Working it out: A coach house in Oak Park's historic district, owned by Chicago architect Mark Filoramo, is undergoing an extensive transformation.
Photos by JASON GEIL/Staff Photographer


Making a connection: The former coach house (left) will feature a kitchen, dining area and living room, with a large open loft above the kitchen. A newly built and energy efficient two-story structure (right) will be joined to the older dwelling by a foyer.


Stable structure: Workers from Weidner Custom Carpentry work on the beams in what will become a loft area in the home.

Mark Filoramo is something of an architectural Janus. Like the two-faced Roman god who looked to both the past and the future, Filoramo draws his inspiration from both past architectural glories and modern design sensibilities.

The Chicago architect, who currently lives with his wife and 4-year old son in a condo in Printer’s Row, purchased a 90-year-old coach house on the 50 by 100 foot property at 619 Pleasant in Oak Park last year.

The old garage/coach house has been gutted inside and will be modernized, while the exterior will be restored.

A two-story flat roofed structure is being built next to it. The ultra modern house will be clad in pre-formed concrete fiber panels, with a cement coating. The roof, which will have a 100-year warranty, will be “bio-foam,” an insulation-like material that will then be overcoated.

The two sections will be connected by a common foyer.

Filoramo, who expects to move into his new home by late spring, said he’s excited to be adding something that is both distinctively new while preserving and restoring a small but classic part of the past.

“I used to be a huge Frank Lloyd Wright buff,” said Filoramo, who grew up in New Jersey and moved to Chicago to study architecture at UIC in the early 1990s. Like Wright, he values both innovative ideas and the timeless interplay of interior and exterior spaces. Unlike Wright, he also loves Victorian architecture.

Filoramo’s new home will reflect both values. When it’s all done, the joined structures will total around 2,600 square feet — not huge by modern day standards, he acknowledges, but spacious and comfortable. It will also be as distinctive a home to be found in the area.

Filoramo said he’s intentionally accenting the differences between the two structures, built nearly a century apart, saying, “I want to exaggerate the differences. I love the contrast.”

The double faceted dwelling will also separate the Filoramo’s public and private domestic lives. The former coach house, which Filoramo refers to as “an old barn,” will feature a kitchen, dining area and living room, with a large open loft above the kitchen.

The new structure, or “private sector,” as Filoramo calls it, will have a master suite on the first floor, along with a laundry room and mechanical room. Two bedrooms and a bath will be on the second floor.

There will be a drainage trough and the rain water will be retained for use on the landscaping. He’s also installing a solar chimney.

“It’s a very efficient house,” said Filoramo.

Wright’s influence will be evident throughout both structures. All the lower floors in both the coach house and the addition will be finished concrete that encase tubing for hot water, providing quiet radiant heating throughout the home.

Filoramo acknowledged the problems with maintenance on Wright’s homes — the copper tubing Wright used to hold the heated water reacted with the concrete and corroded. That wasn’t known at the time, because Wright was the first to employ the technology.

Wright was, Filoramo said, literally too far ahead of his time. Modern materials have corrected most of the problems Wright encountered.

“He didn’t have the materials for his genius,” Filoramo said.

Like Wright before him, Filoramo is striving to facilitate an interplay of interior and exterior spaces in his design. Two joined but separate rear yard areas will function as key elements in the home design, one behind the renovated coach house, and the other off the master suite in the modern addition.

Like Wright, Filoramo is sensitive to the special relationships of the structures. “The original structure, the addition and the detached garage kind of frames the little space,” he said. “It’s like an outdoor room. It’s not a big space, but if you landscape it nicely, it’s going to be a really nice space.”

A second rear yard space, roughly the same size, will be viewed through large sliding doors off the master suite. A canopied walkway will connect the house to the garage, which will eventually be re-sided with the concrete fiber material used on the addition.

Filoramo endured a maddening snafu with the village housing department. He said he had filed all the plans and other paperwork for his building last May, then, waited for the approval. In August, he was told the village had lost the paperwork.

The then assistant housing department director Dan Jakes apologized for the mix up and offered to handle his paperwork personally. Unfortunately, two days before Filoramo was to have a final meeting with Jakes, he was laid off. When Filoramo checked back with the village, he was told Jakes hadn’t entered the new application paperwork into the village system. Even though he had emails and attachments documenting the process, Filoramo had to re-apply yet again.

“I could have been in the house already,” he said.

Work on the house finally started on Sept. 18.

Filoramo said he didn’t think village authorities would share his enthusiasm, but was pleasantly surprised at the level of acceptance of his design ideas.

“I thought, boy, they’re going to make me build some traditional prairie-style thing,” said Filoramo. “I was shocked by how supportive the preservation commission was. How supportive the zoning board was.”

The preservation commission, in fact, discourages many attempts to replicate previous architectural styles.

“They encourage people not to build an addition to match the original,” said Filoramo. “If you read the preservation material, they encourage you not to try to build an addition to match it. For one, (many) people don’t have the money to do it right. And the artisans or craftsmen don’t have the skill level to pull something like this off.”

Filoramo noted that substandard remodeling featuring cheap materials and poor workmanship is evident today on structures throughout Oak Park.

“If they would have just left what was there, they would have been fine,” he said. Instead, homeowners in the ’50s and ’60s too often opted to build poorly constructed approximations of the original designs, leading to accents that didn’t fit in with the original building. In some cases that process reoccurred several times, leaving an architectural muddle.

Filoramo said one such example was the entry foyer to the coach house, which was added on during the ’50s, and which he tore off.

“I’m all for saving stuff worth saving, but…” he said.

Another example is the former garage’s old wooden car entry door. During extensive remodeling in the early ’50s, it was replaced with two rather mundane looking window bays. Above them, along the second floor exterior, is a solid wood beam and decorative wood trim, all of which were covered over by stucco.

Filoramo is currently working with the village’s preservation committee for permission to restore it all back to its original appearance, except for the garage door, which will be replaced with period appropriate windows.

Filoramo will be saving at least one part of the coach house. He smiled as he stood inside and looked up at the exposed reddish brown floor joists.

“Those are clear Douglas Fir three by 10s,” he said. “There isn’t a knot in them. They’d cost $30 a foot nowadays.”

He plans to re-mill the old lumber and reuse it as part of the staircase in the addition.

Filoramo believes the finished home will be a special addition to the neighborhood. “It’s in the historic district, but basically, it’s a brand new house.”

Follow the progress

Those interested in reading updates on Filoramo’s progress in building his new home can log onto www.Goodbuildings.com. Click on News, and go to a blog with numerous photos documenting the stages of construction.

“I take pictures every other day or so,” said Filoramo.

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