Wheaton council gives thumbs-up to mansion move
A stately Wheaton mansion is poised to move to a new site where a couple plan to restore the 1890s-era home to its former splendor.
The city council on Monday awarded a permit allowing the couple to relocate the House of Seven Gables to the southern edge of the old Loretto Convent.
Bob and Katy Goldsborough stepped up to save the structure - a link to an early chapter in the city's past - from the wrecking ball and intend to make the mansion their family home.
Movers hired by the husband and wife already have prepared to haul the 10,000-square-foot structure to two lots the Goldsboroughs are slated to buy from Pulte Homes, the developer building a subdivision on the nearly 16-acre Loretto campus at 1600 Somerset Lane.
The deal had not yet been finalized as of Monday night. Bob Goldsborough declined to comment after the city council's unanimous vote, citing the pending purchase. His wife also did immediately return a phone call.
But the Goldsboroughs have previously described their admiration for the mansion's architect, Jarvis Hunt, and his ornate but durable style. Steel magnate Jay Morris commissioned Hunt to design the home for his daughter.
Built in 1897, the House of Seven Gables would join the so-called "Colony," an exclusive neighborhood for members of the Chicago Golf Club, the first 18-hole course in the country. Hunt also designed its clubhouse.
"There's a grandness to it," Bob Goldsborough said of the mansion in July.
The couple found a prominent ally in Landmarks Illinois. Lisa DiChiera, the group's advocacy director, told the city council last month the Goldsboroughs had navigated a "stressful logistical and financing process to move the house."
"We're very impressed at their perseverance," she said. "And many other people would have walked away at this point in time."
At one point in the saga, the Goldsboroughs envisioned the mansion as a public venue and made an offer to the park district to front the moving costs as part of a plan to restore the house as a wedding and banquet facility at nearby Seven Gables Park. But park commissioners decided in late May not to pursue the project after raising financial and accessibility concerns.
The Goldsboroughs then applied for a city special-use permit to move the mansion to two lots on the northeast side of the site, where Hawthorne Lane currently dead-ends.
But the couple withdrew that permit application and submitted a new one in the face of opposition from neighbors.
The council on Monday signed off on those revised plans that call for moving the mansion to a more isolated corner of the property. The closest existing home, within the Marywood subdivision, is roughly 150 feet west of the site of a relocated mansion that would come to rest on a new foundation.