Just north of the Green Line, between Austin Boulevard and Central Avenue, several historic homes line the streets of Austin.
On an April morning, 15 people gathered at the Midway Park plaza and fountain for Chicago Architecture Center’s walking tour of those houses – many of which are known because of the famous architects who built them or lived inside.
In 1865, Henry Austin bought 280 acres of land, which today sits in part of Chicago’s Austin neighborhood. As Austin began developing the land in the 1880s, it attracted and fostered a diverse community and constantly changing architecture.
Austin donated a plot of his newly acquired land to St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, which was built in 1901. The historic church boasts English gothic details, like arches with pointed peaks, and its door is painted red to symbolize the blood of Christ, common in many Episcopal churches.
On the other side of the fountain from St. Martin’s sits the Greater St. John Church of God in Christ, constructed in 1908. It was designed by William Drummond, who lived in Austin. He worked for architects Daniel Burnham and Frank Lloyd Wright, whom he was head draftsman for when he designed this church. As with many of Wright’s buildings, the church is prairie-style with a low entryway. Inside, there are stairs on either side of the doorway that lead to an open expanse. The church was added to the National Register of Historic Places in the 1970s.
Just west of these churches is a green Queen Anne-style house at 5736 W. Midway Park built in the late 1800s. Typical of this style, the house has a wraparound porch, a turret and an irregular roof line. Queen Anne houses often use multiple materials, like this one’s limestone base and wooden porch. It’s likely that there used to be ornamental decorations underneath the porch roof that were later removed.
There are several historic homes in the area designed by architect Frederick Schock. Four of them were declared Chicago landmarks in 1999 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.
At Menard Avenue and Midway Park sits a massive Queen Anne house built in 1886. Schock lived in the home from the 1880s to the 1930s, throughout the span of which he continually added internal and external architectural details. The home uses limestone and brick and is covered in slate shingles.
Schock also designed the red house at 5810 W. Midway Park. While it has a Queen Anne-style turret, it also includes classical characteristics with its Ionic columns and tall, decorative Italianate windows. The topmost windows above the door are Palladian – a group of three windows, and the middle one is largest and arched. George Manning, who passed in January, used to live here.
Next door at 5830 W. Midway Park is another Schock house built in 1921 in the colonial revival style. Reflecting that, the house’s facade is symmetrical, its roofline is flat with gables on either side, and it has four windows stacked on top of another four. The home has classical elements of Doric columns and quoins, the blocks that run down the corners of the structure, but the two urns out front are more prairie style. Inside, there are three bedrooms and a butler’s quarters.
At 5840 W. Midway Park, Schock designed a house built in 1901. It has prominent prairie elements, like the urns on the porch, broad overhanging eaves and a hipped roof. There’s also a Dutch gable above the front door and oriole windows, which are common in Gothic and Queen Anne-style houses.
At the corner of Menard and Race avenues, Tom Walker and his family live in the Catherine Schock house. It is named for the aunt of Frederick Schock, who built the house in 1887 in the shingle style, similar to Queen Anne. Walker bought the house in 1989. It has over 5,000 square feet, including 22 rooms across three floors. Walker’s son and daughter-in-law live on the lower levels. On the top floor, Walker and his wife have their own kitchen and living space. With the exception of the first floor’s interior, most of the Catherine Shock home has been updated. Walker said it was a learning process for contractors to redo parts of the exterior – like when they had to steam shingles to wrap them around curved parts of the facade.
Less than a block away, Schock designed a home for his mother, Marie. For the last 33 years, Jerry Ehernberger has lived there with his partner. He said that, while much of the siding has been redone – and was likely originally stained gray in 1888, then painted green, then blue before they moved in – the home’s cedar shingles are original. The blue home also boasts exaggerated gables.
At 5704 Ohio St., there’s an elaborate Italianate home, a design style that was popular in the 1870s. This and a home on Central Avenue are likely two of the first homes built in Austin. This house is a great example of Italianate architecture, which is largely characterized by long windows, short overhangs and bracketed eaves.
After Francis Scott Key Public School closed in 2013, the Field School bought its building, designed by Dwight Perkins, who worked for Schock and Burnham. In 1907, Perkins became an architect for the Chicago Board of Education, where he designed about 40 schools across the city. The Field School operates out of the building just north of the old Francis Scott Key while renovations are underway to the original structure – which Perkins designed with five central bays that peak with flat arches.
Around the corner from the Field School, which is on track to open within the next year, is Austin Town Hall, constructed in 1929. The limestone and brick building has balusters under its windows and ornamental pillars built into the facade. Constructed the same decade as the house at 5830 W. Midway Park, Austin Town Hall also has quoins lining its corners.
The architecture tour ended at the firehouse, where Captain David Meyer worked since 1996 before he died last month in the line of duty. Schock also designed this fire station, built in 1899 in a gothic design with pointed arches and pressed metal designs.
The eight-square-block area travelled during the walking tour was, in the 1890s, a mix of residential houses and a city center of bustling businesses and the historic homes listed above. Though today the same spot in Austin is mostly residential, the neighborhood’s vibrant community remains.
