see that kind of connection,” Lipo said.” People come because their house groupies, because they have a connection to the homes or because they want to know more about their hometown. I think we all need these community-building moments.”