A builder in Hinsdale will forge ahead with plans to demolish a 19th-century house over the objection of the village’s Board of Trustees after the board voted this week to reject his demolition and construction application.
It’s the latest example of historic preservation running up against the demands of luxury buyers in the high-end Chicago suburb, where preservationists have worked to keep historic and architecturally unique homes intact.
The house at 142 East First Street is alternatively called “The Hallmark House,” because it was featured in Hallmark commercials in the 1970s, and the William Whitney House. It was built in 1869 and owned by William M. Whitney, an Illinois state representative who was responsible for Hinsdale’s incorporation as a village in 1873.
The seven-member village board voted unanimously to deny the application to demolish the house and construct a new one on Tuesday. Hinsdale’s historic preservation rules require homeowners to seek approval before tearing down or altering buildings in historic districts, but unless the property is designated as a landmark, its decisions are nonbinding. So the owner can continue with the development as long as it meets existing zoning rules.
Hinsdale’s Historic Preservation Commission also unanimously rejected the application in an August meeting.
Robert Cimala, president of Legacy Homes Cimala, which bought the property this year for $2.2 million, is planning a spec build on the site, intending to sell a new house in the $7 million range. The house was previously owned by the Grace Episcopal Church next door.
Cimala said he will continue with the demolition and construction plan, calling the Historic Preservation Commission’s requests for remodeling the house unrealistic and criticizing the process required to begin construction.
“They can’t stop me,” he said. “The way this is set up, all that they can do is advise.”
The home planned for the lot will be 6,840 square-feet, while the existing house is less than 4,000 square-feet. The planned house will have a four-car garage and rise four-and-a-half feet higher than the existing structure.
Cimala said demolition will begin sometime in the next few weeks and he expects construction to be finished next fall.
Cimala said he looked into remodeling the house when he first inspected it, and an architect told him it was not feasible. To renovate the house would require essentially tearing it down and rebuilding it, and the cost to renovate was unreasonable, he said. Members of a design review team in April suggested including the house’s Italianate architecture in the design of the new house, but Cimala said there wasn’t a market for that style.
“What they wanted me to do was basically tear down the house and build another one exactly like it,” he said. “And I told them I wasn’t going to do that. That’s not the style of home people want nowadays.”
Bruce George, an architect with Charles Vincent George Architects, who is designing the new home, detailed the house’s structural problems during Tuesday’s meeting. He said he was involved in a remodeling of the house in 2005 through the church’s maintenance committee. The church put $500,000 of work into the house, but he said a lot of things were left in poor shape because of the cost.
The house is part of the Robbins Park Historic District and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.
Fearing the loss of historic properties, Hinsdale created a Historic Overlay District in 2022 that gave tax incentives to owners of historically significant homes who improved them while preserving traditional architecture instead of demolishing them.
The program has seen success, with about 100 homeowners applying for tax incentives to renovate their historic homes, Hinsdale Trustee Alexis Braden said. Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty agent Mimi Collins bought and renovated a historic house on South Park Avenue that she sold for $6 million last year.
In the North Shore’s Glencoe, another luxury market with a history of teardowns, city officials are considering similar incentives to preserve historic buildings.
Some preservation activists want Hinsdale to have more power to block demolitions of historic places, though. Landmark Illinois urged the village trustees to give the application process teeth and make it binding, in a letter read into the record on Tuesday by Trustee Luke Stifflear.
“Hinsdale has seen an increase in approved demolitions over the past several years, endangering the character of the Robbins Park National Registered Historic District,” the letter said. “The Historic Preservation Commission of Hinsdale urgently needs to revisit the village regulations to make it more difficult for historic assets to be demolished.”