House cleaning in Highland Park, IL

Highland Park is the largest of the lakefront towns we cover and the only one that is a city rather than a village: about thirty thousand people over twelve square miles, with four Metra stations, three business districts, a hospital and its own water plant that supplies four other municipalities as well. Ravinia Festival, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, is here and has its own seasonal station. The Ward W. Willits House on Sheridan Road, built in 1901, is widely called the first mature Prairie School house.

The housing runs against the usual assumption about the North Shore. The median Highland Park house dates to 1963 and under a quarter of the stock predates 1940, so this is a postwar city with a prewar core rather than a prewar town with modern infill. The old part is concentrated in the historic districts and the streets near downtown, along with the Ravinia cottages. Around and beyond it lies the postwar city: ranches, split-levels and colonials, and later larger houses, on ordinary suburban lots.

Two different jobs, then, and they are not interchangeable. The prewar houses have hardwood, plaster, painted trim, radiators and original sash, all of which want hand work and the right product rather than more water. The postwar houses are drywall and forced air, where the work is floor area, glass and bathrooms. The city draws Lake Michigan water through its own plant and publishes it as moderately hard, so expect ordinary limescale film on shower glass and chrome, removed with the right product rather than more scrubbing, and none of the staining the Barrington villages see from a well.

Highland Park is priced the way everywhere else we clean is priced, by bedrooms, bathrooms and size. Enter 60035 and your rooms and the price appears before you give us your name. A travel charge applies on the North Shore and it is shown as its own line, so you see it before you send the request.