244 East First Street was built in 1893. It was a rare Chicago example of work by the prestigious architectural firm Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, of Boston. The firm was known for its commercial and institutional buildings including the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Public Library. The home was built for Carrie Mitchell—yes, her name alone was on the deed—wife of George H. Mitchell, the president of the Mitchell Granite Company. The residence was designated as a Historic Landmark by the Village of Hinsdale Board of Trustees in 2002 and placed on the Hinsdale Historical Society’s Register of Historic Buildings in 1993, just over three decades before it was demolished.
244 East First Street was of historical and architectural significance, as it was built by the firm Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge. George Foster Shepley, Charles Rutan, and Charles Allerton Coolidge were graduates of Harvard and MIT. All worked at the office of the renowned architect Henry Hobson Richardson, who designed the Glessner House in Chicago. Richardson is credited with developing the “Shingle Style” of architecture in the 1880s and used it for many of his residential designs. He also employed masonry with the Shingle Style, which became known as “Richardson Romanesque.”
After Richardson’s death in 1886, Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge entered into a partnership together and finished Richardson’s works in progress, going on to become one of the most successful architectural firms in the country. Their designs moved away from the Romanesque characteristics associated with Richardson’s style and towards the Renaissance Revival style, which was gaining popularity at the time.
The firm was known for its commercial and institutional buildings, so 244 East First Street was a rare example of its residential design work. Among the firm’s early commissions include: the Stanford University campus in 1892; the Ames Building, one of the most acclaimed structures of the period—the second tallest building in Boston, in 1894; many buildings at Harvard University; the Chicago Public Library in 1893; and the Chicago Art Institute in 1897.
Work of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge.
The residence at 244 East First Street was located at the intersection of one of Hinsdale’s few remaining brick-paved streets in the Robbins Park Historic District. It was constructed in the Victorian Renaissance Revival style favored by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge.
The first owner of the home was Carrie Mitchell—her name alone is on the deed—wife of George H. Mitchell who was the president of Mitchell Granite Company in Chicago. The Mitchells were from Massachusetts, which may explain their choice of hiring Boston-based Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge. Mitchell designed multiple granite monuments including numerous Civil War monuments.
In 1908, Alfonso G. Dugan purchased the home. He was the Western Manager of the Hartford Fire Insurance Company. One of his sons, Hugh G. Dugan, joined the Royal Flying Corps in 1917 during World War I and spent 9 months in a German prisoner-of-war camp after his plane was shot down. Hugh was a Hinsdale civic leader and author of the local history book Village on the County Line (1949) and History of the Hinsdale Sanitarium and Hospital. He was one of the primary forces behind the restoration of the Graue Mill and president of the DuPage County Historical Society.
The fifth family to own the home was that of Warren and Nancy Furey, both doctors. Anne Furey, their daughter, found that some of the porch had been removed by 1910, a portion of the porch had been removed and that the front room of the home was once a library and music room—two separate rooms—but a fireplace was removed, and the wall broken down to make one large room, which was rumored to have hosted lots of cocktail parties in the 1940s. In 1941, the original frame boards of the house were covered with siding. Subsequent owners only made small renovations to the home with little changes made to the original structure.
The home contained a large great center entry hall with a 37-foot living room off the entrance. There were four master-sized bedrooms and four baths on the second floor plus two large finished rooms and a bath on the third floor.
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