Antioch house makes a historic turn

When you see a lovely old house that appears to have been sitting in the same place for close to a century, it is natural to wonder about the stories the home could tell.

In the case of one home in the Indian Point area of unincorporated Antioch, the story it could tell is a Cinderella tale of a very plain and serviceable house — inhabited by fascinating, wealthy and ambitious people — that many years later has finally been transformed into the charming and beautiful home it should have been years ago when those fascinating, wealthy and ambitious people still lived in it.

This charming, now-Southern Colonial, home is now on the market awaiting only its sixth owner.

Built in 1923 using a kit purchased from the Sears catalog, the home at 26675 W. Michigan Blvd. was originally used as a hunting lodge by members of one of the area's old families. There was nothing pretty or charming about it in those days. It was a plain Jane house.

Years later, when a Chicago industrialist named Charlie Ackerman, owner of Ackerman-Johnson Anchor Bolts, bought it, the house was still a plain Jane. But Ackerman loved the Chain O' Lakes region; had a plan to make the area even better; and needed a base of operations during his time there. The house served that purpose.

Ackerman devoted a sizable portion of his fortune to excavate 8-foot-deep channels through the marshy areas that natives of the area call “slough.” The idea was to connect the various lakes so people could travel by boat from one lake to another. A man named Joe Burgenser was already doing it elsewhere on the Chain, so Ackerman bought up hundreds of acres in the Indian Point area (bounded by Fox Lake on the east and Grass Lake on the northwest) and began digging his own channels, using tractors and drag lines, his sister-in-law, Dorothy Zika of Antioch, recalled recently.

His dream was to dig channels that would connect to Lake Marie so he could navigate his boat right into downtown Antioch, according to Peggy Taylor, current owner of the Ackerman house. He wanted to attract more people from Chicago to the area and felt that this was the way to do it.

Between the early 1930s when Ackerman purchased the home and 1955 when he died, Ackerman dug numerous channels and built the Ackerman Bridge on Ackerman Road. He also used the fill dirt from digging the channels to build up other areas of slough so houses could be built on them, said Chuck Haling, a longtime resident of the area.

“But before he could do everything he wanted to do, the laws changed and the Army Corps stopped him from digging any more channels,” Haling said.

“It was a hobby for Ackerman,” added Bob Martz, a full-time resident of the area since 1949. “He had more money than he knew what to do with, so this is what he did. He dug 8-foot-deep channels to connect the lakes. But he never bragged about what he did or what he had. He was a quiet man.”

And that quiet man lived in a modest, unpretentious home when he was at the Chain.

“He loved living in that house because he could look out the windows and see all of his diggings, as he called them,” Zika remembered. “He was so interested in being near those channels and seeing what he had created that he didn't pay a lot of attention to the house.”

So it wasn't large or plush. But it did have some luxurious touches like a system of electric bells to call household help to particular rooms, and a stair lift chair to get him upstairs to his bedroom. A garage was also added to the home while Ackerman lived there, undoubtedly to shelter his fancy Lincoln, about which stories still abound.

In 1946, the man whom everyone thought of as a confirmed bachelor, brought home a bride. Her name was Lillian and she was several decades his junior. According to Zika, who is Lillian's much younger sister, Lillian was working as a waitress at a Fred Harvey's Lunchroom in Union Station when Ackerman met her. In fact, many in the area assumed she was Ackerman's nurse when she arrived, but the former “Harvey Girl” was his first and only wife.

She continued to live in the house for 20 years after his death, finally selling it in 1975 and retiring to the South.

Twenty-six years and two owners later, Robert and Peggy Taylor bought the old house in 2001 because they loved the yard and the location along the Ackerman Channel (which is known for its great fishing) and they thought the house had potential.

They quickly conceived the idea to change the orientation of the house so the rear of the home faced the channel and the front faced the large yard. They also transformed it into a genteel Southern Colonial-style home with a wraparound porch. They incorporated the old enclosed porch (which was now on the side of the house) into the main floor plan and built an expanded master suite above it.

“We wanted to keep the character of the age of the house and keep it simple and elegant while using the original fir wood floors, which had been hidden under four layers of linoleum and carpet everywhere upstairs, in the kitchen and even on the stairs,” Taylor said.

“We gave it a Southern feel with shutters on all the windows and French doors everywhere and as it turns out, we ended up with a great entertaining house. We would have parties with tables set up on the big front porch and would open up the French doors and you could just circulate through the house,” she said.

They also added a fireplace to the living room and built a big red brick chimney on the front of the home to add to its historic feel. They also built a modern pier along the channel, replacing the rickety one that was there, and removed a 75-gallon water tank and motor that adorned the backyard when they arrived.

“It was great fun living for nine years in the house of the man our street was named after,” Taylor said. “Everywhere we went, people would tell us great stories about him.”

Zika, who lives down the road, is enchanted by what the Taylors did to her sister's house, wondering aloud why no one ever thought to make those changes before. In fact, she often brings visiting out-of-town family members over to see Lillian and Charlie's old home, proudly displaying the work the Taylors did.

Some of the special touches include taking old wood planks that had once been under the home's shingle roof and using them as paneling in the new powder room and laundry room; replacing aging windows with authentically-styled new ones; adding a large back porch facing the channel; adding a deep two-car garage; and choosing beadboard-style cabinets with antique-look handles for the kitchen.

They also added a geothermal heating and cooling system that is cutting edge technology, said Pat Kappeler of Lake Homes Unlimited. So, not everything is authentic to the time the home was built, which is for the best, in this instance.

The home is on the market for $395,000 and includes just under an acre of land. For more information, contact Kappeler at (847) 587-4200.