McHenry County home tour opens some creaking doors

The private history of this year's McHenry County Historic HomesTour sounds like a string of titles for the old Perry Mason whodunitsby Erle Stanley Gardner.

We have the cases of the incautious philanderer, the tattletalerelative and the disinherited daughters - and that's just in onehouse in Marengo.

Read on to learn of the sexual standards of the stagecoach line,or why the Kennedy Way Station near Woodstock was for women only.But first, a capsule view of the June 1 Historic Homes Tour and thebuildings on it.

The five-hour bus tour visits the 1895 West Harmony one-roomschoolhouse and the 1847 Gannon log cabin, both now on the grounds ofthe McHenry County Historical Museum in Union, as well as the 1857Harley Wayne house, two blocks down the street.

The red brick Wayne house, an Italianate-Greek Revival amalgamwith vivid Victorian trim that in 1989 won a "painted ladies"contest, was built by a supporter of the Union cause who died at thebattle of Shiloh.

In Marengo, the tour takes a look at the 1885 Francis W. Patrickhouse and the 1872 Amos Coon home. Down the road is a countrycrossroads, the ghost town of Franklinville.

There we see the 1885 Seneca Town Hall, once the scene of dancesand box socials, and still used for civic purposes, such as voting.A few yards to the west is the Franklinville Methodist Church, asmall but fine Greek Revival building constructed by parishioners in1849.

Finally, near Woodstock there is the Kennedy Way Station, a redbrick house built in 1853. Not on the tour is the home wherecartoonist Chester Gould, creator of Dick Tracy, grew up. Woodstockmakes up for that June 19-23 this year with Dick Tracy Days, to raisefunds to establish a museum for Chester Gould memorabilia.

The tour starts at 8 a.m. with coffee, rolls and a slide show atthe McHenry County College, U.S. 14 and Lucas Road. It concludesback at the school with a buffet lunch, included in the tour cost of$20.

Along the way, a pianist will play at the Kennedy Way Station.An 1880s school marm will lecture at the one-room school. And theJudith Svalander School of Ballet will re-enact a town dance at theSeneca Town Hall.

And now, back to the case of the incautious philanderer. That'sAmos B. Coon, and wouldn't we like to know whether Harriet DamonCoon's passionate involvement in the Free Methodist Church camebefore or after she found out about her husband's extramaritalactivities.

She was told about them, according to the present owners of thehome, by two daughters who saw their father slipping out of aneighbor's house. Amos B. was so enraged by this accurate reportingthat he disinherited his daughters.

The house stayed in the Coon family until 1958, when it wasacquired by people who ran it as a boarding house, with muchresultant cutting up of rooms and adding of bathrooms. In 1984Shelly and Gary Rogers bought the two-story Italianate structure andbegan restoration.

They had been living in a three-bedroom house built on a cementslab in Streamwood. "We did want an older home," Shelly sighed.

It was perfect for her husband, Gary, who manages an auto bodyshop in Palatine and "has to be doing something all the time."

Shelly had turned down the Coon house because when she saw it,"there was so much stuff you couldn't get down the hallway. Therewere stoves, refrigerators and stuff stacked almost to the ceiling."

Then someone else bought the house the Rogerses had chosennearby, and they decided to tackle the Coon house after all.

"There were four or five layers of wallpaper in the kitchen, andabout the same number in the dining room. The final layer I foundmatched pretty closely with the wallpaper I got at the WallpaperDiscount Center in Belvidere," Shelly said.

The cut-rate paper looks like an expensive reproduction andsuits the house beautifully.

Their huge kitchen used to be two rooms: an inside winterkitchen and a porchlike, uninsulated summer kitchen. Gary threw thetwo together, adding in a little space that used to be outside, andnow provides open space looking into the glass-enclosed side porchthat serves as a greenhouse.

They stripped out tile ceilings, bared the wood rafters andreplaced linoleum floors with pine boards in both parts of thekitchen and in the adjacent dining room. The dining room got a newtin ceiling.

The Rogers kitchen is as close as you can come to a genuineearly 20th century farm kitchen and still meet 1990s building codes.

There's a wooden sink cabinet Gary built, housing andhalf-concealing a modern sink. It has a turn-of-the-century luxury,an indoor pump right next to the sink. Right now it's for looks, butGary plans to hook it up to city water pretty soon.

A 1920s refrigerator with circular condenser on top holds milkand juices. A more powerful refrigerator-freezer hides in thepantry.

There are two old stoves in operation. One is an old Roper gas stove on high legs, with a raised oven. That's where Shelly cooks.Out in the former summer kitchen, to which the heating ducts wouldn'treach, is a wood-burning range that helps heat the place in winter.It's not black cast iron, but the very latest enamel-finished modelbuilt to appeal to a modern farm wife in 1940.

Gary built the long kitchen table and the series of farm cabi nets. He found old counter-top cabinets or bureaus, installed them,and built tall, open shelving units to fit above them. Shelly madeclassic pantry curtains to frame each of them.

An old oak telephone booth next to the gas stove not only housesa phone, its back side conceals the door to the cellar. Hangingabove the stove is the little wire egg basket Gary's grandmother,Ruth Prust of Palatine, carried out to the hen house when she wasabout 6.

There's hardly an auction or flea market in 50 miles' range thatthe Rogerses haven't attended in their search for authentic,affordable furnishings - the kitchen butcher block, dining-roomlibrary table, clawfoot tub and the old dresser into which Gary builta basin for the downstairs bathroom.

Up front, a vast red mahogany rolltop desk dominates the roomthat was Amos Coon's office. This room and the front parlor haveheavy woodwork with unusual round molding standing out around theedges of doors and windows. The family is madly finishing up themusic room and courting room across the hall in time for thehousewalk.

And now, back to the Kennedy Way Station and its ladies-onlypolicy. Seems in the 1840s and 1850s in Illinois, it would have beena scandal to let unmarried men and women sleep under the same roofwhen traveling unescorted. So the ladies on the stagecoach stayed atthe Kennedy home, and the men spent the night at another house a goodmile away.