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| Koeller-Boemmel House, February, 2010 |
According to Morton Grove--100 Years, Henry and Iva Boemmel, the original owners of the house, emigrated to America from Alsace-Lorraine, France. Kopinski and Schlueter are among their descendants.
The house is over 130 years old. West of the frame home is St. Paul Woods, some of that land was donated to the Forest Preserve District of Cook County by the Boemmel family.
The development is part of the Lehigh/Ferris TIF, the project includes sprucing up the area near the Morton Grove Metra train station near the doomed home. Stimulus money, $350,000 of it, helped finance the resurfacing of Lehigh Avenue, which according to Recovery.gov, produced 0.5 jobs.
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| Lincoln Avenue, fall 2010 |
That stimulus cash was deemed substantial enough for one of those omnipresent Barack Obama "campaign signs" to grace the project--which was placed across the street from the old homestead.
One sign--half of a job.
Okay, I've wandered a bit. I am skeptical of the soundness of this entire endeavor. Will Lehigh/Ferris be another failed village development, such as the Waukegan Road Corridor? Traffic patterns favor Dempster Avenue, not Lincoln, despite its resurfacing and the curvy sidewalks with floral borders.
I don't believe the Koeller-Boemmel house is sacrosanct, but a part of Morton Grove will die when it's demolished. If a historical marker goes up on the site, I hope it's a pretty one.
Related posts:
Happy Levi Parsons Morton Day!
Morton Grove's Obama stimulus "campaign sign"
Harrer Butcher Shop, Skokie
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1 comment:
Great article. How is the Koeller family related to the Boemmels?
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