Laura was born and raised in the Chicagoland area, received her BA in Geography from the University of Colorado, and worked in education for 10+ years before changing course and pursuing her MS in Historic Preservation. She is thrilled to have discovered the field she’s meant to be in, and has relished being a part of SAIC’s HPRES program over the last two years.
While little is known about Wilmette’s early residential developers, their work makes up the bulk of the village’s architectural character and is frequently at risk of demolition in favor of new builds. This project documents the work of one such developer, Clarence A. Hemphill, whose impact still permeates the village today.
Using Wilmette building permits, historic surveys, building files, historic photographs, publications, and more from various municipal archives and museum collections, this project defines an inventory of all the Hemphill Homes built in the village. The inventory allows for the project’s analysis of the styles, materials, scale, and concentration of the architecture, and the social patterns these both reflect and promote. In particular, the success of Hemphill’s business model demonstrates Wilmette’s response to the post-WWII building boom, telling us the story of Wilmette’s self-perception among its North Shore peers. Capitalizing on the inventory and rounding out the story, the project includes large-format photographs of the extant Hemphill Homes in Wilmette.
In its totality, this project is an act of preservation by documentation of oft-overlooked, yet still historically significant, Wilmette architecture.