The couple who bought a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Wilmette this month plan to rehabilitate it extensively over several years, calling the effort just the kind of project they were looking for.
“It doesn’t scare us,” said Amy Bauer, who with her husband, Eric Bauer, bought the five-bedroom house on Lake Avenue from a family that had owned it since 1957. The 4,800-square-foot house, on about six-tenths of an acre, has exterior stucco damage, utilities that are more than half a century old, a somewhat awkward floorplan in the bedroom sections and other deficits, but “we have a sense of pride that we can be the ones who bring this house back up to where it should be,” she said.
The plans include overhauling all dated mechanicals, installing a new kitchen in the style of the house and possibly re-creating a lost mural in the dining room.
“I love the way you can tell the time of day from the way the light moves through the house,” Amy Bauer said. The original house, built in 1909 for the family of Frank J. Baker, has a run of diamond-patterned leaded-glass windows spanning roughly 75 feet across the front. The house was expanded around 1919 with a rear addition that Wright also designed.
The couple paid $600,000 for the house Nov. 6, buying it from a trust in the name of the late Betty Sobel, who died in 1997. Her widower, Walter Sobel, an architect, died in 2014, and the trust put the house on the market in mid-July, asking $900,000.
Listing agent Jan Kerr of @properties said at the time that the asking price reflected the fact that the house “needs a lot of work.” After an August price cut to just under $850,000, the Bauers and their agent, Gary Lucido of Lucid Realty, took a look and when they walked in, “we fell in love and knew this was the project we had been looking for,” Amy Bauer said. They had been looking for a “project house” for more than a year and “were willing to wait for a house that spoke to us,” she said.
The home’s Prairie Style woodwork, numerous windows and living room with a peaked ceiling two stories high and a choir loft-type overlook above the brick fireplace did the talking, she said.
Amy Bauer works in technology sales and Eric Bauer is in the pharmaceuticals industry. They're working with Wilmette architect Mike Venechuk and contractor Pam Whitehead of P & P in Oak Park on a phased rehab plan. They want to make the house livable for themselves and their two young daughters and move in sometime in 2020, she said. The first phase will include repairing some structural damage, updating bathrooms and replacing antiquated cloth-wrapped knob-and-tube wiring.
The full rehab may stretch five years, and the estimated cost of all the renovations is at least $860,000, Amy Bauer said.
The existing kitchen, designed by Sobel in a charming midcentury style, is small and broken up into two rooms. Bauer said that although the street-facing parts of the house can’t be altered because of the home’s landmark status, the kitchen’s footprint can be expanded because it’s not visible from the street.
“We’re talking about making the kitchen mirror the look of the living room,” she said.
One important but not particularly expensive detail of the work is to get rid of the overgrowth of trees and shrubs that obscure the house from the street. “We think the neighbors will be excited to be able to see the house again,” Amy Bauer said.
The Bauers recently unearthed a 1912 magazine article about the house that included some interior photos, including one of a mural painted above the dining room’s built-in buffet cabinets. They may commission a re-creation of the mural down the line, Amy Bauer said.
“We want to see the house come back to its original glory,” she said. “It’s our forever house, and we want our girls to know its story.”
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November 18, 2019 at 10:09PM
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Wright house in Wilmette to get major rehab - Crain's Chicago Business
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