The Margaret Silsbee Wade Residence

Joseph Silsbee left Syracuse in 1884 and moved to Chicago.  This did not signal the end of work for him in that city.  Close family relationships, through Anna Sedgwick, his wife, allowed him a number of commissions.  It also became a reason for several of his daughters to relocate back to the city in the early twentieth century.  

Local papers reported that Silsbee designed a home for his daughter Margaret and her husband Frank Wade on several occassions.  One was in 1907, at the earliest stages of the subdivision's development and another came in 1909.  A permit for this home was taken out after Silsbee's death, in 1913. Construction commenced on the home in July of that year and Taylor & Bonta were listed as the architects.  According to letters to historian Thomas McCormick, Margaret Silsbee Wade states that her father was responsible for the design of this home. It is likely that Silsbee prepared plans and elevations before his death and Alfred Taylor, the architect that superintended other Silsbee works of the period, took over the project after Silsbee's death.    

The home has a symmetrical appearance with flat plain stucco surfaces and is capped with a wide hipped roof. Windows on the front of the home do not always adhere to the regularity of the rest of the facade. This overall appearnace, sharing a look that was popular in suburban Chicago at the time, suggests Silsbee's involvement.  A wide open piazza stretches across the front of the home and broad sleeping and breakfast porches extend off the back.  The home was designed with an attached garage, in the basement.       

The Henry Barber Residence

Polo, Illinois is a small farming community in north central Illinois.  It has a remarkable architectural heritage with a largely intact Main Street and an attractive array of finely constructed residential buildings.  The city of approximately 2,500 people boasts six structures on the National Register of Historic Places.  Two of these are homes designed by J. L. Silsbee.   

The oldest known structure designed by Silsbee in this small town in north central Illinois was for banker, Henry D. Barber.  Design work on the Henry Barber home began in about 1891.  It is constructed of Roman brick and is Classical Revival structure with some Queen Anne details and massing.  The front of the home is dominated by two round bays, each topped with conical roofs.  The massing is simple, almost austere, not unlike seminal Prairie Style buildings designed by former employees Frank Lloyd Wright and George Washington Maher.         

The home is finely detailed inside and out.  Leaded glass around entry doors and on interior cabinetry use a series of abstracted geometric shapes for their design, another allusion to the work of his former employees.  A motif found throughout the home can be seen in the wood grill work on the upper sash of the second-story windows.  It is a series of overlapping circles on the upper half with a series of vertical lines extending from top to bottom.