A parquet floor in the William Witten Home in Highland Park, Illinois, came from the 1893 World’s Fair. [Image from the William Witten Home Facebook page.]
Following a story last year from the Chicago Tribune, CBS-2 Chicago reports that the William Walter Witten Home, at 1014 Central Avenue in Highland Park, Illinois, could be torn down soon. William Witten “was a talented woodworker,” notes CBS “and created the parquet dance floor that was a prize-winner at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.” The 1894 Victorian farmhouse earned local landmark status in 1985.
The report states that the dance floor was dismantled, transported to Highland Park, and reassembled inside Witten’s home in 1894. Where on the grounds of the Columbian Exposition this flooring was originally installed is not stated. Neither Witten’s name nor a description of a parquet floor appear in the official World’s Columbian Exposition Report on Committee of Awards (Government Printing Office, 1901).
Capital Seniors Housing, which has purchased the property, plans to remove portions of the flooring and repurpose them inside a new assisted living center to be constructed on the block. Highland Park resident and preservationist Keane Taylor is working to save the home from demolition.
William Witten’s carpentry business advertisement from the February 1909 telephone directory of Highland Park. [Image from the Highland Park Public Library.]