Circa 1872 The Harmening House Demolished

And another one bites the dust.  The Harmening House in Hanover Park (originally known as Ontarioville) was demolished.

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The Harmening House was located at 112 W. Lake Street across the street from the Greenbrook Plaza. Of course, long before shopping centers and interstates were built, the area outside of Chicago was rural.

 

Rich farmland beckoned farmers like John Henry Heinrich Harmening (aka J.H. Harmening) to the vicinity. It was not only the rich land that attracted Harmening, however. J.H. and his wife, Dorothea Thiess Harmening, fled Chicago after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 for safer and greener pastures.

 

 

It was here in Hanover Township in 1872 that they originally built a two-room shelter. Later the structure was enlarged to an impressive Italianate style house with a belvedere big enough to house their large family of four children, Heinrich, Matilda, Sophia and William. J.H. had come far from his humble beginnings as a children born in Cassel, Hessen, Germany in 1826.

John Henry died in 1903. The farm was handed down to his descendants until it was sold to Mueller’s Sod Farm.

The Harmening House and Family Through the Decades

 

 

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Having fallen by neglect into disrepair, costs to rehab were considered too high to be worth it. Thus, the demolition in 2021.

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