Two Derelict Glencoe Houses Face Different Fates

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At Forest Crest, the brothers George Fred Keck and William Keck built quintessentially 1950s suburban houses, with flat roofs, big picture windows, and a blending of indoors and out.
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The Bank of New York foreclosed on this four-bedroom house at 1177 Terrace Court in Forest Crest in 2009. Three years earlier, a couple had bought the home from the estate of a longtime resident. While Cook County property records don’t indicate how much they paid for the place, they do reveal that the couple took out a $452,000 mortgage. They began an ambitious renovation that was never completed. The house is now for sale by the lender, at $299,900, in as-is condition.
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The rear of the house shows its true condition more clearly than the relatively untouched front. “We’ve had some builders interested in [the property], but so far the bank has not accepted their offers,” says Sheila Kula, the Century 21 McMullen agent representing the house. “The bank has an aggressive price for the house.”
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The foreclosed owners had completely gutted the interior. All that remains of the Kecks’ work is a handsome asymmetrical fireplace and some tongue-in-groove ceilings. “It’s a shame,” Kula says. “Somebody didn’t understand the architectural significance of the house and wanted to change everything.”
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Ravine Bluffs is a group of six Glencoe houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for his lawyer, Sherman R. Booth.
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Most of the Ravine Bluffs houses are in superb condition.
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The exception is the house at 1027 Meadow, known as the Ross House. It has a boxy front-entrance addition put on in the 1950s (seen at left), and a sun porch that has settled so unevenly that it appears to be hanging off the house (at right). The prior owners lived in the house from 1950 until their deaths. Because of its dilapidated state, the house appeared likely to sell as a teardown.
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When the Chicago architect John Eifler, who has restored several Wright structures for clients, decided to rehab this house on his own, he found that banks were no longer providing construction loans pegged on the future, improved value of a property. Eifler struck a deal with the late owners’ estate: he is leasing the house while rehabbing it, and he will buy it at its improved value when the work is done. The project includes installing a bench, about where he is sitting. Wright’s design called for a bench there, but it was never built.
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Wright’s banded wood trim and the original plaster of the exterior walls will be retained. But in order to bring the house up to today’s energy standards, Eifler will insert thick layers of cellulose insulation into the walls and attic and install a geothermal heating and cooling system.
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Several interior walls have been demolished. Eifler notes that the house was built for Booth to rent to tenants, so there was not as much ornamental detail on the interior as grander Wright homes had. On the main floor, Eifler is opening the kitchen up to the dining room; on the second floor, four bedrooms will become three.
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Eifler is removing the lilac paint on the trim; when the renovation is completed, all the exterior trim will be stained a natural wood color.
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Eifler and his two sons are working on the property along with professional tradespeople. Eifler is on the site every Wednesday; there’s some urgency to the task because he has a deal to buy the fully improved house in October, though Eifler is not certain whether he will move into the place or try to sell it. (By the time he struck the lease deal, the house was priced at $469,000, down from the $800,000s; he would not say how much he expects to pay for the finished house.)
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Eifler’s rendering of the completed project shows the house with the ill-fitting entrance addition removed, a new family room in place of the decaying sun porch, and a new roof made of recycled metal. The metal will last at least 50 years and can be recycled when it’s obsolete, says Eifler, while new asphalt shingles would “just add to what you have to throw in a dumpster years later,” he says.
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Also a fan of the Kecks’ work, Eifler recently checked out the house at 1177 Terrace Court as a possible next project. “I walked away discouraged,” he says. “That’s a very tough one.”

Two Derelict Glencoe Houses Face Different Fates

Among the architectural treasures of Glencoe are two small collections of homes designed by eminent 20th-century architects—and each of those neighborhoods has a derelict house, a victim of the recent housing bust.

Ravine Bluffs is a cluster of six homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1910s. The derelict house there now has a savior, a Chicago architect who…

By Dennis Rodkin

April 7, 2010, 7:53 am

Ravine Bluffs is a cluster of six homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1910s. The derelict house there now has a savior, a Chicago architect who devised a financial plan that allows him to get the house in livable condition before he buys it.

A quarter-mile away is the Forest Crest subdivision, whose 22 ranch houses by the architects Keck & Keck were built in 1952. One of those houses, stripped of many of the mid-century architects’ characteristic touches, was foreclosed last year, its renovation already at a yearlong standstill. The agent for the house expresses skepticism that anyone will come along to fix it. Click through the slide show below to tour the two houses and learn more about their potential fates.

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