It’s not easy to tear down a house in Oak Park, but a house on Oak Park’s Elizabeth Court has a date with a wrecking ball in the near future. Built in the 1950’s, the ranch home is considered a non-contributing structure in the Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie School of Architecture Historic District.
The new owner of the property at 12 Elizabeth Ct. is planning to demolish the current home and is working through the village’s approval process to build a new two-story brick and sided home.
Although demolition of properties in historic districts typically requires a certificate of appropriateness (COA) issued by the Historic Preservation Commission (HPC,) buildings which are outside the scope of the historic district and not considered historic do not require that certification.
Brenton Boitse, the village’s new Urban Planner in Historic Preservation, said non-contributing structures are not protected buildings under the village’s historic preservation ordinance.
In order to issue a permit for demolition of a non-contributing structure, the Advisory Review Committee of the HPC first meets with owners and provides opinions on the designs of new construction. The review process is considered purely advisory.
At the Dec. 11 meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission, the ARC conducted that advisory review for the newly proposed home.
Warrior Construction, LLC, owned by Oak Parker Lesny Slawek, purchased the existing home for $560,000 in May 2025. Slawek declined to comment for this article.
Slawek, who is a general contractor, presented plans for a new, single-family home he intends to build on the property. He worked with architect Thomas H. Donalek to design a two-story home built of Chicago common brick and vertical siding.
Asha Andriana, acting chair of the commission, began the discussion by sharing the guidelines for new construction within an historic district, which state:
“When designing a new building to be compatible with the neighborhood and adjacent buildings, consider carefully how the new structure relates to the character of the neighborhood in terms of scale, massing, street frontage, materials, height, windows and door placement, details, and finishes.”
Commissioner Amy Peterson evaluated the existing streetscape of Elizabeth Court, a winding one-block long street that runs between Kenilworth and Forest Avenues, commenting that she walks the street frequently. “One of the lovely parts about that street is there are so many different styles.”
Peterson added that this area of the street contained a mix of houses — some from the 1960s and some older homes with more traditional siding, so she thought the two materials in Slawek’s renderings would blend into the neighborhood.
Commissioner Ron Roman said he didn’t want people walking by to say this house is too modern and doesn’t belong.
“I think it looks fine,” he said. “But if you can, make it even a little bit more vintage-looking to fit into the neighborhood. Again, the neighborhood is really mixed, but I wouldn’t want this to be another house that people look at and say, ‘This doesn’t fit in.’”
Commissioners discussed the rear-facing façade, which some thought looked more historic than the front-facing façade.
Slawek said the site was “pretty tough” to work with, with no alley access to the house. He said working with the required zoning offsets meant it was not easy to configure the new construction house on the lot.
After learning from the village forester that he could not take out two trees in the parkway in front of the lot, he had to locate the new driveway around the trees.
Slawek said the real “front” of the house is the east-facing portion along the driveway and says that he tried to keep the north facing elevation of the home in keeping with other homes on the block.
The lot measures approximately 6,250 square feet and the existing home clocked in at 1,175 square feet according to Cook County, which assessed the home’s value at $470,000.
Village zoning requirements for R-1 residential zoning provide that the maximum building coverage for a building is 35% of the lot. Village zoning also dictates front, rear and corner setbacks for buildings.
Talking about the façade of the planned home, the commissioners discussed the large expanses of window and wondered if breaking up the more modern expanses of glass would help the house fit into the streetscape more.
Slawek said he was trying to avoid having the front of his house look like a face, or Halloween pumpkin, with windows as eyes. He lamented that this is the effect the windows have in his current home in south Oak Park, and he said he wanted to avoid that in his new home.
The commissioners praised the various roof lines, saying that detail fit in with the homes on the street. They questioned the plan’s colors of pale grey for the brick and the dark brown for the vertical siding. Slawek said the architect had not chosen colors yet.
The commission recommended he consider the colors of other homes on the street to create an exterior that is in harmony with the existing homes.
Boitse concluded the conversation by noting that the commission would follow up with a list of its recommendations.
Although Boitse indicated at the Dec. 11 meeting that the home had been demolished, on Dec. 15, Dan Yopchick, Oak Park spokesperson, said no demolition permit had been filed with the village. As of Dec. 16, the 1950s home was intact.
