April 15, 2005
"We're doing it," said Dennis Parsons, the Hinsdale architect who, along with colleague Mike Abraham, of Clarendon Hills, heads the Hinsdale Historical Society's Zook House Preservation Committee.
Parsons made that simple but galvanizing statement this past Monday as he and building mover Dan Dillabaugh, president of Dillabaugh, Inc., in Crown Point, Indiana, visited the house, at 327 S. Oak St., in Hinsdale.
"This week, I'll excavate, demo and start cutting the house," said Dillabaugh.
And he's been doing that. He moved his equipment - including a large excavator, Bobcat, small bulldozer and trucks and trailers full of material and machinery - to the site on Tuesday, in the middle of an all-day, heavy and chilly rain.
As the weather cleared early Wednesday, he immediately began digging, changing the landscape around the 81-year old house forever.
At the moment, the foundation of the house is exposed to a depth of about four feet on the east, south and some of the west sides. A deep cut where the foundation meets the brick wall has been made, and wood wedges inserted to hold the gap.
Carpenters are carefully dismantling the undulating wood shingle roof along the alley that joins the northwest addition to the main house.
Bricks have been removed from the west wall of the addition where it joined the original wall. The latter, constructed in 1924, is noticeably thicker than the wall of the addition, constructed in the early 1950s. The bricks that have been removed are marked so they can be reset.
The foundation of a curving portion of the five-foot high, 18-inch thick backyard garden wall has been exposed on either side by a three-foot deep trench. The wall will be cut vertically from the rest of the wall - which forms a semi-circle approximately 160-feet long - at a point to be determined. It will also be cut horizontally to free it from the foundation. Then it will be encased in steel beams and bands and lifted onto a flatbed.
"No surprises, been pretty routine, so far," says Dillabaugh of the work. "It's built as nicely as we thought, really strong."
Three video producers - Hinsdale resident Jim Cunningham, LPCI Board member Judith McBrien and documentarian Scott Baehrend - are now collaborating to record the daily work at the site.
Next Tuesday, Ted Hild, Assistant Division Chief and Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer, visits the site to help assess whether the relocated house and other structures will qualify for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. A nomination was prepared on the house in 1998, but it was not submitted, presumably for lack of owner consent.
Behind all of the activity at the house site, is a near round-the-clock blizzard of e-mails, phone calls and faxes among the members of the Historical Society, various allies and Village of Hinsdale officials involved in the relocation project. Because of the May 5 move date and all that's needed to make the move, there's no time to meet, so decisions are largely made via electronic and telephonic technology.
In other developments, we continue our search for the experienced professional we need to serve as the general contractor for the preliminary restoration of the house once it's at its new site, in Katherine Legge Memorial Park.
We're also working on the license agreement between the Village and the Historical Society concerning the relocation of the buildings at the Park.
And we're on a first-name basis with Com Ed as we try to schedule their crews to move wires along the route of the move, a feat almost as difficult as moving the Zook structures themselves.
"It's a miracle what you're doing now, before you've even made the move," said Hinsdale resident and former Village Board trustee Marge Arens.
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