WE ARE NOT EXTREMISTS, Part II
Read Part I
Sometimes, the biggest obstacle to demolition in Winnetka is public perception; or, more to the point, how much a given developer cares about public perception.
“These people know what I am taking down, and that is why they hate me so much. They try to delay me and make me suffer more.” Birov is describing a review meeting that was postponed, but the bluster is a blind. In a way, it covers up confusion—Birov simply doesn’t understand why there’s so much negative reaction to his work. A former Motorola engineer who came here from Kiev in 1979, read up on architecture and development, and made a go with a few homes in Winnetka, he’s defiantly proud of the homes he builds, adding that he has no problem if someone knocks them all down in 100 years. Stasis, in Birov’s mind, has no place in architecture, so long as there is a changing client market with new demands.
If you want to knock a building down in Winnetka, here’s how it goes: “We have a Building Review Committee that reviews all applications for demolition,” D’Onofrio explains. “We send the application to our local historical society, and they do a review of their records. Based on that information, the committee has the ability to request that a Historical and Architectural Impact Study be done.” The demolition permit costs $11,500, and the Historical and Architectural Impact Study—known as HAIS—$3,500. The developer, curiously enough, hires the person to do the HAIS, an apparent conflict of interests that nonetheless doesn’t have a lot of bite to it: no matter what a scholar/researcher determines, Birov, for the time being at least, can take his house down. Upon the HAIS findings, demolition may be delayed up to two months, the thinking being that maybe a developer will come to realize the errors of his ways, and that such and such a treasure should never be demoed. Theory, though, is never superseded by reality in these instances. The homes go down regardless.
Birov hired Vicki Granacki—of Granacki Historic Consultants, based in downtown Chicago—to conduct the HAIS on 412 Walnut, before the Building Review Committee ruled that he’d need to do so, an attempt to jump-start the process that he was sure was forthcoming anyway. She has worked with Birov several times, and taken the rolling Birov tour across Winnetka.
“I went around with him one time, trying to get him to count out his buildings, telling him why they didn’t fit in to the community. But he kept saying, ‘look at this, look at this,’ bragging, you know. And I’d just be thinking ‘but my God, look at that chimney; it’s twenty feet taller than the roof.’ Finally, the best I could come up with was that the red brick Colonial fit in a little better than the giant stone French eclectic Norman ones.” But for Birov, supply-and-demand alone dictates what one will build, and what one won’t.
“He puts up homes that are impressive, that use quality materials, that go to people who take a lot of pride in what they’re buying,” Granacki grants. “These are people who obviously want to make sure that the rest of the community understands how much wealth they have.”
“He is very earnest and I think he really does believe that he is providing a wonderful service in terms of the kind of construction he’s doing,” says Posey Fisher, the chairwoman of Winnetka’s Landmark Preservation Committee, essentially nailing the crux of the Birov debate and why even the most stalwart preservationist can struggle with labeling Birov an out and out blackguard. True belief, misguided or not, stands out in a forum where you end up questioning just about everyone’s motives, something both sides pick up on.
The future, though, at least Winnetka-wise, is darkening for Birov, and quickly. An Ad Hoc committee has recently drafted a series of proposals that would feature a 730 day “stay period”—the time between the demolition permit being filed and the home actually coming down—with the developer having the option to waive a year if he’s willing to “submit to binding review design,” submit being an especially loaded verb in this ongoing power play. Additionally, a “Preservation Impact Fee” would be imposed, the payment of “3% of the sale price upon first title transfer of the subject property to a bonafide purchaser.”
But that’s too late to impact 412 Walnut’s fate. “The thing about Walnut is it’s almost completely pristine, in its original condition, which is unusual,” concludes Granacki. “The windows are exquisite, and there are no replacement windows. To me it’s incredible that all the windows are original. Now, of course, out on the market place, they would consider that a disadvantage.”
Birov, who plans to save and sell the original glass, isn’t having it. “These people feel the need to control lives of other people. ‘I’m going to impeach your property rights,’ is how they think.” His thoughts on the Hamilton house: “It’s not significant, architecturally, in my eyes. A couple much more significant houses were taken down in Winnetka before. Someone said it was one of the best three houses in Winnetka, which I disagree with completely…I don’t mind having some restrictions and delays, like what I have today. I can work around this. But trying to go to the next level and basically stop construction and make property values go down because of seven trustees or a couple thousand other people…” He sounds defiant and fatigued at once, and cites Kenilworth, where he no longer works, due to the village sanctions meant to keep the likes of Birov away. “They can do what the guy did there. You got so much money, go buy property and restore it and save it. It’s the American way. You put your money where your mouth is.”
“There’s the Kenil and there’s the Worth,” goes one line in local realtor circles in discussing Kenilworth, a community far more insular—and campus-sized—than Winnetka, with a population around 2,500.
The “Kenil,” as it were, refers to the portion west of Green Bay Road, the poorer side of town, though any notion of poverty is highly relative here. Eastwards from Green Bay runs Kenilworth Avenue—the nexus of the “worth”—bounded on its western edge by Sheridan Road, a street so sufficiently wealthy that it’s recently spawned its own eponymously titled glossy magazine, and Lake Michigan.
Despite its size, Kenilworth is populated with its share of characters and attitudes that distill the teardown issue to its essence, and architectural discussions and positions flake away to reveal different sorts of high-rises—those edifices of human motive and intention that no wrecking ball has ever succeeded in knocking down.
A certain improbability colors the teardown debate in Kenilworth, a thorny knot of cold-hard business ramifications and romanticism that offers constant surprises. One could, for instance, scour the history books of the French Revolution and not find a name that sounds more emblematic—or more made-up—than Antoinette Vigilante. When I first saw what I took for a nom de développement on the website for Homeowners for Kenilworth—the pro-new construction faction—I assumed some scalawag was fond of a joke. But then I learned that Vigilante was real enough (with the name being pronounced like the common noun) and, to some members of the Kenilworth community, the accepted resident villain. As she told me, “sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.”
One of the Homeowner for Kenilworth mottos is the somewhat slippery boast “we are not extremists,” as if anyone—developer or preservationist—was queuing up to occupy the middle ground in this debate. Vigilante herself is the quintessential teardown lighting rod, having been the owner of the “Skiff house” at 157 Kenilworth Avenue. Built by Daniel Burnham’s firm, the home became a flash point in the developer vs. preservationist wars in late ‘05 when Vigilante had it lined up for demolition and an eleventh hour rescue was enacted when a resident came forward and ponied up the purchasing price.
This is “the right way to save houses,” according to Birov, ensuring that everyone gets their money and no property rights are infringed upon. Currently, Kenilworth has a six month stay period between when the demolition permit is filed and a home is knocked down, a proposition that’s too costly for Birov’s blood. Not many developers can afford—or are willing—to simply sit on a property that long and deal with public outcry at the same time. Especially the sort that marks the 157 Kenilworth episode.
Vigilante’s contention is that the Skiff house—which still stands in a disheveled state of construction, garbage cans scattered throughout its fenced-in borders—was not designed by Burnham at all. At her latest residence—almost directly across the street—she rummages around in a closet to pull out the Skiff house’s original plat, pointing to the names of designmen Edward Probst and Theodore Lescher, insisting that Burnham had no role whatsoever in the home many in Kenilworth cite as a Prairie School treasure—especially because of the Burnham attribution. “Burnham said ‘make no small plans,’ and look at that house. It’s short and squatty and doesn’t follow his model. I want to go on record as saying that Burnham did not design that house. It doesn’t have a commanding presence on the street.” She then adds a colorful twist on a refrain I have heard several times in my Kenilworth wanderings: “The gold is in the dirt.” Meaning, personal feelings as to a home’s history or beauty, or its actual architectural significance, aren’t worth a jot here, financially-speaking. What matters is the land, and the price a buyer is willing to pay for the model-kit mansion that will go up where once a century old home stood.
Designed in 1908 for Frederick Skiff, the director of Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, 157 Kenilworth is certainly squatty, but in a stately, sphinx-like manner, encased in stucco and cinched up with a trim porch, as though it were a belt.
As for the famed Burnham having nothing to do with the Skiff house: “That’s ridiculous,” says Beth Baxter, a vocal exponent on the preservation side, and a lifelong resident. “The builders like to maintain that there’s not a significant house in all of Kenilworth. It was very common practice for a major architect to do the design, and have minor architects execute the detail work.”
“She’s a nightmare,” offers Vigilante. “She grew up here and she lives in a shack,” adding, “these people who go to the village meetings, they have nothing better to do.” Kathy Cummings, an architectural historian—whom Vigilante believes “reaches” in her zeal to prove homes of historic value—prepared the historical report for the Skiff house, advocating its preservation, and tells me, additionally, that she’d love to see new designs in Kenilworth, something likely to shock the preservationists. “Like a modified Krueck + Sexton approach”—Krueck + Sexton being one of the most progressive current firms.
Cummings is not a resident herself, which perhaps lends itself to a balanced approach recognizing that both keeping up a building just because it happens to be a certain vintage, or knocking down a canonical work of art, violates architecture’s core precepts as surely as spleen undoes neighborly dialogue. Architecture evolves; some buildings stay, some go. “Doesn’t she lecture about architectural significance and history?” Vigilante asks me incredulously. Crate and Barrel recently shot their Christmas catalogue at Vigilante’s new residence, which is handsomely preserved. As the preservationists themselves will tell you, she’s rehabbed homes in addition to the ones she’s torn down, taking a firmly economical approach—the bottom line remaining one of history’s ageless wonders, adaptable to any and all eras.
The saga of the Skiff house itself is hardly confined to the past. “It was known as the ‘crack house’ of Kenilworth,’” Vigilante says about the home in its post-saved, pre-restored state, a condition that it exists in today, with the stylish placard bearing its address—a feature of Kenilworth homes—festooned to the fence that separates its southern front from Kenilworth Ave. It’s being added on to, an attempt to make the house more suitable to our modern living needs, with large family rooms preferred over the sumptuous dining rooms that most families now assemble in only for holidays.
“Did she mention the lawsuit?” Baxter asks me, after learning that I spoke with Vigilante. A local newspaper syndicate representing a handful of North Shore towns phoned Baxter one day at the beach, looking for information on the Skiff house. “She sued me for one million dollars. Me and the Chicago Sun-Times,” the Times being the owner of Pioneer Press, the newspaper syndicate. “I said she purchased the house for $1.8 million and she actually purchased it for $1.875,” she says, her voice trailing off. “…I don’t know if I have the numbers right now….” The case was bounced out of court, the broadside made plain enough.
One encounters no such pyrotechnics strolling around Kenilworth, contending with the sense of awe that emanates from so many of these homes, the passerby nodding hello. It’s downright idyllic. Turning east out of Vigilante’s driveway, it’s only a two or three minute walk before you get to a precipice overlooking the beach. From there, you can turn around and peer all the way down Kenilworth Ave., taking in the whole range from the Worth to the Kenil and back again, with a three-foot high sign for the village of Winnetka visible two blocks to the north on Sheridan Road. Below, a fast-charging Boston Terrier makes a break for the water, stopping just shy on an embankment of snow, his perturbed owner trailing with a bag of dog biscuits. The breeze is picking up and I can make out a bark or two over the surf pounding the breakwaters. Solvitas perambulum, this is not. Treats are demanded, and treats must be had.
