Landmark status sought for Lake View house tied to city's early preservation movement

An architect's 19th century Lake View graystone — home base for his successful efforts to preserve Louis Sullivan's architecture and legacy — is being considered for preliminary landmark status.

The Commission on Chicago Landmarks will decide Thursday whether to designate the residence and studio of long-time architect and preservationist John Vinci.

In addition to the two-flat building's architecture, the designation would also honor Vinci's groundbreaking preservation work and his architectural firm that was founded in the two-story home's dining room in 1969.

Vinci could become the second Chicago architect to have his house landmarked while he's still residing there. A city spokesperson said the first was likely William Keck, who was 85 and living in the modernist Keck-Gottschalk-Keck Apartments, 5551 S. University Ave., when the building he designed with his brother, George, was designated in 1994.

"To be honest I'm sort of embarrassed," Vinci, 89, said of his home's designation. "But I think the house is worth it."

Built in 1893, the home at 3152 N. Cambridge Ave. is no doubt a looker with its corner tower and arched first-floor windows.

Vinci replaced the house's concrete porch and front steps with a steel one made from his own design. The 2009 addition is a light, almost transparent, touch that doesn't distract from the building's classic Indiana limestone facade.

And there's an added treat for those who find themselves in the alley along the south side of the house: a two-story bay window with curved glass.

Graceful and trimmed in metal, the restored window is a detail as Victorian as Ulster coats and opera glasses.

Manuel Martinez/WBEZ

Vinci's renovation and restoration work on the home are also included in the designation report.

"I'm always worried about 'George Washington slept here' landmarks," he said. "I favor landmarking buildings because of architectural significance because I think that that was the original intention of Chicago landmarks."

The proposed designation covers the building's exterior elevations and a neat-as-a-pin brick garage designed by Vinci.

Built in 1981 by Vinci's bricklayer brothers and a cousin who was a carpenter, the structure replaced the home's original frame garage that burned down in 1980.

"Lo and behold, in the middle of the night, an arsonist came along [and] set the garage on fire," Vinci said. "This was somewhat a seedy neighborhood [then] with bars, and I'm sure somebody came by and threw a match in my side door because I couldn't lock it."

Manuel Martinez/WBEZ

Author, photographer and historian Rich Cahan, who has known Vinci since the late 1970s and has conducted research at the house's archives, said the home is worthy of landmark designation.

"It's got these big windows, and it's got this corner [tower]. It relates to the corner in a really beautiful way," he said. "And I like the idea that John did the garage. There are a lot of small details and large thoughts that go into all of his buildings and that garage is one of them."

Vinci bought the house in 1969.

"They they wanted $42,000 or something," he said. "We offered them $40,000 and they took it."

Straight away, the home became the headquarters for his architecture firm, then called John Vinci-Lawrence Kenny, founded with partner Lawrence “Larry” Kenny.

Their work included saving and restoring endangered buildings designed by Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, Burnham & Root and other important Chicago architects.

The home was frequented by a coterie of architects, preservationists and professionals such as architectural conservator and paint specialist Bob Furhoff, who died in September at 87.

Furhoff worked with Vinci in 1972 to salvage the trading room of the Sullivan-designed former Chicago Stock Exchange, 30 N. LaSalle St., and the reconstruction of the space at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Another habitue was Vinci's friend and college classmate Richard Nickel, a prominent founder of the Chicago preservation movement, who was killed in 1972 while salvaging architectural materials from the building as it was under demolition.

"This was his last stop," Vinci said of his home. "He came here to pick up a rope. I wasn't home, but I think he picked up the rope and he went to the Stock Exchange to recover some ornament. And the building collapsed on him."

"Nickel, obviously, is really important," Cahan, a Nickel biographer, said. "He did start the preservation movement in Chicago. But John is important because he took that start and ran with it."