Roy J. Hotchkiss designed 219 Linden in 1923 for Jacob Ecker and his wife. A century later, the brick home with yellow trim and a tile roof across the street from Oak Park River Forest High School still has many of his architectural flourishes.
When the long-time owners decided to sell, they turned to Baird and Warner’s Steve Scheuring, who listed the house for $1,090,000. The house was under contract quickly and closed this week for $1,100,000. Scheuring thinks the quick sale was due to a number of factors that make the home unique, including its first-floor primary suite, its prime location and overall size.
Hotchkiss had deep roots in Oak Park. Born in 1877 in Richmond, Indiana, he moved to Oak Park in 1884 and, according to his 1945 obituary, he attended school in the old Temperance Hall at Lake and Forest avenues.
With only a high-school education, he became a chief designer for noted Oak Park architect E.E. Roberts in Roberts’ office at Madison and Oak Park Avenue before establishing his own architectural practice in 1915 with offices at 115 N. Oak Park Ave. Hotchkiss designed many homes throughout Oak Park and also is credited with the design of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church on East Avenue. He also designed the Art Deco Medical Arts Building on Lake Street.
Inside the roughly 4,300-square-foot home on Linden, a fireplace warms the living room. Scheuring noted that around the time the home was built, many area homes had fireplaces tiled in “St. Gile’s tile,” which was sold as leftover tile from the construction of the church on Columbian Avenue in Oak Park. He’s not sure that this tile is the remnant of the Catholic Church, but it is similar to that tile and original to the home.
A solid terrazzo shelf over the dining room radiator serves as a plant shelf. Scheuring estimated the unusual piece weighs hundreds of pounds. Some original light fixtures and a safe built into the wall also remain from 1923.
Scheuring pointed out that the home has some unusual attributes for an older home. Chief among them, a first-floor primary suite. The four-room suite has a bathroom with a soaking tub, a bedroom, a sitting room and a sun porch with heated floors.
The second floor was only partially finished when Scheuring’s clients purchased the home. Scheuring noted, “Like many homes of the era, the original second level was only partially finished. If the needs of the family only required one bedroom up, that is what was built, and the rest remained unfinished – just open space.”
The sellers remodeled the second floor to include three bedrooms and a large hall bathroom.
The lower level of the home offered another unusual feature: an under-house garage. There was much more living space on this level as well. “The basement alone is 2,900 square feet,” Scheuring said.
This space includes a rec room with a pool table. A movie room was sound-proofed and completely wired for internet and power when it became a work-from-home space during the pandemic. A laundry room and several storage rooms round out the basement.
Scheuring noted: “First floor primary suites are very rare in Oak Park. Especially in older vintage homes of the late 1800s to the 1930s. After that, an occasional ranch home here or there were the only dwellings to offer first floor primary suites. Now, 70% of my buyers are still some form of family entity with at least one child under the age of 5, so sleeping on a different level than your kids is not for everybody. But the pandemic brought an increase in first-floor sleeping needs. Families combined generations under one roof during the pandemic, thus creating a need for more first-floor full living.”
Beyond that coveted first-floor bedroom, “The Ecker home is huge in square footage compared to many others in Oak Park,” he said. “More than 4,000 square feet in just the first and second living areas is crazy for a house in this price range and in this location.”
The third selling point was the neighborhood, which is the heart of Oak Park’s estate section. Noting that he and his wife have called the neighborhood home for years, he said, “The walkability really changes your entire lifestyle. The schools, the Farmer’s Market, the library, the dining, the Green Line… just minutes away.”
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