Local Architect's Highland Park Landmark Sold Out Of Foreclosure

HIGHLAND PARK, IL — A 106-year-old local landmark home was recently sold at foreclosure auction for just under $379,000. The three-story Colonial Revival was designed by noted local architect Robert Seyfarth and had been the home of his granddaughter for the past seven decades.

Seyfarth was born in Blue Island in 1878, graduated the Chicago Manuel Training School in 1895 and built his first house in 1903. He started his career working for Chicago-based architect George Maher, an influential figure in the Prairie School, before relocating to Highland Park in 1910, moving his family to a home he built for himself at 1498 Sheridan Road. During the Great Depression, he shuttered his Chicago office and began operating out of his home, where he would remain until his death in 1950.

According to a piece published in 2000 in the Chicago Architectural Journal by architecture professor Stuart Cohen, Seyfarth had built more than a dozen houses within a few blocks of his own house by the mid 1920s. Cohen said the Forest Avenue home sold most recently may have been the most exceptional:

The best of these early houses is the Alexander Stewart house, built in 1913 at 1442 Forest. Volumetrically simple, the Stewart house has a hipped roof, overscaled double-hung windows with shutters, and an arched Georgian-style entry canopy supported on scrolled brackets. The most unusual feature is the pair of symmetrically-placed sun porches with floor-to-ceiling glass on three sides. These face south at either end of the main facade. The sun porches have pitched roofs, which slope up to join the main hipped roof, completely integrating them into the volume of the house. The studied asaymmetries and private informality of the rear facade, with its centered stair window and paired inset dormers, should be compared to the public formality of the front facade.

Located just west of Sheridan Road and south of Highland Park's central business district, the three-bedroom Forest Avenue house includes two three-season porches, a second-floor master suite and a private suite on the third floor. Interior photos from a previous listing show the home's seven rooms with crown molding, built-in cabinets and several doors on each of its porches. The basement is unfinished, and the home is cooled by a single wall-unit, according to its most recent listing. There is a detached garage with room for two cars and three wood-burning fireplaces.

Though he built a handful of homes in his native southern Cook County, Seyfarth spent most of his career constructing relatively middle class homes on the North Shore. Seyfarth would go on to build at least 54 homes in Highland Park, a few of which have since been demolished. He also built 33 in Glencoe — including one demolished by the Birov family of developers to make way for a house purchased last year by Khalil Mack — 29 in Winnetka, seven in Evanston, three in Northbrook, two in Lake Forest and one each in Deerfield, Glenview and Wilmette, according to Cohen's research.

"Most of his houses in Highland Park were medium-sized and medium-priced," according to an inventory of historic homes in town submitted to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. "That, and the graceful proportions, humane scale and charm of his eclectic style explains his enormous popularity which has never waned."

Seyfarth's first wife Nell became a local community leader, heading up the Highland Park School Board for nearly a decade, serving as president of the parent teachers association and as president of the Highland Park Women's Club from 1925 to 1927, according to Cohen. Citing Seyfarth's late son, Cohen said the architect was a fan of the work of Howard Van Doren Shaw and was good friends with Jens Jensen, taking part in regular lunches with other North Shore architects such as John Van Bergen and Morgan Yost.

"Ultimately it is the livability, light-filled spaces, careful attention to interior and exterior details, beautiful proportions and manipulation of architectural scale that made Seyfarth's houses so prized by their owners," Cohen wrote. "These are the same qualities that should secure Seyfarth the place he deserves in the history of Chicago's residential architecture."

According to property records and real estate listing, the Stewart house sold out of foreclosure to Bank of New York Mellon and a real estate investment trust on May 9 for $378,815 after it was first listed for sale last May for $650,000.

The property's 2018 fair market value for taxing purposes was $725,500, according to the Lake County Assessor's Office. It is listed as a Highland Park historic landmark but it is not listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Find More Recently Sold Highland Park Homes »

• Address: 1442 Forest Ave., Highland Park
• Built: 1913
• Lot Size: 0.55 acres
• Square Feet: 2,372
• Bedrooms: 4
• Bathrooms: 3 full, 1 half
• Last sold: $378,815 on May 9

Listing information originally appeared on realtor.com. For more information and photos, click here.