Rally aims to save historic Naperville home

About 70 people gathered Saturday morning near downtown Naperville to show their support for saving a rundown Queen Anne Victorian mansion on Chicago Avenue.

Signs bearing the legends, "Save Big Blue," and "The Right Thing - Save the Mansion" were slung around adults' and children's necks and tacked to trees along the thoroughfare, where neighbor Tom Ruiz shouted into a bullhorn, "Save the mansion, don't tear it down," as passing motorists honked their horns.

The house, built in 1893, was purchased last December from its longtime owners by Sue Cobb.

Though Sue Cobb, and her husband, Chris, have applied to the city for permission to tear it down, Sue Cobb said last week that the couple now intends to sell it and that they may have found a buyer willing to rehab the building rather than tear it down. She said they looked at demolition after rehab proved too expensive for them.

Ruiz, who has lived on the corner of Wright Street and Chicago Avenue for nine years, said he reacted with alarm both to plans to tear the structure down and to auction its interior fixtures.

"I was totally outraged. I love history. The whole reason I bought my home here was for the character of the neighborhood," said Ruiz. "We decided we have to say something. Once it's gone, it's gone forever."

"I grew up here (in Naperville)," said Sue Mangers, sister of the house's former owner, Charlene O'Neill. "I've got a little bit of background here and it would be a shame to lose it."

"It's got a lot of special meaning to a lot of people," said Gary Hood, who lives about a block away from the 115-year-old blue house at 432 E. Chicago Ave. "We think it may actually qualify as a landmark."

About 20 neighbors collectively applied to the city Wednesday for landmark status for the house. A petition supporting that application was circulated and signed at Saturday's gathering.

The process of seeking such a designation would stave off exterior demolition for about four months while the city's Historic Sites Commission reviews the application, a public meeting on the issue is held and the city council takes the matter under consideration, Hood said.

The Cobbs postponed an auction, originally set for Saturday, of the home's interior features such as moldings, trims, doors, windows, fireplaces and light fixtures. Several potential bidders, unaware that Saturday's auction was canceled, said they were surprised to find a rally going on rather than an auction.

Hood hailed the halting of the house's demolition and the pre-demolition auction.

"We've succeeded in that, so that's good," he told the crowd, urging neighbors interested in saving the house to attend a hearing on landmark status set for August.