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Berwyn, IL —
When Gail Lofgren and her husband, Tom, moved into a bungalow on Harvey Avenue, she didn't think she'd be there very long — and that was nearly 30 years ago.
Her home was featured during Berwyn’s annual bungalow tour Sunday for its painstakingly maintained and recreated interior.
While Lofgren concentrated on making her home old-fashioned, Chris McAuliffe, owner of Chicago-based CM Real Estate Development, decided to rehab a Cicero bungalow as environmentally friendly.
He recently finished what he said will be the first green-certified home renovation in Illinois, on a bungalow off Central Avenue. And he’s committed to continuing the practice of taking old bungalows and bringing them up to the 21st-century green standards in the Berwyn-Cicero area.
Even though McAuliffe’s goals were green, something about the bungalow evoked his sentimental side, and he decided to also keep to its original features.
Although small and humble, area bungalows continue to capture the imagination and hearts of homeowners and developers alike. In both Lofgren and McAuliffe's cases, the bungalow has inspired impressive attention to detail — even if its owners have different end goals.
It's easy being green
“I'm aiming for affordable green, using vintage structures and modern materials,” McAuliffe said. “It's very much proving a point that you don't have to be rich to go green.”
To that end, McAuliffe bought a 1928 bungalow at 1335 S. Central Ave. in Cicero and updated it to the National Association of Home Builder's bronze-level certification for sustainability. McAuliffe is currently finishing the auditing process for that certification.
And it took him dozens of ecological steps — from bathtubs, carpeting and roof shingles made of recycled materials to even paint made to environmental certifications.
Even with all that effort, McAuliffe still felt compelled to preserve as much of the bungalow's original character as possible.
He managed to save all the wood floors and trim. All but one of the doors in the home were maintained. Many of the old casement windows were even restored, rather than being scrapped in favor of more efficient, new windows.
“The greenest thing you can do is keep what you already have,” McAuliffe explained. “It takes more time to clean it up and restore it, but it’s worth it because you don't get quality woodwork like that anymore.”
Bungalows have been a gateway to property ownership for generation after generation of families, McAuliffe said. But now, he hopes they also can be a path to environmentally conscious living while remaining true to architectural flourishes and quality construction.
When Gail Lofgren and her husband, Tom, moved into a bungalow on Harvey Avenue, she didn't think she'd be there very long — and that was nearly 30 years ago.
Her home was featured during Berwyn’s annual bungalow tour Sunday for its painstakingly maintained and recreated interior.
While Lofgren concentrated on making her home old-fashioned, Chris McAuliffe, owner of Chicago-based CM Real Estate Development, decided to rehab a Cicero bungalow as environmentally friendly.
He recently finished what he said will be the first green-certified home renovation in Illinois, on a bungalow off Central Avenue. And he’s committed to continuing the practice of taking old bungalows and bringing them up to the 21st-century green standards in the Berwyn-Cicero area.
Even though McAuliffe’s goals were green, something about the bungalow evoked his sentimental side, and he decided to also keep to its original features.
Although small and humble, area bungalows continue to capture the imagination and hearts of homeowners and developers alike. In both Lofgren and McAuliffe's cases, the bungalow has inspired impressive attention to detail — even if its owners have different end goals.
It's easy being green
“I'm aiming for affordable green, using vintage structures and modern materials,” McAuliffe said. “It's very much proving a point that you don't have to be rich to go green.”
To that end, McAuliffe bought a 1928 bungalow at 1335 S. Central Ave. in Cicero and updated it to the National Association of Home Builder's bronze-level certification for sustainability. McAuliffe is currently finishing the auditing process for that certification.
And it took him dozens of ecological steps — from bathtubs, carpeting and roof shingles made of recycled materials to even paint made to environmental certifications.
Even with all that effort, McAuliffe still felt compelled to preserve as much of the bungalow's original character as possible.
He managed to save all the wood floors and trim. All but one of the doors in the home were maintained. Many of the old casement windows were even restored, rather than being scrapped in favor of more efficient, new windows.
“The greenest thing you can do is keep what you already have,” McAuliffe explained. “It takes more time to clean it up and restore it, but it’s worth it because you don't get quality woodwork like that anymore.”
Bungalows have been a gateway to property ownership for generation after generation of families, McAuliffe said. But now, he hopes they also can be a path to environmentally conscious living while remaining true to architectural flourishes and quality construction.
Bungalow pride — and preservation
Where McAuliffe is proving that houses verging on a century old can be green, Lofgren and the Berwyn Historical Society are busy fighting to preserve the style and feel of those same homes.
“You just don't get the same charm out of a newer home,” Lofgren said of her 1927 bungalow. “It's a simple house with artistic charms and natural products.”
Lofgren, a retired librarian, spent three decades researching bungalows as a hobby and crafting hers into a home with a near-perfect 1920s feel with all the modern conveniences — including a dishwater smartly disguised as a cabinet.
“We tried to make it look like it did in 1927, with a modern take,” she explained. “It's been fun to restore it to what it originally was.”
Lofgren's home still has several of the original lighting fixtures, all of its original woodwork and even a hutch with a 1927 date written on the back. Lofgren and her husband believe the furniture originally came with the house.
Although the bathroom and the kitchen have been revamped, Lofgren’s been careful to use fixtures and colors that fit in with the house's period décor.
The house is one of just six that was featured during the Berwyn Historical Society's Bungalows and More tour last weekend. That event marked the fifth-annual tour, where a core group of historical society members, along with Berwyn resident Aimee Sordelli, began with an informal barbecue in 2005.
“We wanted to showcase a variety of interior spaces so that someone would be able to envision living in a vintage house in Berwyn, and we wanted to share the history of our community and encourage preservation of a housing stock that many people now see as historically significant,” said Kristine Dillon, one of the event’s founders and vice president of the Berwyn Historical Society.
Although Lofgren's house may not have the ornate exterior of some of the homes on the tour, she’s studied bungalow literature and hunted through flea markets just to make sure her bungalow is as authentic as possible.
“It's just a regular, working-class house, but you can put such charm into it, and that's what I think people need to see,” Lofgren said.
While McAuliffe is motivated by his desire to keep the environment clean and sustainable for the future, Lofgren is motivated by her desire to make sure the past also is preserved.
“Without the past, there is no future,” she said. “It was just a great time in the world when these homes were built. I like to live where history was made and I like to think of what it must have been like back then.”
