Naperville mansion to face wrecking ball

Four months after being denied landmark status, the deteriorating Hammerschmidt mansion in Naperville will meet the wrecking ball today.

Kevin Lynch, attorney for owners Chris and Sue Cobb, said he is unaware of any offers to purchase the home and the building is unsafe.

"None of this is being done gleefully," Lynch said. "It is unfortunate that the home was allowed to deteriorate before (the Cobbs) owned it, but they desire to move forward at this point."

The Queen Anne mansion at 432 E. Chicago Ave. was built in 1893 by prominent DuPage County businessman Adolph Hammerschmidt.

The Cobbs bought the house in December 2007 for $775,000 from Charlene O'Neill - whose family had owned it since 1961 - but found the cost to rehabilitate it higher than anticipated. They made plans to demolish it if a buyer could not be found.

A group of residents hoping to save the house filed a petition with the city last summer asking it be designated a historic landmark.

While the city's historic sites commission voted in favor of landmark status, the city council denied the petition in September 2008, saying it would be unfair to force it on the home's owners.

"The Cobbs specifically made no attempts to have the home brought down even after they succeeded before city council this past fall," Lynch said. "They wanted to provide and have provided ample opportunity for potential purchasers of the home to place an offer."

But those offers have not come and the Cobbs plan to use the soon-to-be vacant lot as a yard for their existing home next door.

Debbie Grinnell, director of preservation services at Naper Settlement, said the group is saddened by news of the mansion's imminent demise.

"The community so identified with it as a visual landmark as that eastern gateway into downtown Naperville," she said. "And from our perspective, (it has) historical significance as far as the Hammerschmidt family that built and lived in the house for many years and their contributions to Naperville and the region."

Grinnell said the settlement did not salvage items from the home because it already has quite a few items from the same time period from the Caroline Martin Mitchell mansion. However, it did hire architects to create detailed drawings of both the home's exterior and its internal floor plan. Those drawings, along with photographs of the mansion, will be preserved in the settlement's research library.