“A standout among standouts, this red stone Victorian is one bead in a string of jewels along the 600 block of Fullerton Parkway. Several other Victorians made of stone or brick as well as the handsome Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church combine with venerable old trees to make the 500 and 600 blocks one of the most beautiful residential settings in the Chicago.

“The elaborate stone façade is rusticated here, columned there and topped by multiple steep roofs. It all suggests there’s a lot going on inside, which is true. The interior has stained glass windows, an intricately carved wood stair rail, pocket doors, glazed tile fireplace mantels and other artistic finishes all intact from the time the house was built in the mid-1890s.

“That’s thanks in large part to the family that has owned the house since 1965 and spent much of the intervening time restoring it. ‘This place was a dump back then,’ said Nancy Heckman, whose parents, Marshall and Sarah Holingue, bought the property when it was a rooming house, chopped up and shabby. They paid about $18,000 for it, she says. That’s the equivalent of $190,000 today.

“The Holingues didn’t move in; they lived around the corner on Geneva Terrace and continued operating it as a boarding house while fixing it up. Their daughter moved into one of the rooms when she came home from college and over the years expanded her footprint in the house as she married and had four children.

“With their kids raised and only one left at home, Nancy and Bobby Heckman are putting the six-bedroom house on the market Dec. 1. Represented by Sheila Doyle of Baird & Warner, it’s priced at just under $2.9 million, a price that reflects the fact that the kitchen and baths need updating.

“The Heckmans haven’t unearthed details on who designed the house and for whom, but it’s clear “they wanted the best,” Nancy Heckman says.

“The foyer is museum quality, with all the details in the wood, including stained glass windows climbing up one side of the staircase. The windows face east, to be illuminated by the morning sun.

“The house’s five fireplaces all have original tile mantels. One has a seashell motif, another has a fairy playing with butterflies and others have geometrical patterns.

“It’s a bit of a wonder that they’re all still intact, but Nancy Heckman says she knows why. It wasn’t until after her parents bought the house that ‘people started tearing out everything that was old in a house to modernize it,’ she says.” (Rodkin, Crain’s Chicago Business, 11/16/22)