Laura Dillman of Homewood stood by the chain linked fence surrounding the remains of the Triumph Building on Aug. 18 and reminisced about the people and stores that called the place home.
Demolition of the Triumph Building, at the southwest corner of Ridge Road and Martin Avenue in Homewood, began Aug. 16.
Razing the building makes way for a new four-story structure that will house 36 apartments and an upscale restaurant.
Members of Dillman’s family worked in Bianchi’s Restaurant in the 1980s, she said. She ticked off a number of other stores she once shopped in.
She found the demolition of the long-vacant building to be bittersweet.
“This building has so many memories. It was great while it lasted,” she said.
At the same time, she lauded Mayor Richard Hofeld and the village board and staff for working hard to redevelop the site after the building lost its viability.
“I appreciate the fact that they wanted to do something instead of just let it sit here and be vacant,” she said. “That speaks volumes for our town. They understand the history of Homewood is very important. It’s very dynamic. We need to embrace it.”
Historic transformation
Hofeld said two projects will have a big impact on the downtown area: the new building, dubbed the Hartford Building, and the major renovation of the Homewod train station, which will include a new building at the T-intersection of Ridge Road and Harwood Avenue.
“The downtown will be more or less transformed with the addition of these two buildings.” Hofeld said.
Howntown Homewood has changed quite a lot since its earliest days in the 1850s. The first businesses emerged after the Illinois Central Railroad established a station. It proved to be the seed for the new village.
But the look of the downtown area has not changed much in recent decades.
Local historian Jim Wright said the main changes have been aesthetic facade improvements during the 1960s and ‘70s, although he would dispute the use of the word “improvements” to describe some of the projects.
A couple of them produced a fairly dramatic new look to specific buildings, including the reshaping of the building on the northeast corner of Ridge and Harwood, originally Mueller’s Tavern. What once was a turreted Victorian-era building was converted to a modern white-brick single story structure. The former Homewood State Bank building, now La Banque Hotel on the northwest corner of Ridge and Martin, was built in 1925 in a Greek revival style that was common for banks at the time. Then it was given a sleek modern facade in 1974.
The last big-impact structure? The Triumph Building.
Wright said it was built in the 1950s and replaced what had been the private home of Henry Zimmer, an important early businessman.
The home was converted to Cordt Funeral Home. Years later the business moved to the Fred Gold home on Dixie Highway, now the location of the Homewood Science Center.
Economic impact
Homewood officials recognized the Triumph Building as a potential site for redevelopment a number of years ago. The building fell into disrepair and tenants became fewer.
Village Manager Jim Marino said village officials began working in earnest on the project in 2014. By late 2016, the building was empty, but former owner and namesake Josephine Triumph was reluctant to sell.
In the fall of 2016, the village thought a deal was done. Third Coast Development had a contract to purchase the Triumph Building, but the contract expired before finiancing was complete, and by summer 2017, the firm withdrew its offer.
In May 2018, the village was finally able to obtain the site. The board of trustees approved the purchase of the building for $660,000. A year later, the village sold the building to HCF Homewood LLC for $1.
That transaction was a loss, but Marino said the new building represents an investment in the future economic health and social vitality of the whole downtown area.
“Successful downtowns need residential. They need density. They need foot traffic,” he said, noting that more people living downtown will provide better support for existing businesses and possibly attract new ones.
“People who live in those apartments, they are going to frequent the retail shops and the restaurants. That’s what’s important.”
The project follows recommendations in the village’s 2005 Downtown Master Plan that emphasizes an increase in residential units in the area.
Marino said village officials hope the completion of the Hartford Building will attract more interest from developers. The village owns two other downtown sites, the former Bogart’s Charhouse and the former Savoia T’Go restaurants, both on Dixie Highway. Both could support residential or mixed-use developments.
“We’re hoping this will be the catalyst project,” Marino said. “It will show developers that a project is feasible and it’s worthwhile to invest in our downtown.”
Marino said the process on the Hartford Building has taken longer than officials hoped, and he acknowledged local residents have wondered whether anything would ever happen. Big projects always take time, he said, and this one had a number of hurdles to get over, from extensive negotiations with Triumph, the failed deal with Third Coast and after HFC Homewood had its plan put together, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and caused more delay.
“We’re tenacious. That’s a large reason why this is happening. We stuck with it through the years,” he said.
New building, new name
Marino also noted during a recent interview: “This is the last time I’m going to refer to it as a the Triumph Building.”
Village officials want to turn the page, and Marino said he’s going to refer to the site as the home of the Hartford Building.
The new building’s name honors James Hart, the early property owner who probably arrived in the area just before 1850. James Hart School is named after him.
Hart filed a plat in 1853 for what would become downtown Homewood. He called it Hartford. Hart recognized the business opportunities inherent in the construction of a train station in 1853 that was intended to serve Thornton, according to Wright’s book on the history of the village, “Homewood Through the Years.”
Business development near the train station took off, but the name didn’t stick, according to Wright. The village continued to be known as Thornton Station until 1869, when residents led by Jabez Howe petitioned the U.S. Postal Service to change the name to Homewood.
Aesthetic concerns
When the site plan was presented to the village board in November 2019, architect Jon Murawski said the design included elements that would help the building fit with the look of the downtown area.
The plan did not win universal approval, however. Wright, who in addition to being a local historian is the chairman of the village Appearance Commission, was the sole dissenting vote when the plan was considered by the commission. He remains concerned about one feature the architect didn’t have control over: size. He still believes four stories will be too tall to complement the existing buildings along Ridge Road, none of which are more than two stories.
“It’s going to be a really commanding presence. It’s going to be a looming presence,” Wright said. He would have preferred no more than three stories, or if it had to be four stories to be economically viable, it would have been better placed on the periphery of the downtown area.
Wright was quick to note that he is not opposed to the project itself or to redevelopment in general. His objection remains with the specific plan.
He is also not a fan of earlier exterior renovations from the latter half of the 20th century, when modern facades were installed on 19th and early 20th century buildings on Ridge Road. He thinks the downtown area lost valuable charm to remodeling projects.
“That was in an era when the attitude was anything old, let’s get rid of it,” he said. “If we still had some of the older facades, we might have a different opinion of that. If we had the turreted structure (Mueller’s Tavern) that would be embraced rather than thrown out. That wasn’t the mentality in the ‘50s and ‘60s. We wanted to modernize.”
Next steps
The Triumph Building was mostly demolished in just a few days. By Aug. 19, only a small portion of the east side still remained standing.
Crews turned to debris removal and site preparation. Construction was expected to begin within a few weeks, and developer Tim Flanagan said the exterior walls could be up before winter, allowing interior work to be completed during cold weather.
By this time next year, downtown residents could be welcoming three dozen new neighbors and trying out a new restaurant, Stoney Point Grill.