Beverly home tour highlights structures built by 3 generations of Hetheringtons
Many are familiar with Chicago area architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Walter Burley Griffin, but the Hetherington family of architects don’t get quite as much press.
From the late 1880s into the 1960s, three generations of Hetheringtons designed buildings and homes throughout the Chicago area and the United States. Their styles included Tudor Revival, Spanish Revival, Beaux Arts, Colonial Revival, Craftsman and Prairie.
Among the grandest examples of Hetherington architecture is the Graver-Driscoll House, 10621 S. Seeley Ave., in Chicago’s Beverly neighborhood. For the last 50 years, the Tudor Revival mansion has been home to Ridge Historical Society.
On Sunday, visitors filled the 100-year-old home’s veranda while sampling wine at the starting point of the Beverly Area Planning Association’s Annual Home Tour.
Nearly 450 people took in the RHS exhibit about the Hetherington family before touring four Hetherington homes in North Beverly. They also had the option of exploring the Original Rainbow Cone ice cream store, at 9233 S. Western Ave., a Spanish Revival commercial structure built in 1929 with an upstairs apartment.
“These were well designed, well-balanced homes. And they were not cookie cutter. Each was built for the owner’s preferences and for the sites they were built on,” said Tim Blackburn, a member of the RHS historic buildings committee.
Altogether, about 100 Hetherington homes can be found in what is known as “the Ridge,” Blackburn said.
The Ridge is a geological feature, a glacial moraine extending from Blue Island to North Beverly that also includes the communities of Washington Heights, Morgan Park, and Mt. Greenwood.
Like the Graver-Driscoll mansion and Original Rainbow Cone, several Hetherington homes on the Ridge were built in the late 1920s, at the end of a golden age of American home construction, Blackburn said. Americans having served in Europe during World War I had popularized European revival architecture.
About two and half years ago, Blackburn began researching the origins of his own home on the 107th block of Hoyne Avenue. When he discovered it was a Hetherington, he wanted to locate more.
Sifting through building permit records, architectural trade publications and additional research materials housed in the Harold Washington and Newberry libraries, Blackburn assembled a database of confirmed Hetherington homes and buildings.
The database continues to grow. It also fit right in with the Ridge Historical Society’s plans to celebrate its 50th anniversary, the 100th year of the Graver-Driscoll mansion, as well as BAPA’s home tour, said Debra Nemeth, RHS president
“It’s wonderful to see so many people here to experience this event,” she said. “It’s great to be reopened after being closed for a year and a half.”
John Todd Hetherington was raised in Scotland, and came to the United States in the 1880s while in his early 20s.
Around 1901, he designed a generous-sized home for himself and his family at 9236 S. Winchester Ave. in Beverly. Others asked him to design their homes.
Hetherington established an architectural firm that employed his son Murray D. Hetherington and later established a partnership that employed grandson Jack Hetherington as well.
Along with family photographs, the Hetherington exhibit, which will remain on display for the rest of the year, includes a collection of 30 black-and-white photos of Hetherington Homes taken by Mati Maldre.
There’s also an incredibly detailed miniature model of a Hetherington home made by Jean Hetherington, John Hetherington’s daughter. Another Hetherington home model appears in a photo taken at the 1933 Century of Progress International Exposition in Chicago.
For Beverly resident Joe Blumenthal, the tour and exhibit came as a special treat. “I love architecture, and this area,” he said. “It’s a unique pocket of Chicago. This just doesn’t exist anywhere else.”
Among the North Beverly homes open for tours was a French Eclectic built in 1930 on a hill facing the Dan Ryan Woods Forest Preserve. The roughhewed stone front steps of 2040 W. Hopkins Place kept in character with the rugged limestone and clinker brick exterior.
Beneath a slate roof, the home offered additional surprises, including a uniquely tiled vestibule, sunken living room, impressive stone arch fireplace, arched doorways, wooden beamed ceilings and circular breakfast room. There was also a small tower balcony just off one of the upstairs bathrooms.
Not far away, the brick Tudor Revival at 8844 S. Pleasant Ave. grabbed plenty of attention with a white Rolls-Royce parked out front.
Built in 1928 on a large double lot for Oscar Arnold, vice president of General Motors, the slate-roofed, six-bedroom home, has an identical twin in Detroit, which was built for a Dodge company executive.
Homeowner, Audrius V. Plioplys, a neurologist and accomplished artist, updated the kitchen but the rest remains original, including the painted plaster fruit on the living room ceilings, dark woodwork and colorful bathroom fixtures.
Despite mild temperatures, during the tour, a fire blazed in an imposing stone living room fireplace.
Plioplys bought the residence in 2002 and insists the home’s first owner helped solve a 1928 train robbery that took place in Evergreen Park. He also believes his property once held connections to Prohibition-era gangsters.
Just to the south, at 8848 S. Pleasant Ave., visitors toured another Tudor Revival mansion featuring a slate roof, stone fireplace, plaster molding and spacious rooms with textured stucco walls.
Using a laptop set up in the kitchen, Robin Harmon, proprietor of RMH Lifestyle, showed visitors a renovation process still underway for the home’s new owners. With original dressing rooms and original walk-in closets, the property also featured a recently updated indoor kitchen and a new outdoor kitchen.
A massive American Colonial Revival home at 9000 S. Hoyne was built in 1936 for a lumber company executive. Its wood-paneled den featured pegged wooden floors and a Dutchtile covered fireplace, one of two fireplaces in the home.
A volunteer told visitors a foot-activated device beneath the dining room table once enabled homeowners to summon servants. Like other homes on the tour, this one featured a second stairway and servants’ quarters.
Despite the grandeur of the homes he designed, John Todd Hetherington converted a Victorian home at 9122 S. Longwood Drive into a stucco-covered three-flat and moved his family into just one of its apartments in 1920.
“The Hetheringtons designed so many amazing homes,” Blackburn said. “Whether it was economic hardship or trouble getting commissions, you had John Todd who moved out of an exquisite home on Winchester moving into that flat.”
The fact stunned at least one visitor and yielded a personal connection.
“Interesting, my girlfriend lived in the top floor of that building,” said Sandy Beck, a Beverly resident and regular at annual at BAPA home tours.
Other Hetherington-designed structures on the Ridge include the Church of the Holy Nativity rectory at 9300 S. Pleasant Ave., the Chicago Park District field house at Ridge Park, 9625 Longwood Drive, and Barker Hall at Morgan Park Academy, 2153 W. 111th St.