When siding comes off, ‘true Italianate beauty' of historic Elgin house exposed

Chicago Tribune

a day ago

On a recent weekend earlier this month, 20 volunteers helped strip the aluminum siding that covered a 137-year-old home at 27 Rugby Place in Elgin's Gifford Park neighborhood.
'What we uncovered left us speechless — beautiful original details and brackets that had been hidden for over 50 years,' said owner Christen Sundquist, who's also the city of Elgin's historic preservation planner. 'It's a true Italianate beauty, and we're ready to bring it back to life with care and accuracy.'
Sundquist is undertaking the monumental task with her husband, architect Matt Martin. The couple moved into the home in December 2021 and live there with their two young children.
To help pay for the exterior renovations, the couple received a $5,000 matching grant from a Gifford Park Association program that assists Elgin Historic District property owners in covering the cost of aluminum siding removal so the original facade and missing architectural features can be restored.
Association board member Paul Bednar said the money the nonprofit provides for such projects comes from funds it raises with its annual Historic Elgin House Tour, which this year will be held Sept. 6 and 7.
According to association President Dan Miller, the nonprofit has awarded grant money for such work to 22 homeowners. Another 20 have done it without their financial help.
Prior to the Rugby Place project, the last 'great unveiling' — as the they call such projects — took place more than three years ago on North Porter Street, he said.
'In the spirit of an old-fashioned barn raising, we typically get all the siding off before noon and then have lunch together,' Miller said.
The association also recently used $5,000 in money from its house tour to pay a contractor to plant 11 magnolia trees at seven different locations on city-owned park land in the district. Magnolia trees are the variety residents commonly planted when the old neighborhoods were being built in the mid- to late-1800s, Bednar said.
'That's the start of a program to try to entice homeowners to add them into their yards as well,' Bednar said.
Sundquist noted there's still a lot of work to be done to the exterior of the house, which was built in 1888 for William Kerber, cofounder of Kerber's Meat Packing Co. in Elgin.
'The aluminum removal was the easy part,' she said. 'The hard but most rewarding part will be removing the paint down to bare wood, sanding, priming and painting. We also have 30 brackets to make and crown molding and trim details to do. But the wood clapboard siding is in impeccable condition.'
The cost of the exterior project, from siding removal to prepping, painting and recreation of missing features, could be between $20,000 and $40,000, depending on how much work is done by contractors, Sundquist said.
Bednar said Sundquist's and Martin's home might also qualify for another $3,000 in association program funding to help pay for recreation of the original porch balcony balustrade.
'That's the next project, as we have a door that leads out to the porch, which would be another wonderful spot to entertain guests and drink a cup of coffee in the morning,' Sundquist said.
Elgin has a Historic Rehabilitation Grant program that provides up to $20,000 in matching grant money for qualifying work on historic district and landmark properties but because Sundquist oversees the program, she is not eligible to apply for what it offers, she said.
The Rugby Place house has been a project for the couple, who have installed central air conditioning, buried the electrical line into the property, added an upstairs laundry room, removed carpeting, sanded the wood floors, restored plaster, refinished the dining room, added first-floor casement windows and restored the front and side doors, Sundquist said.
'And way down the line, likely when our kids are in college, we hope to rebuild the belvedere on top of the roof as we found a recent historic photograph that showed that we had one,' she said.