The Barn House (44 page)

Kendall, I learned, had grown up in a high-rise on Riverside Drive in Manhattan—David Dinkins, the first black mayor of New York, had lived across the hall. She'd gone to prep school (Horace Mann, of which I confess I knew little before she mentioned it, but I gather is quite the place) and graduated from Princeton University, where she'd met her husband, Chris, a New Jersey native who was the son of a nurse and one of the first black neurologists in the country. She'd never been to Chicago before flying out for a job interview with Leo Burnett, the advertising agency. “I fell in love with the city instantaneously,” she said. “You get the big-city experience but at the same time you have beaches. I thought, this is as good as it gets.” She got the Burnett job but left after a year to become director of development for a not-for-profit agency founded by Chicagoan John Rogers, Jr., another Princeton grad who had founded Ariel Capital Management, the largest black-owned investment firm in the United States, with $16 billion under management. There she worked with Arne Duncan, who would go on to become chief executive officer of the Chicago public school system. Years later they established a charter school in North Kenwood, Ariel Community Academy; one of the people they interviewed to become principal of this school was Mary Ellen Caron, the principal of FXW. Although Mary Ellen didn't take the job, six years after she left FXW and became commissioner of the city's Department of Children & Youth Services, she hired Chris, a lawyer, to become executive director of her department's newly established Juvenile Intervention Center, which provided services for youth at risk of becoming part of the juvenile justice system.

I go into all this detail to make three points. First, Kendall was a city person; second, she was a member in good standing of the city-guy mafia—hell, she made me feel like a hermit; and third, she didn't have to live in North Kenwood if she didn't want to, yet here she was. She offered numerous reasons why the community was a smart place to invest, all of which at a certain level of abstraction made sense: the community was close to the lake—indeed, a new beach at 40th Street and other lakefront recreational facilities were then under construction; it was convenient to the Loop and transportation; the upside potential, as the real estate people say, was terrific. With most of the high-rise public housing gone, property values were spiraling upward; two $1.7 million homes were nearing completion down the block. The fact remained—and I hate to belabor the point, but come on—she, her husband, and their three small children were living a short walk from the spot where five years before two men had been beaten to death with rocks.

I asked Kendall about that. “I couldn't have done this even three years ago,” she said. “But it's a different world now. I could see all the building going on. At the end of the day I have kids and I'm not going to put them at risk, but I'm comfortable enough about the direction of the neighborhood to think they'll be safe.

“I think this is an exciting experiment, for lack of a better term, in what this city can do. Chicago is so segregated.
¹¹³
I went to prep school my entire life—I got tired of being one of the only African-Americans. I want to be around a great mix of people, and I think there will be more of that here than on the north side. Our neighbors are predominantly African-American, but I'm seeing more Caucasians and other races moving in. My hope is that it will be more like Hyde Park.”

I mentioned a book I'd read about North Kenwood/Oakland pointing out that the improvements in the neighborhood didn't benefit all residents equally.
¹¹⁴
The book said schools like Ariel Community Academy mainly served the middle class, which was better equipped to negotiate the complex admissions process; students from poor families generally had to make do with the older schools, which were among the worst in the city. The Chicago Housing Authority had promised the residents of public housing projects in North Kenwood/Oakland slated for demolition that they'd have first claim on replacement housing, but a federal judge had thrown out the agreement. While fears that white people would take over the community seemed overblown, it wasn't so hard to believe that affluent black people might supplant a lot of the poor ones.

“I struggle with that,” Kendall said. “I don't see enough disadvantaged and well-off African-Americans mixing—there's little common ground. Socioeconomic status divides way more than race ever will. Some African-Americans don't want to be around people with the same skin color as theirs just because they don't have the same income or they don't speak as well. Some people don't have a problem with that. I do. I don't want it to be all wealthy African-Americans. To me being successful is being able to deal with all kinds of people in all situations. You want a balance, but at the same time you don't want to displace people. I don't know how you solve that problem.

“For Christopher and me social justice is very important. We believe we were called to do what we do. We African-Americans who have more advantages tend to look out for ourselves and don't give back as much as we should. That's a big part of why our people as a whole are in the state that we are. Some of our African-American neighbors make a lot of money, and I want my kids to see that. But I also want them to see a socioeconomic and racial mix. I want my kids to be citified—when I take them to the play-ground I want them to see all kinds of people and hear all kinds of languages. The richness of having grown up in a major city is irreplaceable.”

I knew what she meant. For city people, diversity wasn't something you put up with; it was an essential part of the draw. You got to see the whole human circus. Sure, in the suburbs you might have better luck finding a parking spot. But in the city you felt more alive.

There are other arguments to be made for cities, I realize. We stand at the brink of an age in which resources will become increasingly scarce, and some believe dense older towns are better adapted to the coming economic realities than newer ones built around the automobile. That may be so, although the analysis is more complicated than might be supposed (I won't get into it now), and in any case few make lifestyle choices based on altruism. The argument for me was simpler: I found the city offered a more satisfying life. Others, I knew, had contrary opinions and were welcome to them. The main thing was, now you had a choice.

There was another attraction to urban living as well, one that was peculiar to a gentrifying as opposed to a gentrified town, and I think any city person who has had the experience will own up to it—the sense of participating in a grand adventure. Many of us who had lived a long time in Chicago felt it with particular acuteness—we'd seen a mature city emerge during our lifetimes, and perhaps felt we had contributed ourselves in some small way. There was something noble about it, I think. Here was one of the great human projects, in which generations long forgotten had invested their lives, for a time seemingly destined for the scrap heap. We had restored it to the main current of history. How much longer our little piece of it would endure was impossible to say, but craftsmanship had gotten Mrs. Carr's house this far; perhaps our modest contribution would get it a little further.

Granted, the larger job was far from complete. Many who followed us in Chicago would try to salvage neighborhoods in worse shape than the ones we called home. In one important respect, though—and you'll forgive me if I boast in saying so—they'd have an advantage an earlier generation didn't. They wouldn't have merely the idea of the city before them; they'd have the thing itself.

T
he Barn House was one of the last home renovation projects Tony and Jerry worked on. Reasoning that there had to be an easier way to make money, they began bidding on commercial jobs, and eventually found a profitable niche rehabilitating hotels and motels—a business that lent itself to production-line economies, since once you'd figured out an efficient way to renovate the first room, you merely repeated the process for every room thereafter. They moved their office to the suburbs and Jerry relocated to Florida. Eddie remained in Chicago, and I hired him for several additional projects at the Barn House—among other things, his guys rebuilt in cedar the porch steps I'd been foolish enough to have made out of pine initially. As always the work was exquisite.

I spoke with Tom the trumpet player on the phone a few times after he departed the Barn House; for a time I believe he was working for a small ad agency downtown. We made tentative arrangements to get together a couple of times but for one reason or another these fell through. He had no permanent phone number and I was never able to call him. I haven't spoken to him in years.

I referred Lee to some friends who were looking for an electrician to do some wiring in their two-flat in Lincoln Square. They were delighted with his work but scandalized that he charged so little and occasionally pressed more money on him. I got an e-mail from them some time later: they'd called to ask him about another project but were told that he was dead.

The Chief and I see less of each other than we used to but still make a point of getting together around the holidays to have dinner. Having long had the idea that the Chief was barely scraping by financially, I pressed him finally and established that he made his living trading securities and such on his own account. His shrewdest investment was buying a seat on the Chicago Board of Trade in anticipation of its going public. His net worth today is in excess of $2 million.

Mary and I are still together, although I'd have to say working on the house permanently strained our relationship—it would have strained any couple's. The job had been interminable. The house was under construction continuously for more than three years, with major projects for nine years after that. I didn't paint over the carpenters' pencil marks in the upstairs bathrooms until 2005, twelve years after we'd bought the house. We're not done even now. Was it worth it? My answer is much the same as James's: I'm happy to have done it once. The kids have been a great joy to us—Ryan is preparing to enter college as I write—and because of them I'd say, yes, the long struggle was worthwhile. But nothing could make either of us go through it again. I think anyone who has endured a project like ours would agree the cost was far higher than planned, in ways you didn't expect. I'll tell you one thing, though—after all these years Mary's still a knockout.

 

O
ne spring morning not so long ago my doorbell rang—it was my neighbor George. He'd been out walking his dog and noticed Ned's front door was open, which struck him as odd. He wasn't foolish to worry. Earlier there had been an incident a few blocks away in which (as we heard the story) a fellow pretending to deliver flyers tried the front door of each house he passed till he found one that was unlocked. On entering, presumably bent on robbery, he surprised an elderly man, whom he bludgeoned to death.

I phoned Ned's house; there was no answer. We called the police. On arriving, one cop went around the back while the other drew his revolver and entered the front door. After some minutes the cops returned; they'd found no one inside and nothing amiss. Later that day I got a call from Ned, who was at work. He had left the door open for the exterminators, who had neglected to shut it on departing. “Thanks, neighbor,” he said.
No problem
, I replied, feeling moderately virtuous, but knowing I could just as easily have been calling him and saying I saw smoke.

The two ways to wire a three-way switch, or anyway the two I know, are shown opposite. (The purpose of a three-way switch, for those who have never paid attention to such things, is to allow you to turn the lights on at one location and off somewhere else, as when walking down a hall.) The second way isn't recommended, and may violate modern electrical codes for reasons I'm not about to go into. But it'll work, and if it's what you've got in your old house and you don't feel like redoing the wiring when replacing the switch, it beats sitting in the dark.