Home tied to Grant Wood may get landmark
Ahouse associated with artist Grant Wood and a horrific Depression- era crime is on track to become Park Ridge’s 10th historic landmark.
Known as the Eicher House, the two-story, 19th- century frame residence at 312 Cedar St. has been recommended for local historic landmark designation by the Park Ridge Historic Preservation Commission. The City Council will vote on whether to accept that recommendation some time this summer.
“It’s the integrity of it,” said Historic Preservation Commission member Barbara Christopher of what drew her to the home and inspired her to work with owner Reta Kikutani on the landmark application process. “She’s a fantastic steward of the property. She’s gone above and beyond to keep it, as far as I can tell, the way it was originally.”
Kikutani’s parents purchased the house in 1939 — eight years after a previous owner, Asta Eicher, and her young children left Park Ridge and never returned.
Eicher had been an artist and the widow of Henri Eicher, a silversmith and foreman of Park Ridge’s nearby Kalo Shop, which produced original silver objects and jewelry by several artisans who were part of the city’s early 20th- century Arts and Crafts movement. The couple bought the house in 1908.
Between 1913 and 1915, artist Grant Wood, best known to many for his painting “American Gothic,” is said to have set up a workshop in the Eichers’ barn while also working as a silversmith for the Kalo Shop and attending classes at the Art Institute of Chicago. The barn still exists on the property.
Art historian R. Tripp Evans, who published a biography on Wood in 2010, said he has not found any documentation proving Wood lived and had his workshop at 312 Cedar St., but has heard the claims made by Park Ridge residents. With Eicher and Wood working together at the Kalo Shop, Evans thinks it’s entirely possible the barn on Cedar Street property was Wood’s craft shop.
“I do know Wood lived in a barn in Park Ridge in those years and experience has taught me that local/oral history about these places is usually pretty accurate,” Evans told the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate. “The houses where Wood lived have been enshrined in smalltown memories for a long time.”
Kikutani points to the Grant Wood and art colony connections as two reasons why her home warrants the title of a historic structure in Park Ridge.
“So much history is disappearing,” she said. “I think with the Grant Wood tie-in it’s very important to keep that history in Park Ridge.”
But it’s also the story of what happened to the Eicher family that intrigues Kikutani.
In August of 1931, authorities began investigating the disappearance of Asta Eicher and her three young children. Newspaper articles from the time state that Asta, whose husband had died several years earlier, had been corresponding with a man named Cornelius Pierson, whom she had met through a newspaper advertisement, and had taken a trip with him in June 1931, leaving her children with a caretaker.
Some time later, Pierson returned to Park Ridge alone to pick up the children — and a number of items from the Cedar Street house — reportedly telling neighbors he was selling the home and all of its contents because he was preparing to marry Asta.
Suspicious, authorities later entered the house and discovered nearly 30 love letters to Asta from Pierson. But Cornelius Pierson didn’t actually exist — the name was an alias for Harry Powers, a man suspected of wooing count- less other women through letters promising wealth and companionship. A Chicago Tribune article from 1931 described how Eicher may have sought out a wealthy suitor due to her dwindling finances in the years following her husband’s death and had kept her money problems — including the fact that she had taken out a second mortgage on the Cedar Street house — hidden from Powers.
It was beneath Powers’ garage in the community of Quiet Dell, West Virginia, that police discovered the bodies of Asta Eicher and her children: Greta, 14; Harry, 12; and Anabel, 9. The body of another woman Powers had reportedly lured to his home was found as well. Powers, who confessed to the crimes, was found guilty and sentenced to hang. The Eicher family was returned to Park Ridge and buried at Town of Maine Cemetery.
The serial killings made national and international news — and interest continues to this day. Two films on the subject were produced and Jayne Anne Phillips’ fictionalized account, “Quiet Dell,” was published last year. As Phillips was writing the book, Reta Kikutani invited her to see the house where the Eichers lived and provide her with a copy of a newspaper article detailing the crime.
“She came because she wanted to get the ambiance of the house,” said Kikutani who, like Christopher, pointed to the 19th-century floors, moldings, windows and even fourlegged bathtub that still remain and evoke the feel of a long-ago era.
When 312 Cedar St. was actually built remains under debate. Information from the Cook County Assessor’s Office states it was constructed in 1835, but with so few settlers in the area at that time, the date remains questionable, members of the Historic Preservation Commission admit.
“We tried to trace it, but due to the Chicago fire, there are no records,” Kikutani said.