List Price: $989,000
The Property: When Gary and Marcia Myers first saw this 1902 Victorian in Oak Park 26 years ago, it was well past its prime. But the couple eagerly took it on—“I like to have a project,” Gary recalls—partly because of its excellent location on a street of impressive older homes only a short walk from Oak Park–River Forest High School and the town’s bustling central shopping district…
List Price: $989,000
The Property: When Gary and Marcia Myers first saw this 1902 Victorian in Oak Park 26 years ago, it was well past its prime. But the couple eagerly took it on—“I like to have a project,” Gary recalls—partly because of its excellent location on a street of impressive older homes only a short walk from Oak Park–River Forest High School and the town’s bustling central shopping district.
In the two and a half decades since, the Myerses have restored, rehabbed, or reconfigured virtually every inch of the property, from the enormous attic to the back fence, where they installed a replica of Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jette.
The main floor of the house has four large rooms that could be configured in various combinations of living room, dining room, family room, and library; they all have extensive restored wood trim, and some of the rooms have gorgeous vintage stained glass. The master bedroom—one of four bedrooms on the second floor—combines an original bedroom and a seasonal porch, now fully enclosed and weatherized; it also has ample closets and a master bath, features you don’t always find in an older home. The third floor (the former attic) is a roomy place with a high-peaked ceiling and huge windows.
Out back, there is a large canopied patio, a garage with a rental apartment overhead, a goldfish pond, and the Seurat replica and two other murals. The second mural is Jules Breton’s The Song of the Lark, which like the Seurat is in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. The third mural, painted directly onto the stone foundation of the house by kindergarten students, is a second look at Seurat.
“We probably weren’t finished working on the house for 20 years,” Gary Myers says. With their daughter grown, the couple has moved to the seniors’ community Sun City in Huntley. Among the many things they say they miss is Oak Park’s seasonal farmer’s market, staged just half a block south of the house.
Price Points: The Myerses initially listed the house in February at $1,089,000, but have since lowered the price two times; they posted the current asking price in October.
Listing Agent: Patsy Bonniwell of Better Homes & Gardens Gloor Realty, 708-851-2232; pbonniwell@gloor.com