House cleaning in Glencoe, IL

Glencoe is the smallest and most contained of the North Shore towns we cover: under four square miles, one Metra station, one downtown a few blocks square around Vernon and Park, and more than a thousand acres of forest preserve closing it off to the north and west. The Chicago Botanic Garden is physically in Glencoe, on Lake Cook Road, which surprises people who assume it is somewhere else. The village holds thirteen Frank Lloyd Wright structures, most of them in the Ravine Bluffs development of 1915, along with the only bridge Wright ever built.

The housing surprises people too. More than a third of Glencoe predates 1940, but the largest coherent layer is midcentury: the median house dates to the mid-1950s. So the village runs two kinds of house at once. The prewar side is Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, Tudor and Prairie, with plaster, hardwood and original trim. The midcentury side is the opposite job: the Keck and Keck houses at Forest Crest are glass and plane, with large fixed windows, deep overhangs, radiant floors instead of radiators and very little millwork, and the split-levels at Strawberry Hill and Skokie Ridge run in half-flights.

That split decides the work. A prewar house is hand work on woodwork, plaster and old glass. A midcentury house is floor area and a great deal of glass, and a split-level means the vacuum and the caddy are carried between half-levels rather than rolled. Water is municipal, from the village plant below the bluff, so there are no wells here and no iron staining. Ravine and bluff lots on the east side hold damp, and the village runs curbside leaf collection from mid-October into December, which is exactly when leaf grit arrives at the doors.

With two thirds of Glencoe at four bedrooms or more, bathroom count and the square-footage band move the price more than bedroom count alone. Enter 60022 and your rooms and the number is on the screen before you give us your name, and you can request the cleaning from the same page.