Moving to Hinsdale (Berwyn, Oak Park, Wilmette: for sale, houses, theater)

[snow owl]

That's the point. Who can afford to live there in the first place? If you can, good for you. It's a reflection of the haves and the have nots.

[chet everett]

Originally Posted by snow owl

That's the point. Who can afford to live there in the first place? If you can, good for you. It's a reflection of the haves and the have nots.

While it is true that to buy a BIG shiny new house TODAY you'd need to have quite a pile of cash (lots for teardowns are still selling well above $350K...) there are many many people with kids currently in high school or even a bit younger that bought their homes a decade or more ago. Then there were a much broader selection of homes on the more affordable end of things and many of these people got a much better deal then they could have in Sauganash/Forest Glen neighborhood on Chicago's northside or the Morgan Park/Beverly areas at the opposite end of the City.

If you walk around Hinsdale (or any other town with similarly expensive real estate) you'll no doubt see some people that do put on quite a display of consumption, but you will see far more people that look no different than those in much more affordable areas. Factoring the low taxes, good schools, broad commuting options and overall quality of life it is easy to understand why towns like Hinsdale have a lot of people competing for homes.

Compared to the most costly sections of Chicago ones money goes MUCH further and even comparing the total value many people feel DuPage Co is a far better proposition than the NorthShore...

For people that had very modest homes in desirable suburbs the rise in property values made it easy for them to decide that they could go from being a "have not" to a "have" by simply selling the appreciated property. If their kids were done with school, or they never had kids the was little incentive to stay. Still, there are a handful of people of very modest means that hang on, maybe for sentimental reason, or maybe to prove that there is some diversity of experience everywhere...
Finally, like just about every town, there are some very affordable rentals still within the boundaries of Hinsdale. The same attractive features of the town are available to these folks with only a modest outlay of their rent.

[nanannie]

Originally Posted by snow owl

Rich people can be really callous and careless when it comes to fellow beings. I think they just don't realize how priveliged they are in this world. Sometimes it just hurts to have it flaunted.

Yes and poor people and middle income people can be really callous and careless when it comes to 'fellow beings'. I am sure it hurts all to be generalized into 'one way'.

[NearWestSider]

You guys can spin it any way you want, but Hinsdale is THE poster-burb of two things:

1. Really, really bad teardowns.
2. Over the top snobbery.

On item 1, virtually every suburb declares itself to not want to be the next Hinsdale - for good reason. All the horrors of the McMansionization of Lincoln Park pale in comparison to what has happened to Hinsdale over the last 30 years. Its as if Mr. T moved in, nuked what was once a beautiful, elegant suburb, and replaced it with some of the tackiest teardowns ever conceived. Hinsdale today is synonymous with really bad, really expensive (and expensive-looking) architecture.

On item 2, anybody who knows the place at all knows the bizarre keeping up with the joneses that the unfortunate kids from that town have to live with. Yes, the horror stories are true. The kids really DO talk about how much money their fathers make, how expensive their house is, their riding lessons and where they are going on vacation. This disease exists to some degree in all affluent suburbs, but Hinsdale Central stands head and shoulders above the rest in the fine art of the pecking order.

As far as the schools being so great, any town that can cherry-pick its students by excluding the less affluent from the community is going to show great test scores. Its not rocket science, and there is nothing you can get at Hinsdale Central that you can't get at Lyons Township or Downers for one tenth of the emotional baggage you will be saddling your kids with.

[chet everett]

Have you seen the teardowns in Hinsdale? You'd have to be blind to call the majority of shacks that were dozed anything other eye sores.

Seriously, the houses that went to the landfill were almost all just awful.

Hinsdale was never "elegant". Even the bigger houses on the SE section of town were little more than overgrown farmhouses.

Tacky is a pretty subjective term, but every crap cinderblock sided faux rowhouse in LP at least as big an abomination as the places with hand laid Belgian Block driveways in Hinsdale.

I would challenge you to show a single lot in Hinsdale that does not have better landscaping post teardown that it had with some hovel on it. Mr. T had 7 acres of trees to lay waste to in Lake Forest -- there simply are NO seven acres lots in Hinsdale, haven't been since probably the 1920's... GENTEEL CHICAGO SUBURB RAGES OVER MR. T'S TREE MASSACRE - New York Times

This past weekend the KIDS at Hinsdale Central ran a "Taste of Hinsdale" Hinsdale Central | Character Counts! that was as low key and down homey as anything that you'd find in some farm community: Teutopolis Schools

I have no idea where you think this "cherry picking" is happening -- the district has TWO schools with well defined attendance boundaries, the northern portion is more affluent than the southern, but there are homes in both attendance areas that overlap in market price. Both schools do quite well. News (broken link)

There are some major differences in how many kids take the tough courses at EITHER of the District 86 schools and how well they compare to the schools like LT or the District 99 schools. While I have some issues with the overall ranking and methodology of these kinds of studies, the results are black and white:
America's Top Public High Schools | Newsweek Best High Schools | Newsweek.com

If you'd walk around a STUDENT RUN event like "Taste of Hinsdale" you'd have a very different view of 'emotional baggage' -- there simply is no such thing among the majority of students. It is a terrific school with GREAT kids that very much appreciate the sacrifices that many of their parents make to give them a fantastic education. The VAST majority of kids are involved and grateful for their good fortune. Hinsdale Central | Club Descriptions

The one thing that Hinsdale is most well known is being the most in-demand place to live in DuPage, from the diversity of housing to the ease of commuting, to the fine schools it is VERY MUCH the most sought after town as evidenced by its unbeatable median home price and avg household income: DuPage County, Illinois - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The town is probably the single place least likely to see any major erosion of value due to the the mortgage melt down.

[nanannie]

Good points chet. And, I dont know the difference between someones opinion and a '' spin '', but I always question such negative generalizations of an entire community as jealousy/sour grapes.

[NearWestSider]

I am always amused when people try to defend the destruction of a historic district on the basis of what was there before being subsubstandard. That is exactly the rationale my buddy Kurt Reetz used when he started bulldozing Hinsdale in the early 80's. I've never bought into the concept of salvation-by-destruction except in the most dire circumstances (and I consider Maxwell Street, where I currently live, as one of those).

Real towns are not isolated islands of wealth. Real towns are conglomerations of people with different backgrounds and skill sets. Hinsdale's jihad against the middle class has been a huge success in terms of driving them out of town and jacking up property values, but that is also one of the reasons the example they set is almost universally condemned.

As far as how classy the place is, I suggest you aim your BMW towards that palatial Los Angeles-styled monstrosity near the hospital. You know, the one that looks like a movie star lives in it? I would call it a mobile home on steroids, except that would be a disservice to the mobile home, which is elegant and understated in comparison.

The difference between a tacky place like Hinsdale and a tasteful one like Lake Forest is that in Lake Forest people put their palaces on large estates behind walls. That small token of modesty is simply not in the vocabulary of Hinsdale, where the whole point is to make as loud a public statement as possible about one's wealth.

In most towns, a house is a place to live. In Hinsdale, a house serves the same function as a tattoo or a thong bikini.

As far as it being in demand, there are few places like it, so if you've got a net worth over 5 mil and you are dying to strut your stuff, you've probably got just enough jack to thrive on its winding, tree-lined streets.

But it is definitely a niche town, a place for people with big money, big egos, and a big desire to let the world know about it.

Anybody looking for a tasteful wealthy western suburb would be better off in Riverside, where the locals perceive value in preservation.

[ahava]

Originally Posted by nanannie

Good points chet. And, I dont know the difference between someones opinion and a '' spin '', but I always question such negative generalizations of an entire community as jealousy/sour grapes.

Yet you don't question generalizations of an entire community when the message is positive? How can chet make statements like "It is a terrific school with GREAT kids that very much appreciate the sacrifices that many of their parents make to give them a fantastic education. The VAST majority of kids are involved and grateful for their good fortune." without knowing the vast majority of HCHS students? I sincerely doubt that chet has asked anything close to a majority of those students how they feel about their parents' wealth, which makes his statements also a generalization.

[chet everett]

Call it the "friendliness factor" or "do unto others" or the Golden Rule and I'll happily plead guilt as charged -- positive generalizations should not be a problem at all, and certainly are very different than unfounded negative generalizations.

Through my work I have known hundreds, perhaps thousands of families that send/ have sent their kids to both Hinsdale Central and South. They are not that different at all. I completely stand by my statement that the vast majority of kids at HC are involved in positive activities at the schools. They like to help others and realize that in the grand scheme of things they have a lot to be thankful for. They are, on the whole, kids that demonstrate their gratefulness in ways large and small regardless of income.

If you live in Western Springs you too know there is a big spread in income between people that may have recently constructed a new house and the majority of folks in town who originally bought/renovated/built homes for a fraction of such a sum. There are gracious neighbors that you don't mind if they have a newer, nicer car than yours because they don't go out of their way to be a jerk about their good fortune and there are others that are not so thoughtful. In my experience there are far more residents of Western Springs that fit the former category than the latter. Further, I feel confident that I can say the same of every other well off area that I've encountered in DuPage, Cook or Lake county. I am not going to pretend that I routinely rub elbows with folks in every town, and I suspect that if you pressed me to name anyone that I've met from say "Mettawa" I might be stumped, but can honestly say that I do doubt that any area has a majority of people that live up to a negative stereotype...

I know quite a few people in Riverside, a town mentioned above. There are some great people there, but there are also a sizable number of people that almost certainly take the 'historical' thing way too seriously. Some of the butt-in-skis would have the village ban plants that were not in Olmstead's drawings or the Avery Coonly estate plantings of Jens Jensen's. I am not going to go negative on the whole town for that. If you like a real slice of history Riverside certainly has many more works by prominent architects of by-gone times. It is also hideously over taxed. A very close associate built an admittedly well appointed home, but something a fraction of the size of some I've seen in Oak Brook or Lake Forest. The property tax on this single family home occupied by a normal family of five is over $60K/year. Yessiree sixty-thousand dollars. More than six times the ten thousand or so tax bills that routinely give people in towns further west indigestion...

For a big ego I would also suggest that the Nearwestsider look again to Riverside where a certain public employee can routinely be spotted showing up to work in his current production fancy Italian sedan. I assure you there are not many of those around anywhere. I might also suggest that ego is behind more than a few people in Riverside going out of their way to trumpet the town's architectural heritage: Riverside Community Web Site - Riverside, Illinois
It would be foolish to suggest that the whole town's existence was not very much due to a PR campaign not unlike something done by developers holding "Millionaire Showcase Home Parade Festivals" in fringe developments today -- Riverside, Illinois - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I would strongly urge anyone seeking a diversity of home styles, from the rather simple, to the very current, excellent schools, safe walkable streets with top notch commuting options and positive family values to weigh the benefits on any town centered on the BNSF Metra line. I believe Hinsdale compares most favorably.

[NearWestSider]

OK, OK, I confess: I am being entirely facetious in my anti-Hinsdale rantings. I am totally full of it, and if you or anyone took anything that I said seriously, or were offended by it, I APOLOGIZE!

Well, almost: That "Beverly Hills" teardown by the hospital IS every bit as dreadful as I say, and the Hinsdale Central kids DO display a tendency to derive an inordinate amount of self esteem from the successs of their parents.

But those are side shows. The truth is that Hinsdale, in all its pristine Abercrombie-ness, just happens to be one of those places that's easy to tease and poke fun at, so I do.

You've also gotta remember I used to live in La Grange, where hating Hinsdale is an old and hallowed tradition. I mean, LT vs. HC is not just a rivalry - its contempt for an entire way of life! (see, there I go again.......smack)

If its any consolation, I also enjoy lampooning Wicker Park, to which I see more than a few passing similarities to Hinsdale, despite their being polar opposites.

So please, no harm intended, and if somebody wants to skewer La Grange (or University Village, where I live now), fire away. I won't be the least bit offended. Hell, I may even join in.