Built in the late 19th century and chopped into a two-flat in the early 20th, this Italianate Oak Park house was put back together as a spacious, multi-generational home in the 21st.
Jani Westcott and Steve Krasinsky weren’t necessarily looking for a project when they started hunting for a new home for themselves, their kids and one grandmother in 2015. “But it’s what we got after we looked for a very long time,” Westcott said.
They took it on both because of the home’s charms, including two tiers of front porch, original stained glass and pocket doors, and because of its location: a neighborhood that is filled with pretty historical homes and is within a few blocks’ walk of Oak Park’s busy downtown district of restaurants, shopping, landmarks and a CTA Green Line station.
Before moving in, the couple worked with architect Steve Ryniewicz, whose firm Studio R is in Oak Park, to reconfigure and enlarge the floorplan, add green elements including a geothermal heating and cooling system, and preserve the historical character of the house.
The 3,500-square-foot house now has five bedrooms, including master suites on both the first and second floors. There’s a crafts room, a music room, and a mud room with a clever take on the green concept of reusing materials: the cabinetry is wrapped in old radiator covers that provide ventilation for stinky sports equipment that gets stored inside.
With their family size now shrinking, Westcott, who’s in advertising, and Krasinsky, who’s in software, are looking to downsize. They’ll list the house, on Clinton Avenue, for sale later this week. Priced at just under $1.28 million, it’s represented by Molly Marino of Baird & Warner.
“The porches are what sold the house to us,” Westcott said. There’s this one, whose pair of doors open into the living room, and one above it that is adjacent to the master bedroom. “On a breezy day, we open the doors and windows and get the most beautiful, healthy circulation throughout the house,” she said. The front door is original, refurbished.
The living room has original pocket doors, stained glass windows and the high ceilings characteristic of the day. When the couple bought the building, “there were seven or eight different kinds of molding in the house” thanks to various updates over the years, Westcott said. Ryniewicz narrowed it down to one that suited the home’s original vintage. Some of what’s visible is old, some a re-creation. This image shows only the front half of the living room, a large space.
The living room has original pocket doors, stained glass windows and the high ceilings characteristic of the day. When the couple bought the building, “there were seven or eight different kinds of molding in the house” thanks to various updates over the years, Westcott said. Ryniewicz narrowed it down to one that suited the home’s original vintage. Some of what’s visible is old, some a re-creation. This image shows only the front half of the living room, a large space.
Oak Park’s Amanda Miller Design Studio fitted out the kitchen with a mix of cabinetry: traditional style, in white, and a more modern flat front in gray, and wrapped part of the island in reclaimed wood. The island is L-shaped both to reach out toward the dining room, seen at the rear of the photo, and to provide abundant space to work, whether that’s cooking or doing homework.
While there’s reclaimed wood on the kitchen island, here in the mud room something very different has been re-used. The locker doors look like mesh but are actually vintage radiator covers. The perforations provide ventilation; the concept provides a chuckle.
The layout of the home was meant for multi-generational living. The first-floor master suite was designed for Westcott’s mother, who lived with the family before she needed additional care. “I admit we designed a nicer suite and bathroom for her than for ourselves,” Westcott said. “We thought she should have that.”
Nevertheless, the upstairs master has this over the downstairs: a big, inviting covered porch. “It’s really graceful to be able to walk out from the bedroom to your own porch,” Westcott said. “And when the windows are open in the summer, it’s heavenly.”
This is the adjacent master bedroom, with an original leaded glass window. When designing the rehab, they looked at opening up the front windows into doorways onto the porch, but preserving the façade’s historical look meant keeping the exit to the porch where it was, at the end of the room. The master bath is reached via that alcove as well.
The official bedroom count, five, doesn’t include this space, probably once a nursery or servant space and now a music room.
Original pocket doors frame the entrance to this office.
When Westcott and Krasinsky bought the house, for $455,000 in 2015, the second floor didn’t extend as far back as the first. That left room for adding this space (or most of it; about five feet on the right was part of the old layout, Westcott said). They reused elements of the house here. The leaded glass window came from another part of house, and the cabinetry was in the first-floor kitchen before being moved up to this craft and laundry room.
This second-story landing shows the harmonious way old and new combine in the home. The window is original to the home, but the distinctively studded newel posts aren’t. They’re knockoffs of details on the first floor. The work to bring the house back was “painstaking,” Westcott said, and not something she expects to do again at their next home.
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A 19th century Oak Park house, long a 2-flat, reunited and refreshed - Crain's Chicago Business
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