• 2228 N. Kedzie Boulevard

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Year of construction … 1895
    Original cost to build … unknown
    Architect … Hessenmueller & Meldahl
    Original owner … Henry Gainer
    Occupation … Furniture Store Owner

  • The Henry Gainer House is from Chicago’s opulent 1890s. It and its neighbor to the north were designed by the same architects and built at the same time by the business partners, who happened to be brothers-in-law — Henry Gainer and Ignatz Koehler.


    Adjacent 50-foot-wide by 212-foot-deep lots were purchased in 1894 for $4,500 each. At the time, there was only one other house nearby on this side of the street and none on the opposite side. While these large boulevard parcels were desirable, their high cost kept buyers away until prices actually started to decline due to the economic “Panic of 1893.”


    The Gainer House was initially 27 feet wide by 68 feet long. Architects Hessenmueller & Meldahl described it in a February 1895 building periodical as planned to have “stone fronts and pressed brick and stone sides, oak interior finish, mantels, gas and electric fixtures, the best of sanitary improvements, electric light, etc.” Note that electricity was still considered a relatively new technology for homes. A building permit was issued the next month.


    The residence is designed in the Romanesque Revival style popularized by Boston architect Henry Hobson Richardson. From the 1880s through to the turn of the century, Chicago architects designed houses, flats, and lofts in the style because clients demanded it. Its characteristics are massive rusticated stone walls, deeply inset windows, rounded arches and rounded towers with conical roofs. Owners with the means of a Gainer or a Koehler desired this appearance of strength and permanence.

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    Kedzie Boulevard Looking North from Palmer Square c. 1909 (Gainer House at far left). Logan Square Preservation.

  • Frank William Hessenmueller and Jens Jetmark Meldahl were hardly among the top architects in the city. They may have been chosen because they had done commercial work for the partners, and did an addition to the home in 1896. They had recently designed large apartment buildings around the city using stone and pressed brick. And it was easy to design in the Romanesque Revival style since it was well-defined and there were plenty of local examples to study and copy.


    The street façade of the Gainer House checks all of the style requirements listed above. The limestone was rough-cut (often referred to as ashlar or ruff-hewn). The front windows end in semicircular arches (1), and many contain expensive curved glass. There is a circular tower with a conical top (2), and another partial tower with a smaller cone. It is this lack of symmetry that makes the style unique and appealing to the eye.


    Usually there is very little carved ornament in Romanesque Revival residences. Here, ornament is limited to a small egg-and-dart pattern around the windows (3). The roof is tall and covered in the original tile. The gutters and downspouts are the original copper. Together, these elements give the house the look of a small French château.


    Given the stature of the house otherwise, it is surprising that the porch and the side porte-cochère are built of wood (4). Maybe the architects wanted to add an element of color to an otherwise drab grey front, or this detail was just a custom of the day.


    The building’s sides look completely different from the front. Because these façades could be seen from the street due to the wide lots, finished red brick, and not common brick, was used. Replicating the expensive street façade was not considered necessary. The architects added attractive details such as bays, brick rustications, and large, arched dormers encased in copper.

  • Key Architectural Features

    1. Windows end in semicircular arches
    2. Circular tower with a conical top
    3. Egg-and-dart pattern
    4. Wood porch and porte-cochère
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    Henry Gainer House c. 1970, Logan Square Preservation

  • The following year, Henry Gainer constructed a $2,000, two-story, red brick barn that today is referred to as a coach house. The barn would have held carriages, horses and feed, and likely housed a coachman (and possibly his family). In 1905, Gainer bought the still-vacant 50-foot parcel on the south side.


    Subsequent owners, including the most recent, have done a great job in preserving and maintaining its appearance. The last major change was in 1907, when Gainer built a sizable addition and the house was converted to a flat building.


    Marked and subtle variations of the Romanesque Revival style can be spied through the tall trees that almost completely obscure the Ignatz Koehler House; it was no copy. There are hints that this building was not maintained as well as its neighbor, however. Still, a 2020 asking price of more than $1.5 million demonstrates how desirable the area has again become.


    These adjacent double lots (the city standard is 25 feet) afforded a side driveway that was a luxury in 1895 Chicago. Soon, they were converted from horse-and-buggy to automobile use. Still today, a driveway is a rare thing to see on the boulevards, but a few can be found in Logan Square.

  • The Gainers and the Koehlers

    Henry Gainer was born in Ohio in 1856 to immigrant parents who hailed from German Bohemia. His wife, Margaret (née Flamming), was born to German parents in Port Washington, Wis. In the 1880 U.S. Census, the couple and their one-year-old son, Edward, lived on Milwaukee Avenue on Chicago’s near northwest side. That same year, Margaret’s elder sister, Louisa, married Ignatz Koehler. He had come to Chicago from Austria-Hungary as a child.


    It was also the year that the brothers-in-law formed Gainer & Koehler to sell furniture (Gainer had previously owned a “crockery” business). The families lived and worked at various locations along Milwaukee Avenue close to Division Street. The business prospered, eventually giving them the resources to build large homes in Logan Square.


    Both the Gainer and Koehler Houses were built as single-family residences. The 1910 U.S. Census lists the residents at No. 2228 as Henry, Margaret, son Edward, daughter Ethel, and Henry’s widowed father, William. There also was a live-in female servant and a male handyman, who probably lived in the coach house.

     

    A year after moving into the new house, Henry bought two adjacent lots about a block away on Sawyer Avenue. He then had Hessenmueller & Meldahl build him two frame flats and offered them to his siblings. Two — Herman and Christopher — were Chicago policemen.

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    First Polish-American Family of Chicago

    The Schermann family would stay in the house at No. 2228 until the mid-1980s. Patriarch John Schermann was well-known throughout Chicago. Born in the city on December 13, 1863, he was a son of the first Polish family to settle in Chicago. His father Anton (born Smarzewski) was also one of the founders of St. Stanislaus Kostka parish.


    John was a police lieutenant during the Haymarket Riots (his gun is preserved at the Chicago History Museum), a saloon owner on Noble Street, and a Republican alderman for the then-16th Ward before getting into the insurance business. After he died in an explosion at his country home in McHenry, Ill., on August 14, 1924, the funeral at St. Sylvester Catholic Church in Palmer Square was attended by a huge crowd and included a horse-drawn carriage and other honors.

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    His wife, Mary, and unmarried children, Kathryn and Charles, continued to live in one of the flats. Another son, Anthony, became estranged. The women had frequent fights with tenants that made the Chicago newspapers. They tried to sell the building in 1945.


    Mary would die there at age 79 in 1961. Kathryn stayed on after her brother, who lived with her all his life, died in 1981. The house was said to have had no electricity or heat at the time of her death two years later. Neighbors remember her as an eccentric. She was an accomplished pianist and artist who wore her original clothing from 1920s. Her odd behavior might be explained by the fact that she witnessed her father’s death and was herself burned during the explosion.


    At the neighboring Koehler House, the family had welcomed their daughter’s new husband and a grandchild into the house without enlarging it. Louisa died there in September 1923; Ignatz, in December 1936; and daughter Margaret Wenigman, in September 1940. When the property came up for sale in 1957, it was listed with a four-room English basement flat, a four-room apartment in the coachhouse, and a nine-room main house.


    Brother-in-law and business partner, Henry Gainer, died one year after Ignatz. Sons and grandsons continued the Gainer & Koehler name into the 1950s. For a few years, there was a Gainer & Koehler Park at Southport and Schubert Avenues, where a sponsored baseball team played in the early 1900s.

  • Hessenmueller & Meldahl, Architects

    The architects — Hessenmueller & Meldahl — practiced together from time to time between 1890 and 1907. As partners, they had some expertise in designing buildings for furniture businesses. In 1896, they designed the Wicker Park Hall while working out of an office on State Street. That building still stands at 2044 West North Avenue in only slightly altered form.


    Frank Hessenmueller had started his career as a draftsman in Cleveland, Ohio. By 1910, he left Chicago, first for the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and then for New York City. By the 1940 U.S. Census, he was living with his third wife in Somers, N.Y., and working for the Works Projects Administration (WPA).


    Of Meldahl, the Chicago Tribune dated July 14, 1894 wrote, “The wedding of Miss Clara A. Johnson, daughter of Capt. William O. Johnson, 666 N. Hoyne Ave., to Mr. Jens J. Meldahl, son of the royal architect of the House of Denmark and nephew of the Admiral of the Danish Navy, will take place this evening at 7:30 o’clock at the home of the bride. Three hundred guests are asked to the wedding.”


    Jens Meldahl continued to practice architecture in Chicago until he and his wife moved to Delavan, Wis., in 1930 and then joined their son’s family in Madison in 1935. His son happened to be an engineer with the WPA. When Jens died in 1946, he too, was living in the town of Somers, but this one was in the state of Wisconsin.

    - M.N.P

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