Behind the Aluminum Siding: What Hinsdale Is Choosing This Summer

For thirty-some years, a layer of aluminum siding covered the original dark-stained shingles of a house at 121 S. County Line Road. Nobody removed it. Nobody had to. When owners Lukas Ruecker and Safina Uberoi bought the 1894 property in 2021, they pulled back the cladding and found the shingles still there — some in decent shape, some not, all of them capable of being matched and stained once new ones fill the gaps.

Then they found something stranger. Behind one of the walls, the original French door opening was still there, intact. Someone had drywalled over it decades ago. One of the porch windows had been hidden the same way. "We just have to put the doors back," the project architect told the Hinsdale Historic Preservation Commission at its March 4 meeting.

That is what a serious restoration looks like: you find out what survived, and you work forward from there.

The Bagley House, the only Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home in Hinsdale, had been heading toward demolition when Ruecker and Uberoi stepped in. Neighboring houses on the same block had already come down. The $1.3 million asking price in 2021 was close to the value of the land alone — meaning the structure, architecturally, was worth less than nothing to a developer. Ruecker and Uberoi, who also own the Wright-designed Tonkens House in Cincinnati, bought it anyway. They hired Harboe Architects to prepare a full conservation plan. They applied for a local landmark designation. They committed to donating a preservation easement to the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy upon completion, so the house cannot be demolished by whoever owns it next.

Ruecker is targeting late 2026 or early 2027 to finish. The first floor rooms — entry hall, library, living room, dining room — will be restored to Wright's original intent. The octagonal library, similar in form to the one Wright later added to his own Oak Park studio, will be visible again from the street. Salvaged leaded glass and trim will be repurposed in the new side entrance rather than discarded. After more than a century of accumulation and alteration, the house will read like itself.

What made that outcome possible was a policy change nobody was expecting.

Village President Tom Cauley told the board in November 2024 that he had initially resisted the idea of using public money for private preservation. He changed his mind. By the time trustees voted on the Bagley House deal last fall, the village had approved or was actively considering grants for ten properties through the same program. The Bagley House agreement gave Ruecker and Uberoi a five-year property tax rebate worth roughly $13,000 in ceded village revenue, plus a $10,000 matching grant toward $323,000 in eligible construction costs.

Those numbers are small relative to the scale of the restoration. They matter for a different reason: the village created a financial structure that makes preservation more competitive against the teardown math. The preservation incentive program did not exist a few years ago. It exists now specifically because places like the Bagley House kept getting lost.

That is a policy shift, not a goodwill gesture, and it is worth understanding what it signals about the character of the place you live in.

The same instinct shows up at Burlington Park this summer, running through different channels.

The Hinsdale Fine Arts Festival turns 53 this year. On June 6 and 7, 85 to 100 juried artists will line the park from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days. No reproductions in the booths — original work only, artists present for the duration, judges awarding a $250 Best of Show prize named for Jim Cizek. The show was named Best Summer Art Show in Chicago's western suburbs by West Suburban Living for ten straight years, 2012 through 2022. In 53 years it has not moved, and it has not lost the format that makes it worth attending.

What is different this year is what comes five weeks later.

Amdur Productions, the Highland Park-based company behind regional art fairs across the Midwest, is launching a brand-new event in Hinsdale on July 4 and 5. The Hinsdale 4th for All: Family Festival and Art Fair starts the morning after the town's parade, runs through Sunday afternoon at Burlington Park, and brings 80 artists in media ranging from ceramics and sculpture to photography and fiber. This is the first year it exists. A companion juried show follows the same weekend.

So in 2026, Hinsdale gets two art weekends at Burlington Park instead of one — a long-established show in June and a new institution being built in July. That does not happen by accident. It happens in a town where the audience for original work is large enough, and consistent enough, that an outside promoter looks at the calendar and sees a gap worth filling.

Robbins Park is getting the same kind of treatment — not maintenance, but deliberate investment beyond the standard allocation.

The village's capital improvement plan had budgeted $180,000 to replace the playground equipment at Robbins Park, which is a reasonable estimate for a standard replacement. Then the Mather Giving Foundation donated $200,000 specifically to fund a custom treehouse-themed installation. Trustees approved a contract for $312,653 at their March 3 meeting. The gap between a $180,000 off-the-shelf replacement and a $312,653 custom playground is a decision — about what the park is for and what it should feel like to be a kid in it.

The treehouse theme is a detail. It matters because somebody proposed it, and the foundation funded it, and the board said yes.

There is a version of a Hinsdale summer that looks like it always has: the Fine Arts Festival, the parade, the Metra home on weekday evenings. That version is still available. But this year, there are enough specific departures from the default calendar that the summer reads as something more intentional.

The Wright house on County Line Road will be close enough to completion that its original shingle exterior may be visible for the first time in a generation. The Fine Arts Festival will put its 53rd round of juried work under Burlington Park's shade trees. A new art fair will take over the same park the morning after the Fourth of July parade — something that has never happened before. Robbins Park will have a custom playground that did not exist in any form last year.

Each one is the result of someone deciding that what was already here was worth more than a standard-issue replacement. The Bagley House nearly became a teardown lot. It is going to be a landmark instead. The village spent years watching older homes disappear; it is now offering property tax rebates specifically to reverse that math. Burlington Park could have had one art fair; it will have two. Robbins Park could have had a generic playground; it is getting a treehouse.

The pattern is consistent enough that it is worth naming: Hinsdale is in a moment of choosing what stays.

If you are thinking about your Hinsdale home — what it is worth right now, what buyers are paying for in this market, or what you should do before the spring selling season moves — Second City Agents works this market and knows what drives value here. Schedule a free market consultation and find out where your home stands.