The Charles O. Boynton House is located in the

DeKalb County, Illinois DeKalb County is a county located in the U.S. state of Illinois. As of the 2020 United States Census, the population was 100,420. Its county seat is Sycamore. DeKalb County is part of the Chicago-Naperville- Elgin, IL- IN- WI Metropolitan Stati ...

, city of Sycamore. The home is part of the Sycamore Historic District which was designated and listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in May 1978. The Queen Anne style mansion sits on a stretch of Sycamore's Main Street that is dotted with other significant Historic District structures including, the Townsend House and the Townsend Garage. The Boynton House was designed by the same architect who designed the

Ellwood House The Ellwood House was built as a private home by barbed wire entrepreneur Isaac Ellwood in 1879. It is located on First Street in DeKalb, Illinois, United States, in DeKalb County. The Victorian style home, designed by George O. Garnsey, under ...

in nearby DeKalb and the David Syme House, another house in the Sycamore Historic District.Bigolin, Steve
The Sycamore Historic District: Location 3
''Daily Chronicle'', 5 September 2006, Retrieved January 13, 2007.

C. O. Boynton

Charles O. Boynton was born in 1826 in

Rockingham, Vermont Rockingham is a Town in Windham County, on the southeastern Vermont border in the United States, along the Connecticut River. As of the 2020 census, the population was 4,832. Rockingham includes the incorporated villages of Bellows Falls and Saxt ...

. He came to

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...

in 1847 and opened a dry goods store in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. Two years later he moved to Sycamore and opened another store, this time a general store. He began lending money in 1852 by obtaining capital from back East at lower

interest rates An interest rate is the amount of interest due per period, as a proportion of the amount lent, deposited, or borrowed (called the principal sum). The total interest on an amount lent or borrowed depends on the principal sum, the interest rate, th ...

and then lending locally at a higher rate. He did this until the early 1870s and made a significant amount of money. After lending Boynton moved on to

land speculation In finance, speculation is the purchase of an asset (a commodity, goods, or real estate) with the hope that it will become more valuable shortly. (It can also refer to short sales in which the speculator hopes for a decline in value.) Many s ...

. Boynton owned farmland in DeKalb County as well as almost 75,000 acres (300 km²) in Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Arkansas. He held nearly 60,000 acres (240 km²) of walnut forests in

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the Osage ...

where he owned a lumber mill.

History

Planning for the Charles Boynton House began in 1886, by Boynton. His hand picked architect was George O. Garnsey of Chicago, who had designed a number of prominent structures in DeKalb and in Sycamore. Many of those structures are listed on the National Register either individually or as part of the Sycamore Historic District. The Queen Anne style mansion was completed by April 1887 at a cost of about $12,000. The house remained in the Boynton family for around 100 years but went through numerous changes throughout its history. In the 1940s the family converted the first floor of the home for use as a gift, antique and women's clothing shop. To add merchandise space they enclosed the

porch A porch (from Old French ''porche'', from Latin ''porticus'' "colonnade", from ''porta'' "passage") is a room or gallery located in front of an entrance of a building. A porch is placed in front of the facade of a building it commands, and form ...

with glass and consolidated their living quarters to the upper floor. Finally, in 1986, the home left the hands of the Boynton family as third generation Lillian Boynton put the home up for sale, asking $275,000. The home, nearby

Charles O. Boynton Carriage House The Charles O. Boynton Carriage House is a prominent structure in the Sycamore Historic District, located in Sycamore, Illinois. The Sycamore Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places The National Register of ...

, and surrounding property sold for $207,000. The home's new owners set about remodeling, mostly the interior of the home. Outside they returned the porch to its 1880s appearance. The third floor had originally held a grand

ballroom A ballroom or ballhall is a large room inside a building, the primary purpose of which is holding large formal parties called balls. Traditionally, most balls were held in private residences; many mansions and palaces, especially historic man ...

, said to have been even larger than that in the Ellwood House. At its height the ballroom was lavishly decorated and furnished. Even in the home's last years with Lillian Boynton the ballroom still retained its deteriorated original

wallpaper Wallpaper is a material used in interior decoration to decorate the interior walls of domestic and public buildings. It is usually sold in rolls and is applied onto a wall using wallpaper paste. Wallpapers can come plain as "lining paper" (so t ...

and gas

chandelier A chandelier (; also known as girandole, candelabra lamp, or least commonly suspended lights) is a branched ornamental light fixture designed to be mounted on ceilings or walls. Chandeliers are often ornate, and normally use incandescent li ...

s. After the sale, the ballroom was gutted to make way for a new master bedroom. The home hit the market for the third time in a little over 100 years in 1997. Both the home and carriage house passed hands, separately this time, due to

bankruptcy Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor ...

proceedings. The home, at remained a single family home while the carriage house was converted for office space. On December 16, 2016, the Boynton House was damaged in a fire that originated in the home's carport. Authorities speculated that a carpenter's van owned by a hardwood flooring company that was working on the property ignited, causing an estimated $175,000 in damages. No one was harmed in the fire.

Architecture

The facade is red

brick A brick is a type of block used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term ''brick'' denotes a block composed of dried clay, but is now also used informally to denote other chemically cured cons ...

and light colored stone. There is a diagonally placed

turret Turret may refer to: * Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building * Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon * Objective turret, an indexable holder of multiple lenses in an optical microscope * Mi ...

in the mansion's southeast corner, rising above the rest of the house.

Bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a Gulf (geography), gulf, sea, sound (geography), sound, or bight (geogra ...

s are formed in the first and second floor rooms within the tower. A prominent oriel projects from the second floor's northeast corner, opposite the tower. Many windows are detailed in

stained glass Stained glass is coloured glass as a material or works created from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant religious buildings. Although tradition ...

including those in the oriel. The porte-cochere has been remodeled over the years and was originally intended to awe and amaze visitors to the Boynton House. The home has seen a number of changes aside from the porte-cochere. The front porch has undergone dramatic altering through the years. When Garnsey designed the building he intended the porch as an open and wooden decorative touch. By the turn of the 20th century the porch had been replaced with a brick based porch. The 1940s brought the commercial conversion of the first floor of the home and the porch was enclosed with glass to provide additional space for the business.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Boynton, Charles O., House Buildings and structures in Sycamore Historic District Houses in DeKalb County, Illinois Historic district contributing properties in Illinois National Register of Historic Places in DeKalb County, Illinois Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Illinois