The House at 1340 by Judy Alter

 

It is no coincidence that when Irene Foxglove decides to take a solo apartment in Chicago, she chooses the Madison Park Hotel. Nor is it a coincidence that when Chance Charpentier buys a house for the children he has rescued from their brutish father, it is the house at 1340 Madison Park. Madison Park is a three-block long oasis on Chicago’s South Side, a narrow park lined mostly on one side with houses the age of 1340 and on the other side apartments probably slightly newer. A tiny, one-way drive circles the park, with a turn-around about halfway along. Good luck should you want to find a parking place. Most houses on the north side of the park have one-car garages, many rebuilt to eliminate the skinny garages of the early 1900s.

Those twists in Irene in a Ghost Kitchen are me working in a bit of personal nostalgia. I grew up in that house, and my family still refers to it as 1340. A two-and-a-half story duplex built in the early 1890s for the Columbian Exposition, it is, as one of my kids described it, a red-brick brownstone, with decorative stonework and the requisite bay window. When I was a child, the houses in that part of Madison Park had wooden front porches, but the area has been gentrified now, and the porches are gone, replaced by trendy landscaping with Japanese maples and other plants utterly foreign to the South Side of Chicago. In my day, the lot next door was my father’s garden, a wonder that bloomed from spring until Chicago’s winter weather sent it to sleep for the year. Today, a house, supposedly designed to resemble 1340, stands in Dad’s garden.

Not too many years ago I took my four grown children to Chicago. They had never seen my Hyde Park/Kenwood neighborhood, Madison Park, or 1340. They knew, because I had told them, that there was not much money when I was a child. My dad was a physician but a salaried educator rather than one who saw patients, and he supported his mom and sister in Canada as well as us. When we drove up to the house, there was profound silence as the kids stared and then, at last, one let out an awe-struck, “Mom!” My parents bought the house and extra lot in 1936 for about $6,000. The last I knew it was on the market for somewhere well over a million dollars.

After my parents retired and sold 1340, the house suffered through a series of owners, some not at all respectful of its age or classic touches like the pink marble fireplace—replaced by a wooden Swedish modern monstrosity. Today it is stark and modern throughout, but in making it part of Irene’s story, I kept it as it was when I lived there—a living room with two couches and a baby grand piano, one lone bathroom, and the 1950s kitchen Mom was so proud of with white-washed knotty pine cabinets and turquoise Formica and linoleum.

I’m a pantser—no outline for me ahead of writing and very little planning. I tend to think if I can get that first line, I’m off and running. So I certainly didn’t plan ahead to include Madison Park or 1340 in Irene’s ghost kitchen adventure. But a classic bit of wisdom advises authors to listen to their characters, and in this case, I think Irene clearly told me she wanted to move to the Madison Park Hotel. Then Chance told me he’d buy the house at 1340 for the rescued children. I hope readers think my bit of nostalgia works.

About Judy Alter

After an award-winning career writing historical fiction about women in the nineteenth-century American West, Judy Alter turned her attention to mystery fiction and never looked back. She is the author of four series: Blue Plate Café Mysteries, Kelly O’Connell Mysteries, Oak Grove Mysteries, and the current Irene in Chicago Culinary Mysteries. For almost thirty years, Judy was director of the TCU Press. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, the Guppies subchapter, the Texas Institute of Letters, and Story Circle Network; she is listed in the Halls of Fame of Texas and Western Writers of America. She is also the author of two cookbooks and a food blog, Gourmet on a Hot Plate.