FEBRUARY 17, 2015
WILMETTE, ILLINOIS
A space heater is suspected of causing a fire that heavily
damaged a landmark brick and stone building that houses the Woman's Club of
Wilmette.
Mark Loendorf, a custodian who lives in the building at 930
Greenleaf Ave., said he was in the auditorium area about 9:50 a.m. when the
smoke alarm went off.
"The whole fire system went off. It was a space heater
in a bedroom on the second floor," Loendorf said as he stood across 10th
Street from the building and watched Wilmette firefighters battle the blaze.
Loendorf, 55, said he ran upstairs to the apartment where he
and his family have lived for the past 20 years and found their bedroom
engulfed in flames. He said a small electric space heater appeared to have
started the fire, and a nearby pile of clothes was burning when he got to the
room.
"I grabbed a fire extinguisher just to try to fight it
back. But when I couldn't crouch under the smoke anymore, I had to get out of
there," he said. "I knew I had to get out of there.
"I almost wish I could have stayed up there. That's how
I feel right now, sick to my stomach," he said.
He said his wife was at work and his daughter was at school.
No one else was in the building at the time, he said.
"I lost my bedroom, and now I've lost my home, because
the ceiling just caved in," Loendorf's wife, Amy, said at the scene.
Wilmette police Chief Brian King said the call came in to
dispatchers around 9:45 a.m. Flames shot through the roof of the 2½-story
building and thick black smoke billowed into the sky as firefighters aimed
their hoses from at least two directions.
An ambulance stood by as firefighters used a tower ladder to
pour water on the roof. As police taped off the area shortly before 11:30 a.m.,
a firefighter told officers that a wall next to the alley in back of the
building had collapsed.
Crews who initially went into the building were ordered out
again "due to the large amount of fire, truss construction and heavy HVAC
equipment on the roof," the Fire Department said in a statement.
By 12:55 p.m. the building was an ice-shrouded shell, its
north wall collapsed and water gushing out the building's front door.
While the space heater was a suspected cause, fire officials
said the blaze remained under investigation.
Wilmette resident Christine Norrick said she smelled smoke
when she stepped outside her home around 10 a.m. and saw a plume of smoke
and flashing lights between 9th and 10th streets.
"It's such a beautiful old building, so I'm hoping that
they can rebuild and that the damage is not too great,"said Norrick, a
member of the village's Plan Commission and the former chairwoman of the
Wilmette Historic Preservation Commission.
"The Wilmette Woman’s Club is a beautiful, 1920s-era
stone building where residents hold a lot of special events, like bar and bat
mitzvahs," she added.
Lali Watt, a former president of the League of Women Voters
of Wilmette, said the building is important to the league and the community.
"Hopefully there's not too much damage because the
Wilmette Woman's Club building is an absolute institution in this
community," Watt said. "The league in Wilmette was founded in 1924 by
members of the Woman's Club, and it's been around forever. … They are a really
good neighbor. And the building is at the center of what happens in this
community."
According to the club's website, it was founded in 1891 as a
service organization dedicated to enriching the civic, educational and social
service sectors of our community. It stored books for the Elmwood Library
Association until a public library opened to house them in 1904, the site says.
It supplied lifeguards to the first public beach, supported a visiting nurse,
oversaw the creation of Wilmette's League of Women Voters and ran a canning
kitchen during World War II.
Firefighters from at least 10 communities, including
Wilmette, Winnetka, Northfield, Evanston, Skokie, Morton Grove and Des Plaines,
responded to the fire, as did the Cook County Department of Homeland Security
and Emergency Management.
Village President Bob Bielinski thanked the
communities whose fire crews aided the Wilmette department and said he was glad
that the fire had injured no one and had not affected homes to the north and
east of the club.
Bielinski called the fire a tragedy that went beyond the
loss of a historic building.
"Obviously the history is important, but in the present
that facility has been a real sort of focus point for community events. I can't
count the times I've been to community events there," he said. "The
most recent was the Chamber of Commerce's Taste of Wilmette, and in a couple of
weeks you would have had the Going Green Wilmette fair.
"So, really more than the history is the importance of
it as a gathering place for this community."
John Carpenter is a reporter for Blue Sky Innovation,
Kathryn Routliffe is a reporter for Pioneer Press and Rosemary Regina Sobol is
a Chicago Tribune reporter. Tribune reporter Karen Ann Cullotta contributed.
Source: Chicago Tribune