Get your tickets tomorrow for the discount @
Aunt Diana's or Riverside Library, $35
or
Sunday at Riverside Township Hall for $40!
Riverside
Six homes. Hours: Noon to 5 p.m. Sunday.
In 1895, Joseph L. Silsbee designed a house for John F. Palmer, the inventor of the pneumatic tube.
"Silsbee also designed the Lincoln Park Conservatory, and he employed Frank Lloyd Wright as an apprentice architect," said Kim Jacobs of the Frederick Law Olmsted Society of Riverside, the sponsor of the event. The three-story residence has elements of Victorian, Tudor and Shingle styles. The family room addition features an Arts & Crafts hearth constructed from the same bricks as the chimney. The reception area of the interior has undergone an extensive restoration.
An Arts & Crafts residence on the tour was architect Harold Zook's last commission. The horizontal fieldstone is the work of Italian stonemasons. As the original owner's family grew, those same stonemasons returned to work on the home's expansion. Zook's signature spider web pattern appears on the living room fireplace, and his favorite chevron design is featured on the walls of the den and on the garage door.
The Denniston residence was built in 1887 as a replacement for a house that was constructed as part of the original village development in the 1870s, but it was destroyed by fire. The porch, which extends across the full width of the house, has a view of a park designed by Olmsted, a landscape designer.
The Thorncroft home was designed by William Drummond in 1910 and completed in 1912, the two-story structure features a low-pitched roof with flat edges, stucco walls and wood bands that serve as a sill for an almost continuous band of windows on the second floor. The current owners have extensively renovated and restored the home.
The current owners of a 1922 residence are Arts & Crafts aficionados, and they have filled their home with period antiques and Stickley reproductions. The fireplace mantel, dating from circa 1885, was salvaged from a home in Blackpool, England.
A 1915 Craftsman bungalow originally was built as a duplex for income property. Each unit had a living room, dining room, three bedrooms, one bath, a fireplace and a kitchen. In 1994, the structure was converted into a single-family home. The exterior underwent only minor changes, while the interior of the house is essentially a new home built in 1994, surrounded by walls built in 1915.
The gardens of the Coonley estate also may be visited on the tour.
Tickets for the Riverside Housewalk are $40, $35 in advance. For more information, call the Frederick Law Olmsted Society of Riverside, (708) 442-7906, e-mail housewalk@olmstedsociety.org, or visit www.olmstedsociety.org
http://searchchicago.suntimes.com/homes/952500,cover16.article