Glen Ellyn home from Depression era going up for sale - Crain's Chicago Business

A Glen Ellyn couple who 35 years ago bought a lavish home from the 1930s replete with carved plaster ornamentation, tile work and heraldry, and then restored it are putting it on the market. 

“We spent 15 years restoring it, because we wanted to do everything in the original style, but we were young” and couldn’t fund the work all at once, Joan Bufalino said. She and her husband, Vince Bufalino, are asking $1.6 million for the four-bedroom, 6,200-square-foot home on Hill Avenue. It’s to be listed this week, represented by Matt McCollum of Keller Williams Premiere Properties. 

The Bufalinos have not unearthed the name of the architect or the full name of the original owner who built the lavish home in 1932. All they’ve found is that the owner’s last name was Marshall and that he may have been in the railroad industry. 

They know from a decades-old sales brochure that most of the design features still in the home are original. That includes the broad staircase with bas relief plaster balustrades that looks like the grand staircases in majestic old movie theaters, and a tub in the main bathroom set on a tiled platform and complete with a tiled headboard, as if the bather were on display in a 1930s movie.

The front facade is a restrained Spanish-style design capped with a red clay tile roof, but in back there’s a columned three-story tower like the campanile of a California mission and a relaxed Mediterranean style. Inside, intricately carved plaster beams hang over the dining room, one of whose doors is topped by a small balcony emblazoned with an image of St. George slaying a dragon.  

The former ballroom in the basement has a mosaic tile floor, multicolored plaster moldings and a pair of arched doorways flanking the fireplace that open to a half-round that was designed to seat an orchestra. In the family room, originally a porch, a wall of stone holds a fountain that spills into a basin at the foot of the wall.

“It’s the most eclectic architecture you’ve ever seen,” Joan Bufalino said. 

The Bufalinos paid $320,000 for the home in 1985. They did much of the cleaning, restoration and painting themselves, she said, but used professionals to update the plumbing, electric and climate systems and to install a modern kitchen. The property, about three quarters of an acre, also includes a coach house with a one-bedroom apartment. 

The home was unoccupied when the Bufalinos bought it. When in the hands of previous longtime owners, water damage had been allowed to accumulate and many of the original fixtures weren’t functioning, Joan Bufalino said, “but we saw so much potential in it.” 

The home is about four blocks from Glen Ellyn’s pretty downtown and a Metra station and less than a mile from Glenbard West High School, which scores 9 out of 10 on the GreatSchools site.