Naperville home recycles to craft historic feel

ake a look at the exterior of Doreen Schweitzer's home and it looks like it has been there for a hundred years or more, just like many of its neighbors on the western edge of Naperville's central district.

Look more closely, however, and you will see that it's just an illusion.

"Those bricks are old Chicago street bricks that I got at a place called Alcott's in Montgomery, Illinois," Schweitzer said.

The combination of old and new, northern and southern, green concepts and technology pervade the very essence of this house. The structure has a very definite yin and yang, an amalgamation of style that works in its very balance.

No wonder this 5,000- square-foot home on a teardown lot wasn't controversial as many newly constructed buildings in old neighborhoods often are. It was made to fit.

"It's also a corner house with two elevations and we made it look like a corner house - that's another reason why it works in the neighborhood," said Mike Cody, president of Cody Design Group in Naperville, the architectural firm that designed the house.

The idea of building a custom home had long been in the mind of Schweitzer, owner of Doreen Schweitzer Interiors Ltd. Over the years, she had lived in a number of traditionally styled homes, including Cape Cod and Saltbox styles.

"I had always thought that I would build a Virginia Tidewater-style home with a dormer," Schweitzer said. "But the shape of this lot was not conducive to the standard Georgian style."

The land on which Schweitzer's home is long and narrow, 66-by-180 feet, and formerly contained two smaller homes.

Through research Schweitzer had learned that a standard Naperville lot is generally 65-by-130 feet, a size determined in the 1800s by logging chains. The extra length in her property came from an alley formerly located on the south boundary.

What ended up on the site could best be described as a Charleston single, a long narrow two-story house common in South Carolina that is a combination of Georgian and Federal styles.

Schweitzer had very definite ideas of what she wanted to include in her home; ideas culled from old copies of Colonial Home magazine, as well as a trip to Charleston where she fell in love with the historic Nathaniel Russell home.

Schweitzer's vision as well as her background as an interior designer made designing her house as complicated as it would be for a fellow architect, Cody said.

Yet, the partnership worked partially because, as Cody said, "We're good listeners," and partially because he had visited Charleston and understood what Schweitzer wanted to create.

That vision included an office and sample room for Schweitzer's business that would be separate yet connected to the living quarters of the house. The business area opens off a spacious foyer on the north side of the house. Connecting the home and work areas is a long hallway that is almost a room unto itself because of its width.

The original plans, developed with another architect, didn't include such spaciousness.

"Those plans had a long, narrow hallway that looked like a bowling alley," Schweitzer said. "It wasn't a very efficient use of space."

Cody achieved spaciousness through several elements that included columns in the family room as well as placing the stairway to the second floor in the middle of the house.

"Realistically a stairway belongs in the middle of the hallway, not in the front and that's even more difficult to achieve in a narrow home," Cody said.

The residence portion of the structure is where the yin and yang really comes to light. The recycled theme of the exterior paver bricks is also present here, used to create an alcove for a stove in the kitchen as well as the fireplace in the family room.

The latter contains the largest concentration of green elements, with reclaimed beams originally from Canada worked into the ceiling as well as a repurposed wooden floor that extends into the living room and kitchen.

A hand-painted mural by artist Wendy Gresmer of Batavia graces the winding stairway to the second floor, as well as the upper hallway. Gresmer also painted the gold leaf on the ceiling of Schweitzer's master bath.

The second floor has three bedrooms as well as large laundry room that Schweitzer wanted on that level for convenience. A Southern-style porch graces the first and second floor eastern elevation, which ironically many visitors think is the home's main entrance.

The most significant green element, however, is the one that remains unseen. A geothermal heating and cooling system installed by Wiesbrook Sheet Metal of Plainfield controls the inside climate.

Geothermal systems work via circulating a water-based solution through a loop system buried four to six feet below the ground where temperatures stay relatively constant throughout the year. Instead of using two mechanical systems, only one is needed to heat and cool the building.

Landscaping outside Schweitzer's home is still a work in progress as she has slowly added to the gardens since the building was completed in 2006. Brick pavers are used for the walkway in the front garden, but unlike the ones used for the exterior elevation and inside elements, these names of the companies that manufactured them - Purington, which once was the largest manufacturer of brick pavers in the world, and Metropolitan, among others, are clearly visible.

"We turned the bricks inside out for the exterior so that the names weren't visible," Schweitzer said.

What matters most, however, is that this is a structure that works, from a business perspective as well as a residential one. Schweitzer has her business end of the home, but can easily bring clients into the residential area to show her design skills.

"I built this house to suit my purposes," she said.