Hinsdale's Most Famous Architect Also Designed a Paint Store and a Gas Station

At 8 E. First St., a brick gable sits on Tuscan columns over the sidewalk. Stone pilasters frame the entrance, the cornice wraps back at the corners, and a round oculus window sits high in the front gable. R. Harold Zook designed it in 1944 for a paint store, the Schweidler & Mewherter Building. Since January it has been DeNucci's Italian, which took over from Il Poggiolo after that restaurant closed in June 2025 following 17 years on the corner, as Hinsdale Patch reported.

That portico is a Zook building. So is the slate-roofed former filling station on Garfield Street, and so is an old post office on Hinsdale Avenue. Everyone in Hinsdale associates Zook with storybook cottages, and nearly all of those are private homes. On Saturday, Nov. 14, the Hinsdale Historical Society will sell $200 tickets for a trolley ride to see three of them. His commercial buildings downtown are there for anyone with a free afternoon to see, and plenty of people have eaten or shopped in them without ever hearing his name.

A paint store, a gas station, a post office

In 2003, Historic Certification Consultants surveyed downtown Hinsdale for the village. The survey credits Zook with four commercial buildings and one remodel inside the downtown area. Each was built for an ordinary errand.

The Garfield Street building is the one with the most story behind it. The survey calls it the oldest standing gas station in downtown Hinsdale. The Brewer Brothers built it in 1929 and chose Zook to design it, and he gave them a brick Colonial Revival office and garage with a cornice, a frieze, multi-light windows and classical door surrounds. Even in 2003 the survey's authors were complaining that the 1990s canopy over the pumps took away from it.

The pumps belong to the past now. For years the site was Dips & Dogs, and in June 2026 the village board approved an exterior plan and outdoor dining for Humble Patty. That's a walk-up burger and soft-serve concept from the owners of Fuller House, and the occupancy permit is tied to installing a safety barrier, according to The Hinsdalean. Before that, the village's Historic Preservation Commission reviewed the exterior changes, signs and outdoor seating because the building is a Zook design. DeNucci's went through the same commission for its awning and window signs in November 2025.

So in less than a year, two of Zook's five downtown buildings have gone before the commission for restaurant use, and both reviews ran with his name on file.

Why the storefronts don't look like the cottages

If you're looking for spider webs on First Street, you'll walk right past these buildings. The features people think of as "Zook" come from his houses. The survey lists them as thatched roofs, spider-web windows with leaded glass, V-shaped windows that stick out like the prow of a ship, chevron-patterned doors and layered moldings. The Historical Society's own checklist adds a few more:

• Faux-thatched or "rolled-eave" roofs
• Exposed beams
• Brick, stone, stucco and wood mixed on one facade
• Chevrons and V-shaped windows
• Cutout shutters, gates and window boxes

The Hinsdalean has also pointed out wavy shingle roofs, hand-forged hardware, chevron brickwork and stone chimneys.

Downtown, the survey sorts his buildings as Classical Revival and Colonial Revival: columns, pilasters, cornices, dentils and a cupola. The survey also credits him with Tudor Revival homes with slate roofs. What ties the two kinds of work together is the craftsmanship. The village describes his work as carefully built, with detailed woodwork and hardware, patterned brickwork, decorative leaded glass and unusually complex rooflines. On a commercial street, that care shows up in proportions and trim, not in a rolled roof.

He planned the downtown, too

Zook's role downtown went beyond individual buildings. He was born in Indiana in 1889, studied at the Armour Institute of Technology, which is now IIT, and started out working for Howard Van Doren Shaw. In 1924 he moved his family into a house he had designed at 327 S. Oak St. From 1932 until he died in 1949, he chaired the architectural committee of the Hinsdale Plan Commission, and in that job he put a master plan for the village into effect.

That puts his later commercial work in a different light. The 1941 Reineke Building and the 1944 paint store at 8 E. First both went up while he was chairing that committee, so he was designing storefronts for the same village center he was helping plan.

The numbers depend on who's counting. The village credits him with 31 houses and six commercial buildings in Hinsdale. The downtown survey counts more widely and says 92 buildings have been authenticated as his designs, 80 homes and 12 municipal or commercial structures, including his St. Charles Municipal Building and the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge.

A Zook walk, in order

All five downtown buildings fit into a single loop. Here's one way to order it, starting near the tracks:

1. 14-16 W. Hinsdale Ave., the 1926 Old Post Office.
2. 14 W. First St., the 1941 John Reineke Building.
3. 8 E. First St., the 1944 paint store that is now DeNucci's. Look up at the oculus.
4. 49-51 S. Washington St., the Oswald Building. It's 1889 underneath, with a Colonial Revival front from Zook's 1928 remodel.
5. 50 S. Garfield St., the 1929 filling station. Look for the cupola and the slate cross gable.

Two public Zook buildings sit outside downtown. The Burns Field warming shelter at 350 N. Vine St. is on the village's list of Zook works and is a local landmark. The bigger one is the Katherine Legge Memorial Lodge at 5901 S. County Line Road. It was built in 1927 and designated a village landmark on Feb. 6, 2001, and the village points to its spiderweb window, decorative timbers, patterned brickwork, steep double gables, slate roof and casement windows. The Lodge works as a rental venue. Its first floor seats up to 180 people, and the indoor maximum for an event is 200. The village reserves the Lodge and Zook Studio area for Lodge clients, so check before you walk up on a weekend.

The houses get their night on Nov. 14

The Historical Society's candlelight event is the rare chance to see Zook's residential work from the inside. The schedule runs:

• 4 to 5 p.m.: Welcome at The Lodge at KLM, with a preview of plans for Zook Commons
• 5 to 7 p.m.: Private trolleys to three privately owned Zook homes for guided architectural tours
• 7 to 9 p.m.: Back at the Lodge for live jazz, an open bar and seasonal food from Chef Paul Virant

Virant is the executive chef and owner of Vistro Prime in downtown Hinsdale. Tickets are available through the Historical Society.

Proceeds go to the Zook Legacy Campaign, a $1.5 million effort to turn Zook's home and studio, which the society moved from Oak Street to KLM Park in May 2005, into a dog-friendly café, a museum and an event space, as the Hinsdale Journal reported in June. That 2005 move cost about $240,000, paid by an anonymous donor. According to village records cited in the Journal's story, seven Zook homes in Hinsdale were torn down in the decade before it. Landmarks Illinois gave a $2,500 grant in December 2025 toward a National Register nomination and a building assessment, and the society's spring 2026 Kitchen Walk sold out in seven minutes with all proceeds going to the campaign.

Michael Abraham, a Historical Society trustee and the architect designing the conversion, made the case for Zook at a library lecture in June. "It wasn't just a cute aesthetic. It was part of a revolution," he said, according to the Hinsdale Journal. If the café opens, the newest public Zook space in Hinsdale will join the paint store on First Street as another of his buildings where you can go in and order something.

At Second City Agents, we pay attention to which details in a building are original and which came later, because that's often the first question when a historic Hinsdale property comes up. If you own or have your eye on a Zook and want to talk through how its original details show up in the market, schedule a free market consultation.