Mr. Robert Silhan House
- Style
- Streamline Moderne
- City
- Chicago, IL
The Mr. Robert Silhan House is a small Streamline Moderne home in Berwyn, Illinois, built around 1937 and inspired by the buildings of Chicago's Century of Progress World's Fair. Robert Jaroslav Silhan, born in Radnice, Czechoslovakia, in 1879, immigrated to the United States in 1901 and married Katherine, whom he had met there, two years later.
the building
The Cuyler Avenue lot. Katherine Silhan bought the property as an investment in 1922, before it was even connected to a road. She and Jerry Silhan subdivided it into four lots in 1929, keeping one for themselves. Robert and Katherine took out a mortgage in 1934, likely to finance construction, and sold their previous house on Harvey Avenue on September 30, 1937, around the time the new house was completed.
the style
The house's Streamline Moderne look borrows the futuristic, streamlined vocabulary popularized at Chicago's Century of Progress World's Fair, scaled down to an ordinary house.
More on Streamline Modernesignificance
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
nearby
- Arthur J. Dunham House
- Berwyn Health Center
- American State Bank
- F. F. Tomek House
- St. Mary of Częstochowa in Cicero
- Shedd Park Fieldhouse