Property of Mr. and Mrs. Louis H. Huebner, Park Ridge, Illinois | architects: Huebner & Henneberg

9/20/2025 12:26:00 AM

The conviction that children deserve as much privacy as their parents was dominant in architect Louis Huebner's mind when he designed a split-level house for his own lively family in Park Ridge, Ill. The Huebners have three children-Connie, 14, Andy, 11, and Danny, 8-and the three-level plan their father prescribed gives them what amounts to a house of their own without ever making them feel banished to the nursery (or worse yet, a juvenile dormitory). Furthermore, by building up and down, instead of on one level, the architect was able to fit a house containing 2,600 square feet on a meager 75-by-131-foot lot and still manage to save a number of the handsome old trees that graced the property. The house faces a busy suburban street with neighbors pressing close on two sides, yet alternate expanses of brick and glass provide as much seclusion as any family would want, without making them feel walled-in.

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From the front of the house, opposite page. the up-flung roof line gives unity to the design. Nevertheless, you can detect the division into three parts. On the ground floor are living room, dining room and kitchen, and, in a wing of its own, Mr. and Mrs. Huebner's bedroom. Only a few steps up or down from the centralized kitchen are the children's rooms on the upper floor of the two-story wing: Andy's and Danny's rooms; on the lower floor: Connie's room (with its own, very private bath) and the family room. Under the living-dining- kitchen section is a basement so big the boys can roller skate there on rainy days. In one corner, directly under the kitchen, is the laundry equipment, handy to the pleasant sewing and ironing center off the family room.

For all its sensible, down-to-earth plan, however, the house is full of delightful, even whimsical, surprises. To reach the living room, opposite page and below, from the entrance hall, for instance, you have to cross a wood bridge over a graveled moat in the middle of which is planted a huge round hooded fireplace flanked by great green plants growing in big pots. The moat separates the living room from the dining room, but at floor level only, since there is nothing above that except the chimney to block the view.

The moat also removes the living room from the natural path of household traffic. But from the dining room, you can amble through a doorway opening into the breakfast area and kitchen, and, during parties, that is exactly what the Huebners' friends do. For the kitchen, opposite page, below, is as lively and gay as the lady who presides over it and a magnet for children and grown-ups alike. What Mrs. Huebner likes best about her kitchen is its sweep of counter space. Yet, everything she needs is within arm's reach. Serving meals in the breakfast area takes only a few steps. For meals in the dining room, including parties, she sets everything on the kitchen's planning desk that also doubles as a pass-through.