A couple of weeks ago an old high school buddy and I took a sentimental journey. We drove out from Chicago and went back to our old home town- Winnetka, Illinois.
Our first stop was New Trier High School.
“Bud” and I went there in the the 60’s. And it was home to so many of our teenage triumphs and tragedies.
New Trier is currently undergoing a pricey remodeling project. Although the refurbishment is extensive, I’m happy to report that good old New Trier looks pretty much the same- minus the infamous mobile classrooms of our day.
(And if any of you want to watch the live stream of the construction, just click on this.)
As Bud drove us around the surrounding side streets to survey the work in progress, we laughed and reminisced about old friends, teachers we liked, teachers we loathed and Driver’s Ed.
And then Bud had a brainstorm.
“Let’s go to my old house. I haven’t been there in years.”
And so off we went to Lindenwood Drive.
Lindenwood is a pleasant residential street in Winnetka built in the early 50’s by the great builder, Clarence Hemphill. Founded in 1926, here’s the kind of houses his company put up back in those glorious suburban baby boom days.
And this.
Sadly, after sixty-seven years in business, Homes by Hemphill had to close its doors in 1993. It’s “carriage trade” approach had been severely undermined when the real estate market shifted from people who wanted quality to people who demanded value.
Once upon a time, we knew everyone on Lindenwood. I had friends who lived there, my doctor lived there, I even went out on one memorable date with a creep who lived there.
Misogynistic Sexist Sidebar: There was a kid in my class who lived on Lindenwood. Let’s call him “Larry.” One day he asked me out for a Friday night date. We went to the movies and then he took me back to his grandmother’s (empty) apartment in Evanston. I remember the white shag carpeting and I remember how he unsuccessfully tried to put the moves on me. I spurned him and the evening ended none too soon as I demanded that he take me home. The ugly little incident was closed. Or so I thought. When I got to school the next Monday morning, good old Lar had been telling everyone how he scored with Roffe. I was outraged. And shocked. I had never had anyone lie about me before. I still hate his guts.
Back to Lindenwood Drive…
As Bud and I drove up the street, our mouths fell open.
His house and one other I knew were still there. Looking pretty much exactly the way we remembered them.
But practically every original house was GONE.
And in their places.
Curses!
McMansions.
You know, those awful travesties that don’t fit the lot. Those towering monstosities that are built upward merely to impress and intimidate.
Like this.
These houses had sprung up like toadstools and had blighted the block. People with more dollars than sense had invaded poor little Lindenwood and now garish faux castles made out stucco were a tawdry testament to the fact that money doesn’t care who owns it.
It was sad.
And although I have singled out Lindenwood for this post, the fact is that all over the North Shore this phenomenon of tearing down perfectly beautiful old houses and substituting glitzy Frankenhouses is rampant.
So many charming, gracious homes have been razed. And the new houses that take their place have no worth architecturally or historically.
They do have bigger bathrooms, though.
Bud and I just shook our heads and continued our drive up Appletree Lane. He pointed out the houses that used to belong to many of his friends. Fortunately some of them still had survived the teardown treatment. (The houses. Not the friends.)
And then, because I was in a WTF mood, I said to Bud, “Now let’s go to my house.”
We turned left onto Hill Road and one block later there was the stop sign. Locust Road. We made a right and I was happy to see that the first few houses were still in situ.
But in a blink we came to my neighbor, George Lill’s, house.
OMG. Gone. Like George who died in 1996.
George had a white and green kind of Cape Cod cottage house on a very large piece of property. It was charming and low key. He and his wife had raised five boys and dozens of Springer Spaniels happily in that house.
But George died in 1996 and the property was sold.
Now look.
You can’t even begin to understand how this ugly behemoth has taken over the lot. It looks like a hotel. And the listing says it has seven bedrooms and is going for over $7 million.
(If you really want to punish yourself, read all about it here.)
And here’s my old house.
That’s it. Most of the house is hidden in this picture but I can tell you this.
NOTHING has changed since the day I left it. I even saw the planters that Med Lange designed for me still reigning out in front.
The landscaping, the roof, the blue stone chip in the driveway, everything we had done was still untouched.
In a way, this was more unsettling than what had happened to the Lill house. My house still looked as if I lived there.
Well, in a way, I do. The best time of my life was spent in that house and I visit it in my mind often.
I turned to Bud with a sigh.
“You can’t go home again, no matter what,” I said.
He nodded and headed for the city.
Houses may come and go.
Good memories stay forever.
You can’t tear them down.
As someone who lived on Lindenwood most of her life, I can say it was a wonderful place to grow up. For me and for my kids. My parents built our home with a famous architect named Henry Newhouse. Yes, really his name. I am happy the new owners have preserved it and love it as much. Those McMansions are shameful.
Glad you brought your very personal “bird’s eye view” to today’s post, ML. You’re very lucky that your wonderful memories weren’t bulldozed along with so many fine houses. Thanks!
Sad, Ellen, but this is one George who’s not dead.
No, very much alive and kicking butt at the ACPT. Are you having a blast, Maestro? Give my best to Will Shortz.
This reminds me of a true story about the house that I grew up in.
I was raised in a small house in Metairie, LA, a suburb of New Orleans. My parents bought the house from the developer in 1950, a year before I was born. My mother’s sister and her kids lived across the street, and her brother and his kids, a block away. We lived in that house until my senior year in high school.
I took my daughter, Carey, back, in 1999, for my 30th high school reunion, so I drove her to the neighborhood. The owners, who had bought the house 21 years earlier from my parents, invited us in. Nothing — and, I mean, not one thing — had changed, including the college and fraternity stickers my brother and I had put on the door to our bedroom. Talk about a walk in the past.
Alas, our street was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, and all the homes were destroyed, ultimately to be replaced by mini-McMansions, this having been a decidedly middle-class neighborhood with small lots.
Before the new home went up, however, my cousin from across the street had visited NOLA and took the opportunity to drive down the street. His house was one of the few that had not been torn down, but he took a photo of our former home, then a vacant lot due to the storm, and sent it to me with a note saying, “Michael, your lawn never looked so good.”
Memory Lane.
PS: Ellen, you may not know that my daughter, now a grown and married woman, has made us grandparents (1/5/16). Andi and I are Didi and Poppop to the most perfect grandson going, Emmett Ford Warren. He may give little Sam a run for his money.
Thanks, Michael, for this touching and yet still funny comment. I never realized that you were from Metarie. Did you know Warren LeRuth? But MUCH more importantly, congratulations! I can only imagine how thrilled you all must be with Emmett’s arrival. Now that’s big news! I’m so happy that you’ll have the best time making new memories.
Actually, they bought the house 31 years earlier, nearly twice as long as we had lived there. Oops.
Here’s a little different take on the subject…when those 50’s houses were built, they were the McMansions of their time.
“More dollars than sense?” No. It’s just that time marches on and tastes change and as far as I know, they aren’t making any more land in Winnetka.
Everyone waxes nostalgic about the old days. It’s human nature. When you are living in a place, you don’t realize how much it changes because the changes happen slowly. But move away and come back years later and it’s a shock.
Having grown up in Lincolnwood, I want my Gabby Hartnett’s bowling alley, the White Owl Supermarket and Howard Johnson’s back! How I loved those fried clam sandwiches from Hojos.
But alas they’re gone and they’re not coming back. So I say take a picture and, as Simon and Garfunkel poetically sang in their “bookends” album, “Preserve your memories, they’re all that’s left you.”
Sorry, but we are going to have to agree to disagree on this one, Steve. I’m all for progress. And I understand things change. But these houses are not am improvement over what was there before. NO taste is NO taste.
As we used to joke, you’re certainly entitled to your opinion, even if it’s wrong! (LOL)
If your feeling was pervasive, then there wouldn’t be so many of these “monstrosities” being built. I remember when our parents used to say that rock & roll was terrible and would corrupt the youth. They wondered how anyone could listen to that “noise.” Obviously the youth had no taste for good music, right?
Taste is an opinion, not fact. To the many owners who are building these homes, they like the taste! You certainly have the right to disagree. I’m only saying that things change whether we like it or not.
To many people, the only real flavor of ice cream is vanilla. I’m glad Baskin Robbins didn’t agree.
None of these houses will ever be in Architectural Digest or win any awards. Other arbiters of taste than myself have spoken. And you may be right about 31 Flavors, but I like vanilla! Truce?
Thanks for sharing the “progress” on Lindenwood, Ellen. Unfortunately, it’s the same story everywhere.
My first home in my twenties was an old farmhouse in Highland Park that we rehabbed inside and out with our own blood, sweat, and tears. Eventually, we sold it and then it was sold again.
Then it was torn down. I was devastated because it was a very well-built, modernized house, but did not fill the lot. It seemed like such a waste of all our work and precious resources to send all that construction material to the landfill.
A former neighbor from California called me one day and jokingly said she had heard that a library had been built where my house once stood! Now, a McMansion stands on the half acre lot because my rehabbed farmhouse was just too small for the current “trend of development,” as zoning boards allow and promote increasing density to gain more tax dollars.
A bigger concern for me is that the McMansions and increasingly dense developments take up a bigger footprint on our planet and help contribute to climate change. How big and how much is enough?
In addition to the larger amount of materials it takes to build a McMansion, the “Mc’s” and the dense developments cover too much permeable, open space and create more flooding for nearby homeowners and expensive flood protection projects for taxpayers.
Example: In Northbrook, one of the MANY flood projects is a current underground reservoir at the end of a park near Wescott School. This very small project will cost Northbrook and Metropolitan Water Reclamation District taxpayers almost $10M to protect 86 homes from flooding. That’s $111,627.90 from other taxpayers for each home being protected because Northbrook seem bent on filling up every open space available that used to retain water naturally in this flood-prone area. Isn’t this a waste of precious resources that could be used for better purposes if we had sustainable growth?
By storing so much water underground and sending it down the Mississippi to the oceans, we’re contributing to raising the ocean’s water level and flooding elsewhere. All of this manipulation helps contribute to the dramatic climate changes we’re experiencing. The cumulative effect of small actions has a huge impact. It’s doubtful anyone thinks about that when they build a 12 room “Mc” for a few people.
Thanks, Karen, for this very thoughtful and important response. You’re right, of course. This is just a microcosm of a much bigger problem. Appreciated your insights here.
There’s an aspect to this that isn’t as obvious: the villages make a percentage “tax” on all home repair, remodeling, building and tearing down. I know that because we had a new driveway and redid some of our lawn to prevent flooding. Basically, they make a fortune on these tear downs, so there’s no way they will outlaw it.
Good point, Debbie. Too bad there isn’t an “Aesthtic Tax” that could be levied against the uglification of our beloved home towns.
Interesting topic. I grew up in Englewood, NJ. Two years ago we went back to the home I lived in and knocked on the door. The new owner welcomed us and took us on a tour of the house. They have lovingly restored the house, updated it, and put on an addition. And they gave me a copy of “201” (the equivalent of North Shore Magazine) showing how the landscaping was redone. I was happy that the house was not replaced by a McMansion.
You’re lucky, Doc. Englewood sounds like a pretty nice place. Thanks for a story with a happy ending.