MATTOON, Ill. (AP) - Some people might look at the Richard Roytek home and simply see a door, windows and a chimney stretching up from the ground through the roof and beyond.
But the Roytek home was the subject of some meticulous research Wednesday afternoon as students from Eastern Illinois University’s Historical Preservation class worked their way across the grounds, both inside and out, taking measurements of every wall, window and stone. The single-story home, located at 3420 Richmond Ave., is the perfect training ground, instructor Mike Jackson said; it even throws in a couple of curve balls, including a wrap-around glass window from the home’s east to north sides.
Jackson, who is retired from the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, is the course’s substitute instructor while regular professor Nora Pat Small is on sabbatical. The students were working on elevation drawings, meaning they were replicating what each side of the three-dimension house, as well as the inside walls, looked like on a two-dimensional piece of paper.
It may sound like a simple task, but it’s important to get the measurements right — out in a future job, documenting the house to a particular scale can be an important part in the preservation process, Jackson said.
“This is an exercise in drawing, but it’s really about how to visualize and convert a 3D thing into two dimensions,” he said. “That’s the art of drawing and measuring, and there’s a lot of interpretation. It looks fairly obvious, but it’s not.”
And while it’s important students understand the historic aspects of 19th century architecture, it’s also important to look at 20th century architecture, Jackson said.
“A lot of people don’t think of this as historic preservation yet,” he said. “They think of historic preservation as an 1850 building and this is a 1950 building. But in the world of history, it’s old enough to be historic, and it is.”
Steve Thompson, of the Coles County Historic Preservation Advisory Council, owns the Roytek house — which was constructed in 1950 by Richard Roytek, who was a partner in the area Dixie Creme Doughnut franchise at the time of construction and would later go on to own and operate the two Mattoon Dairy Queens. Thompson lives there with his wife Kathy.
Thompson said the home is the only home in Mattoon on the National Register of Historic Places.
“I (registered it) to encourage other people, and say ’hey guys, why don’t you register your houses?’” Thompson said.
Thompson went through the Historical Administration program at EIU and originally had the desire to manage historic landmarks such as battlefields and national parks. He found himself in the historic preservation class, which led to the field he would eventually work in.
Small said the program is important in teaching students how to mitigate the loss of historical aspects of buildings that cities or developers may want renovate as well as how to keep a historic site updated without losing its unique attributes. Students are also taught how to write grants, an ability agencies may be looking for in candidates.
“How do you fix a roof leak, or what are the kinds of landscaping that will destroy a foundation?” she said. “These kinds of things are useful when you are working in a historic building.”
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Source: Journal Gazette and Times-Courier, https://bit.ly/1NjUOPa
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Information from: Mattoon Journal-Gazette, https://www.jg-tc.com
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