Unfinished mansion near Naperville, Naperville, Illinois

Abandoned Unfinished Mansion Near Naperville, Boarded Up and Alarmed Before Demolition

An unfinished dream home near Naperville, boarded up with an ADT alarm going off. DuPage County demolished it in April 2022.

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This is a mansion near Naperville that was meant to be someone’s dream home and never got finished. The upper windows were boarded, a chain link fence ran around the front, and the county tore it down in April 2022. I only got to see it from the outside, with the boards still on.

I called it beautiful when I got there. There was some graffiti on it, but it was very well boarded up, and the architecture gave it what I’d call southern vibes.

What we found

The mansion from the road, with its tile roof and boarded upper windows. 0:17

The front entrance behind a chain link fence, with plywood over most of the windows and a sign hanging on the fence. 0:33

There was an open window way up on the second floor. The security cameras on the house didn’t look new at all, though they could be. Around the back there were lots of footprints, so people had been walking through.

The side wall seen through the fence, with one boarded window and dead brush against the stucco. 0:50

A two story corner of the house with a boarded window next to one that has lost its board. 1:06

A smoke alarm was going off inside. I wondered if there had been a fire, unless what I was seeing was mold. A second window was open higher up, and a lot of the boards looked very fresh, so either someone climbed up or someone broke them off.

The garage wing and an arched passage between the two sides of the house, seen through the fence. 1:23

A fence post and bare saplings against the stucco, with snow on the ground. 1:40

Then I found a door that looked almost open, and it was open. The alarm was still going, and the sticker said ADT. It wasn’t going when I got there, and I could see fresh stickers on the board.

A boarded window and a boarded door beside the stone faced entry. 1:56

Plywood over the upper windows, with snow at the base of the wall. 2:13

A small arched door with a window next to the stone wall, brush growing up the corner. 2:29

Why this mansion ended up abandoned

The Chicago Tribune reported the story in April 2022 as the house came down. It was an unfinished Spanish style mansion on unincorporated land near Naperville in DuPage County. The owner and his wife bought the two acre lot in 2007 for $625,000 and started building. He said he spent about $2 million before construction stopped during the financial crisis, and that he never got the roughly $1 million he needed to finish it.

The house sat unfinished for about a decade. Neighbors complained about overgrowth and trespassers. A building inspector’s affidavit from 2020 described broken doors and windows, standing water in the basement and structural hazards. The county went after the property under its clean and lien program. The owner said he spent $100,000 on security and other protections, and that problems with the county’s online permitting system kept him from getting permits.

In March 2022 a judge denied his request for more time and allowed the teardown. His lawyer filed an appeal, and a judge refused an emergency order to pause the work. The county posted a video of the demolition on April 18, 2022. A county spokesman said everything it had done was authorized by court order.

What happens next

When the Tribune ran its story, the owner said he would pursue the appeal. The county planned to bill him $138,000 for the demolition and fine him $2.8 million for violating its nuisance ordinance and building rules. A local real estate agent estimated the empty lot would sell for $750,000 to $900,000.