Remodeling contractor in Beverly, Chicago

Building permits come from the City of Chicago Department of Buildings, and the city requires a licensed general contractor for permitted work. We pull the permit and book the inspections. The part that is particular to Beverly is landmark review.

Two Chicago Landmark districts sit inside the community area. The Longwood Drive District runs along Longwood between 98th and 110th streets, with three blocks of Seeley, and holds houses built from 1873 to 1929. The Walter Burley Griffin Place District covers the 1600 to 1800 blocks of 104th Place, a row of Griffin houses from 1909 to 1914. The Commission on Chicago Landmarks reviews proposed alterations in landmark districts, and its Historic Preservation Division staff review every permit application for work there. An addition, a porch rebuild or new windows on those blocks goes through that review as well as the normal permit.

There are also individual landmarks, including the two Frank Lloyd Wright American System Built Houses at 10410 and 10541 S. Hoyne. The six Rock Island stations at 91st, 95th, 99th, 107th, 111th and 115th streets form their own landmark district, which covers the stations, not the houses around them.

People often mix up the city districts with the Ridge Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and spreads across Beverly and Morgan Park. The National Park Service says National Register listing places no restrictions on what a private owner does with the property, within local law. So on most ridge blocks the city permit is the only approval you need. On Longwood and Griffin Place, the city landmark rules apply on top.

CMAP's community snapshot counts 77.8 percent of Beverly's homes as detached single family houses, against 25.6 percent for Chicago as a whole. 47.6 percent were built before 1940 and another 44.2 percent between 1940 and 1969. The median house has 7.4 rooms, and almost a quarter have four bedrooms. These are big houses by city standards.

On Longwood the styles run from Italianate and Carpenter Gothic to Queen Anne, Shingle, Prairie School and Renaissance Revival. A house that old has usually been updated in pieces. Before we price a kitchen or bathroom we open up enough to see what is behind the plaster: the age of the wiring, whether the drains are still cast iron, and how earlier owners rerouted the plumbing.

With seven or more rooms there is usually space to work with. A butler's pantry, a back porch that was enclosed decades ago or a small rear bedroom can often be folded into a kitchen or turned into a second bathroom without adding on. Moving a wall in a house this age means checking what it carries first, so we look at the framing in the basement and attic before we commit to a layout.

Upstairs bathrooms in prewar houses often sit over the main rooms. New tile and a bigger shower add weight, and old floor joists may have been notched for earlier pipes. We check and repair that before the tile goes down.

Beverly is high ground. The city's landmark listing for Longwood describes the ridge at 50 to 80 feet above Lake Michigan, and FEMA's flood map shows no Special Flood Hazard Area inside the community area. That does not keep basements dry. Chicago's Department of Water Management says the common cause of basement flooding is the sewer. In heavy storms the mains fill and water pushes back into basements through private drains.

Chicago runs a combined sewer, so roof water and household waste share the same pipe. Older city code required downspouts to tie into the house drain, which adds to the load in a storm. Before we finish a Beverly basement we look at the floor drains, the downspouts and any backflow protection, and we choose wall and floor materials that survive getting wet.

The city zoning map puts most of Beverly's residential blocks in RS1 and RS2, the two lowest density house districts. Under the Chicago Zoning Ordinance, RS1 allows a floor area ratio of 0.50 and RS2 allows 0.65. In both, the side setbacks must add up to 30 percent of lot width, and the rear setback for a detached house is 28 percent of lot depth or 50 feet, whichever is less. Height is capped at 30 feet.

Large lots help, but a big house on a wide lot can already be close to its floor area limit. We run the numbers for your lot before design starts, and on landmark blocks we plan the addition to suit the review as well as the code.