Please join us for Part Two of our Bungalows & Blooms Walking Tour this coming Saturday, July 24, at 9:30 AM.  We will meet in the driveway of 626 Orange St. on the corner of Orange and Gertrude.  Parking is on both sides of Gertrude and on the north side of Orange.  We will visit 27 bungalows–exterior only–plus 5 extra gardens from Wabash to Orchard this time.  It is a little over a mile long and will take approximately 1 -1 1/2 hours to complete.  There will be more “jerkinhead gable roofs” and “piano windows” to see.  As last time, a booklet telling about the architectural features of the houses and the historical information of the first owners will  be furnished. This is a joint effort of SWAN and the Elgin History Museum.

Jennifer Fritz-Williams, Historic Preservation Specialist with the City of Elgin and Pat Hill, neighborhood resident and bungalow owner, will lead the tours.

Tickets are $5 and may be purchased the day of the tour.

See the “Bungalow Belts” on Orange Street and Morgan Street that contain Chicago Bungalows, and Sears Bungalows on Orange and Oak Streets. What are the characteristics that make a bungalow? What decorative features are unique to bungalows? There are 7 different types of bungalows, defined by roof type and all are present in the Southwest neighborhood. Architectural specialist Sarosh Saher will be your guide.

Tickets are $5 each and can be purchased the day of the tour.

Hats off to the Preservation Committee for organizing a spectacular tour!

SWAN will receive 12 more Historic Plaques to display on our beautiful historic houses, plus 3 more Awards for our neighborhood. Dawn Hartney will be presented an award for leading our group in putting together our Sears Trolley Tour last May and Kathy Moore and Stacy Reynolds will each receive awards for their outstanding efforts in recruiting neighbors to have their houses researched and plaqued.

Everyone is invited. Let’s support our winners and our neighborhood!

To reach the site, head west on Big Timber, and then turn turn right (north) onto Lyle.  Then, you make an immediate left onto Monday Dr.  You can park near the corner of Monday and Banks.

We hope to see you there!

More details will be available in the coming weeks.

To get involved with SWAN’s Bungalow Walk, contact Pat Hill.

Daily Herald Report

The Downtown Neighborhood Association of Elgin invites individuals, families, organizations, and businesses to sign up to decorate a window or organize an activity for downtown Elgin’s 11th annual Window Wonderland event. Daylong activities and judging of windows will be held from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 12.

This year’s window theme is “Home for the Holidays,” in conjunction with a citywide, nonprofit celebration of the holidays, November through December. More information can be found in mid-October at elginhomefortheholidays.com. In addition to decorations, the window may also include live music, skits and dancing. Decorating takes place between Nov. 1-30. The windows will be judged by a panel of judges on creativity, appeal and use of event theme. The public will be able to obtain passports for the event and ballots to vote for their favorite window on Dec. 5. Winners will be notified the following week.

If you would like to participate, contact the DNA by Friday, Oct. 9 at (847) 488-1456 or download a form at downtownelgin.org.

Window Wonderland is one of many activities happening in and around downtown Elgin on Dec. 12. Other activities include live reindeer, free pictures with Santa, a live Nativity, trolley rides, dog sledding demonstrations, chestnut roasting and more. Also if your business/organization is interested in being a sponsor, contact Jennifer at (847) 488-1456 or jbenson@elginil.org.

Copyright © 2009 Paddock Publications, Inc.

ELGIN — The Elgin City Council on Wednesday evening revisited fine-tuning plans to buy foreclosed homes with $2.1 million from the federal government’s Neighborhood Stabilization Program.

At a committee of the whole session in late April, Community Development Director Jerry Deering suggested purchasing two or three homes, in various Elgin neighborhoods, that would be sold to income-eligible families. Homes would be chosen based on location, architecture and/or if they could be converted to be in compliance with occupancy requirements.

On Wednesday night, the council discussed the idea of selecting a pool of qualified contractors from whom it would take bids for rehabbing up to 12 purchased homes spread out among the northeast, northwest, southwest and Gifford Park neighborhoods. At any one time, three or four contractors would be working on NSP projects.

Habitat for Humanity of Northern Fox Valley would manage 25 percent of the projects, because the federal requirement is that a quarter of the funding go into homes that would be sold to qualifying low-income families. The city would use NSP funds to buy the homes, and Habitat would use its own funds for rehabbing and financing.

In April, Deering informed the council that less than 3 percent of the Elgin’s housing stock is involved in the various stages of the foreclosure process. On Wednesday evening, Planning Manager Matthew Fitzgibbon told the council that the city currently has 477 properties scheduled for auction and 379 homes owned by lenders. Eighty-two of those homes are in the neighborhoods the city has targeted for the program.

According to information from the Illinois Foreclosure Listing, from 2007 to March 31, 2009, Elgin saw 1,990 newly filed foreclosures, 1,027 scheduled auctions, and 693 real estate-owned foreclosures.

“We’d like to have the first of the homes purchased this fall and winter, so that work could begin in spring,” Fitzgibbon said.

The plan would be to have at least four of the houses being worked on by summer, then proceed to work on another four houses. And work would include affordable restoration as well as equipping the homes with green features including tankless water heaters.

© Copyright 2009 Digital Chicago, Inc.

ELGIN – The house at 155 S. Gifford St. is the former home of Increase Bosworth, one of the city’s early residents.

“It was lovely mansion,” said Bill Briska, Elgin historian and president of the city’s heritage commission. “But then it was turned into a slum, a boarding house with five units.”

The neighborhood eventually was declared a historic district, and the Bosworth house was deconverted back into a single-family home, he said.

Many Elgin residents and city officials agree that historic district status for neighborhoods acts as a catalyst for stressed areas because it helps stabilize communities and property values.

However, some residents fear the “red tape,” extra rules and costs associated with the status.

There are 1,700 Elgin properties in four historic districts, two of which are on the national register, according to Jennifer Fritz-Williams, the city’s preservation specialist.

She said the city is encouraging more neighborhoods to apply for historic district status. The reason: “It’s one of the most effective tools in preserving walkable communities close to many amenities, and it maintains and repairs existing homes,” Fritz-Williams said.

That is in addition to the fact it prevents old homes from losing their character.

“You can’t take an older house (from) the 1920s and 1930s and put aluminum siding on it or turn porches into rooms,” said Briska, who has owned a home built in 1886 in the Elgin Historic District for the past 29 years. “Just like you can’t take a Model A Ford and turn it into a minivan, those renovations don’t make it into a modern-day house. It destroys the distinctive character of the house.”

Dan Miller, an Elgin resident and proponent of historic district status, agreed.

“We need to protect it so that guys like the owner on Hendee (Street) do not wipe out part of our heritage,” he said, referring to a home where the owner tore down the original porch and replaced it with an inexpensive wood porch.

“If the neighborhood had the protection of a preservation ordinance, he would have been told that he cannot destroy his significant porch, and he would have been given advice on how to repair it.”

Grants for homes

Once a neighborhood gains historic district status, residents there can apply for grants through the city to restore their homes.

An example is a Gifford Park neighborhood family that recently installed a fancy porch like the one that had been lost to modernization in the 1950s. It cost $30,000, with the city contributing $17,225 through the 50/50 Historic Architectural Grant Program.

Under the program, pays half the cost for a historic exterior renovation, up to $20,000. This year, the city received 24 applications, Fritz-Williams said. Typically, it gives out 12 to 13 grants per year. However, because of a tight budget this year, the city was only able to give out three grants.

Not everyone is a fan of historic districts. Near-west-side neighborhood leader Chuck Keysor said opponents like him “are opposed to the added regulation, red tape and basic notion that their liberties are being curtailed” when it comes to historic district status.

“I hate to see old houses be trashed by remodelers who have no sense of historic values or aesthetic sensitivities,” Keysor said. “They are like plagues of locusts, spreading their destruction wherever they go, often doing their damage in the name of energy savings and lower maintenance.”

However, forming a historic district is “like guerrilla warfare, where every vote must be won through hard-fought campaigning, and enemies will be made in such a process,” he said. “I love old houses, but I would rather not work to directly create enemies.”

On top of that, he said, many like himself can’t restore their homes back to their original state due to preservation guidelines.

Most importantly, Keysor said, “No one would want to invest in restoring an old house in our neighborhood even if we had a historic district.”

The reason, he said, is “the perception of crime and huge amounts of subsidized housing in the northwest neighborhood” have kept people from buying homes for restoration.

Push for stability

But proponents say that’s exactly why neighborhoods need historic district status.

“There are good properties and bad properties — renaissance and ruin lie side by side on these blocks,” said the heritage commission’s Briska. “Without historic district status, the risk is the ruin will outrun the renaissance.”

Historic district status “seems to stabilize property values and maintain and increase the values of homes relative to comparable properties not in districts,” Briska said.

Plus, the “cost to maintain and repair a home is usually less than the cost of replacing it,” he said.

Briska said residents shouldn’t worry about added regulations, either.

“You shouldn’t be afraid of historic district status,” Briska said. “If you don’t want to do anything to your property, you don’t have to. It just helps you if you want to restore that property.”

The bottom line, he said, is that historic status districts are going to attract residents with higher incomes, which correlates with reinvestment.

“You’re not going to have as many people just moving in and moving out,” Briska said, pointing to stable communities in places such as Glen Ellyn and St. Charles. “It’s a cycle we’d like to get going in Elgin because if everyone has pride in their own house, they’ll have pride in their neighbor’s house, and you’ll have a sense of community.”

To see if a home is in a historic district or to apply for historic district status, people can visit the city’s Web site at www.cityofelgin.org, click on “Living in Elgin” and then click on historic preservation.

© Copyright 2009 Digital Chicago, Inc.

There are a lot of reasons why I have been drawn to the Fox Valley and its largest northern Kane County city, Elgin. The first and foremost reason for my appreciation of Elgin is its immensely successful efforts at historical preservation.

One of the greatest events of the years is scheduled for next Saturday. The Gifford Park Association’s annual House Walk is in less than a week. When I first attended one, I felt bad for the local residents and police force. Excited tourgoers were driving wildly all over Elgin, trying to get a good spot in a very long line to the next home on the house walk. At earlier house walks, the homes were spread out quite a bit and you had to drive from home to home or wait in yet another line to board a shuttle bus.

In more recent years, those attending were treated to a specific area of homes that were within walking distance of one another, and cars could be parked at the start.

This year will feature homes in three historic neighborhoods. I hope tour attendees will not be causing traffic and parking jams in Elgin.

Neighboring communities such as the Dundees and St. Charles have started their own house tours, but truly cannot compete with the magnificence of those awesome trips through history in Elgin’s historic districts.

In addition to those gorgeous painted ladies, Elgin can also boast of having the most Sears houses in the area. After attending a house walk that showcased the Sears Catalog Homes proudly built in Elgin, I had one of those lively discussions that parents and children often have. I insisted while standing in line at a house walk home in West Dundee that I would be entering a Sears home. My mother insisted I was terribly mistaken. Of course, having been educated by the Gifford Park Association, I was indeed correct in my observation.

On Sunday, Sept. 27, the walk through Bluff City Cemetery will be held. Often the actors’ stories of local Fox Valley cemetery residents include discussion of places where the individuals once lived. If you have been to a Gifford Park house tour, it is nice to be able to recall a home that is being described.

Both events are worth every minute of your wait to see beautiful, lovingly restored homes and to hear portrayals of past Elgin residents. Elgin has been a trendsetter in the Fox Valley for these two events.

You are truly missing out if you don’t attend one of these walks through history. I am proud to say I have enjoyed them for more years than I care to mention. Hope to see you there.

Linda McDaniel-Hale is a Sleepy Hollow resident.

© Copyright 2009 Digital Chicago, Inc.