The Graham house, which was recently on the real estate market, was bought for $490,000 by a speculator whose only goal was to find a double lot in the Park Ridge to subdivide and build to make a quick profit.   A permit for demolition was applied for almost immediately after closing and demolition is scheduled for this Thursday or Friday.  There was almost no opportunity for the community, or outsiders, to have any input on the matter.
How sad it must be for some of the long time residents of Park Ridge to watch as their old town steadily disappears.  How must they feel as they watch their streets of small, humble, well built cottages and bungalows give way to mostly large, ostentatious, poorly designed and, all too often, cheaply built homes?   Most of these new structures hardly deserve to be called "architecture" and few are worthy to replace such a masterpiece as the Graham Residence.
It was back in the middle of the Great Depression that John Van Bergen created this exquisite residence for Mr. and Mrs. Graham.  It was an ingenious design, showing Van Bergen's mastery of three dimensional space.   The small structure actually has five levels of interior space.  It contains four bedrooms, three baths, an indoor two-car garage, an 18 foot high tent ceiling, parquet floors and a huge limestone fireplace in the living room.  It also has high tent ceilings in three of the bedrooms, and a large playroom with a second fireplace in the basement.  Constructed in 1937 with air conditioning, insulation and copper plumbing, the building was technologically state-of-the-art for that time.  The house was the first built in its subdivision. 
Only two families have lived in the house since it was built.  They were the Grahams, and then Robert and Violetta Buhler, who bought it from the Grahams in 1992.  Both families were good stewards of the property, taking superb care of the structure, and making only minor changes to it.  Until the demolition sale this past weekend,  the 60 year old building was in perfect physical condition and could have been a wonderful home to others for at least another 60 years.
Both the Graham and the Buhler families are terribly upset by its impending destruction. 

They all loved the house so dearly.  Last Saturday during the demolition sale, I toured the house for the last time with George Graham's granddaughter, Nancy.  I watched as she,  barely able to hold back the tears, tried to negotiate for the price of a single doorknob to take away with her as a momento.  As we left the house and stood outside at the curb,  she was still very emotional as she reminisced about the many times she spent in this house while growing up.
She won't be the only one with tears in her eyes as this superb piece of architecture is destroyed this week.  The loss of this building is a pitiful waste that will be shared by the whole community when it realizes that it has squandered a bit more of its own history.

Front entrance.  Notice the four square quarry tiles set into the concrete--This is how Van Bergen "signed" his houses.