History
Little is known about Isidore H. Heller and his family, but what is known has been compiled through personal interviews as well as census and county records. Heller was born in Austria in 1847, and his wife, Ida, was born in Wisconsin in 1857. In America, Heller worked at Wolf, Sayer, and Heller: Packers and Butcher’s Supplies, which was located on Fulton Street, Chicago, on the northwest side of the city. Heller and Ida were later married and had three children, including Walter Heller, a Chicago investment banker.
Heller purchased land in the Hyde Park area of Chicago from Jonas Hamburger on 2 January 1895 and commissioned Lloyd Wright to design the house in 1896. A building permit was issued on 13 July 1897, at a cost of $7.70, and named William Adams as the builder. The building was constructed on the 50 by 175 feet (15 by 53 m) lot in 1897. The total cost of the work is estimated at $12,500. In 1906, the lot was enlarged when Heller purchased an additional 25 feet (7.6 m) to the north of his original plot.
The Hellers lived in the house for about 16 years, until the death of Ida Heller on October 11, 1909. The house was sold to Francis Bickett on 18 June 1913, as records indicate that by 1915, Heller had been living in Silver Lake for some years. Bickett sold the house within a year to Charles McFarlane, and from 1924–39 the Heller House was owned and occupied by Joseph Mayer and his wife; the house became known as the "Joseph Mayer House" to local residents. The Mayers sold the home to Mr. and Mrs. Wilfred Fox in 1939, who reportedly made alterations to the home's third floor.
In 1948, George Watson purchased the home from Fox and owned it for the next 25 years, becoming the owner with the longest tenure. Lewis Bradford then bought the house in 1972, and had the exterior sandblasted. In 1977, Victor and Danielle Barcilon bought the house. They occupied it until 1987, when it was sold to David and Catherine Epstein, who sold the home to Serafino Garella and Judith Bromley, in 1995. They restored a bathroom and restored the master bedroom's fireplace. The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in the same year. The house was then sold in 2004 again to the current inhabitants the Goldstein family, who in 2006 restored the roof of the house.
Read more about this topic: Heller House
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation, because as a result of what happened in this week, the world is bigger, infinitely.”
—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)