1990 - Edgewater Glen

1990 Fall Tour of Homes
Edgewater Glen
September 16, 1990

Welcome to the Second Annual Edgewater Historical Society Home Tour

Editor’s note: To respect the privacy of the homeowners while making the historical information available for research, most names and street addresses have been removed from the online version of the “tour booklet.” The original printed booklets are all available at the Edgewater Historical Society Museum.

Images and text for this online “tour booklet” were copied from the printed booklet. Copyright © 1990 Edgewater Historical Society.

For individual home descriptions, select an address at the left.

John Lewis Cochran is credited with being Edgewater’s founder. In 1886 he subdivided the land along the lakeshore, beginning at Foster, and gave the area the name “Edgewater.” Cochran’s development of this area encouraged other developers and landowners to consider sub-dividing. The foremost of these was one of Edgewater’s earliest settlers, Nicholas J. Kransz.

Nicholas J. Kransz came to the area in 1843 with his brother Hubert and a cousin, Theodore Moeis. The three men worked for a farmer named Riess. They were not paid until 1846, when Riess gave them title to 120 acres of land bounded by Clark, Edgewater, Glenwood and Devon. They built a farmhouse at the corner of Clark and Ridge, that was later known as the Seven Mile House (the distance from downtown Chicago). They were among the many Luxembourgers who immigrated to this part of the state in the mid 19th century. The men did well truck farming and selling their vegetables - chiefly celery - at the South Water Market.

As time passed, Nicholas made plans to marry Margareth Faber. The other two moved on, one to California and the other to the Black Hills in search of gold. Nicholas and Margareth had nine children, with five living into adulthood: Nicholas Jr., Peter, Henry, Mary and Annie. All of the children eventually built homes in the area. The home of Nicholas Jr. is on our tour. Mary married Bernard Weber of the National Brick Company and Annie married Nicholas Schrupt, who worked in insurance. Both of the sons-in-law became involved in the later development of Edgewater.

In 1859, Nicholas Kransz sold the land North of Granville, claiming that it was useless for farming. In 1883, he sold the land south of Ridge and his son Peter built a house there. The township of Lakeview put in the roads Grand (Granville) and Southport (Glenwood) in 1886. Then in 1896, Kransz died and his sons and sons-in-law began to plan the sale and subdivision of the remaining farmland.

On September 26, 1903, a permit was issued to the Weber-Kransz Company to build 50 houses. In a year that was a dismal one for new construction, this project was the largest ever proposed in Edgewater up to that date. Five of the houses were built on Granville and the rest were to be on the 1400 and 1500 blocks of Hood. The estimated cost was to be $2,000 per house. Of course, this price would go up if you wanted some of the options offered by the builder. These options included a fireplace, built in mirrors, more ornate hardware and slightly larger rooms. Construction of these 50 houses was by the B.F. Weber Company, which also served as the architect.

Our tour today is mainly in the first and second Kransz additions to Edgewater. We also include two buildings in Cochran’s Fourth Addition to Edgewater which he subdivided in 1893. The area is truly eclectic with a range of housing styles showing the influences of Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, Craftsman and Prairie. All of the houses on the tour were constructed between 1893 and 1920.