House and Home in Barrington - the Beginning

My parents, Don and Shirley Erickson, purchased 10 acres of Barrington property when I was seven years old. While Dad built his business and we lived in a rented home in Mt. Prospect, Illinois, our summer weekends were often spent in Barrington. Dad built a tree house that was suspended between two trees, we flew hand-crafted model airplanes, and picked wild raspberries.  Dad would scan the property to try to determine the best site to build the home, a design which went through many iterations before the first structure was built when I was in 6^th and 7^th grade. 

During the time that the house was under construction, our entire family worked on the house under Dad’s tutelage and our cousin, Richard Erickson, also participated in building the house. We lay brick floors in winter with a “Sally” heater in the bitter cold. We helped put in plumbing, we stained the cedar walls, and more. We moved into a sprawling home with a flat roof with eves that draped over the walls and spent nearly a year there before the 1967 Lake Zurich tornado leveled our home, sending the roof into the valley, flattening most of the walls, and destroying most of our belongings.

The Lake Zurich Tornado

We had $80,000 in insurance reimbursement and, with that and other funding, we rebuilt the home but this time with Jamaican roofs capped by skylights through which we could watch the stars.

I understand that the house has currently experienced destruction through looters and vandals and that the house is a shell of roofs and walls. This is what occurs when homes go into foreclosure and are left vacant. Even a pristine home built with the loving care of a well-trained architect and his family is not immune to the same destruction faced by so many homes across the United States since the sub-prime market crash in 2007-08.  But, even now, the home’s condition is not comparable to what our family faced one early evening in April 1967. For with grit and determination, we re-built the home and our father continued to expand it throughout the years, testing his design concepts on our home before using them on client’s designs.

For photos of the original home, its destruction and second beginning, please click on the link below.

Second Beginnings