North Shore Views

Archive for the 'Local curiosities' Category

Wilmette’s Brick Streets

There are a few towns in the area with brick streets. Downers Grove has some. Forest Park has about a dozen. Oak Park has one or two. But as far as I know, no town has as extensive a network of brick streets as Wilmette. Wilmette has thirteen miles of brick streets (with another three and a half under asphalt) and they are one of the things that gives our village its charm.

The paving of our streets began in the 1880’s with Forest Avenue (east of the tracks) being the first to be paved with brick. By 1916 the village had over 24 miles of brick streets. They make for a bumpy ride and they are harder to plow in the winter but they are also a natural “traffic calmer”. And they do last longer than asphalt streets.

Many of the bricks used to pave Wilmette streets came from the Purington Brickyards in Galesburg, once the largest brick maker in the world. More recent renovation and repairs have used recycled bricks supplied by Gavin Historical Bricks in Iowa City.

Pavers are different than ordinary building bricks. They are made from a mix of shale, clay, sand and kiln-fired at extreme temperatures making them very hard, smooth, non-porous and heavy.

During the Depression a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project was initiated to relay the bricks to preserve the character of the eastern part of the village while providing jobs. The bricks were removed and turned upside down to put the worn side down and the “new’ side up.

Tags: Wilmette's brick streets

Proof there’s a buyer for every house…at the right price

Do you remember that bizarre story about the Evanston woman who was living in her house with the bodies of her dead siblings?

As I recall, the bodies of her two sisters and brother were discovered in the fall of 2008 after a neighbor became concerned because she had not seen the woman’s sister around lately. When the police went into the house they discovered the body of one sister, who had been dead for 30 years, the body of the brother, who died in 2003, and the body of the other sister, who had died recently (all of natural causes).

Today there was a story in Crain’s saying that someone has actually bought that house (the owner has moved into a nursing home).  An Evanston couple made an offer on it just one week after it was put on the market. They knew about its gruesome past but were undeterred. It’s a pretty 1890s-era house in east Evanston and I guess once it’s gutted and redone  the new owners won’t find it so creepy.

Until the deal closes we won’t know how much they paid, but presumably they got a good deal. It just goes to show that, at the right price, every house will sell…even in this market.

Tags: haunted houses, pricing your house to sell, Strange real estate stories

Wilmette's Rock

Right down the street from my house in Wilmette, there’s a rock by the side of the road…on the west corner of Ridge Road and Thornwood Avenue to be exact. It’s not a big rock. Maybe about as big as Plymouth Rock, which, if you’ve visited it, you’ll agree is pretty underwhelming. Anyway, what’s unusual about Wilmette’s rock is that it is always decorated in keeping with the season (or sometimes at the current whim of the artist) and yet the decorating is always done in secret.

Although I have passed this rock a zillion times, I have never seen anyone actually painting it, and I don’t know anyone else who has either. But sure enough you’ll see it painted one way one day and the next morning you’ll drive by and it will have morphed into something completely different. So I decided to begin documenting the many faces of the  rock.

Here’s my first picture of it, dressed as a turkey for Thanksgiving.

Ten bucks says it will be Rudolph come Friday morning.

Tags: painted rock, Wilmette

Winnetka- Home of the First Jungle Gym

Here’s a little known bit of North Shore trivia: the first-ever Jungle Gym, constructed in 1920, is still being enjoyed by children at Crow Island School on Willow Road in Winnetka.  It was invented and patented by lawyer and Winnetka resident Sebastian Hinton. Apparently Hinton’s father, a mathematician, had built a three-dimensional bamboo frame in their backyard in Japan in order to teach his children about Cartesian-coordinates. But Sebastian and his siblings thought it was just a toy where they could climb and swing like monkeys. As an adult he saw that it could be a fun and space-efficient way to encourage physical development in children and he proposed it to Winnetka school superintendent, Carleton Washburne.

The first prototype was placed at North Shore Country Day School. While it was a big hit with the kids, it also had some design flaws, which needed correcting. A sturdier version was installed at Horace Mann School (where the Post Office now stands).  When the school was demolished in 1940, the apparatus was then moved to Crow Island School, where it still sits on the southeast corner of the school’s playground.

Tags: Crow Island School, North Shore history, Winnetka