By Susan Flood, BAPA Executive Director
I held up traffic on Longwood Drive the other day. I was leaning out my passenger window at a stoplight to photograph the waves of purple Scilla that sweeping up the lawns of some of Beverly/Morgan Park’s most beautiful homes. Every spring it’s as if nature reaches out and says, “Look over here!” and our eyes follow the purple train of flowers up to the houses, and suddenly we are aware of the unique splendor that is hard to find any place else. All this, within the city limits of a world class city.
May brings with it BAPA’s Beverly/Morgan Park Home Tour and memories of the first time I wandered through someone’s home on the tour over 20 years ago. I felt a bit funny in my role as a voyeur. I committed as much of the splendid design and decorating as I could to my memory so I could take these ideas home and try them in my own spaces.
This year as I toured potential Home Tour homes I was swept up with gratitude to the homeowners for the impact they make on our community by sharing their personal space for this popular event. It makes me proud of my choice to settle in a community that sees this kind of hospitality as a priority. It’s yet another reminder of how closely connected we are in Beverly/Morgan Park, of how much we care about our neighbors simply because we live alongside them.
Until I joined the team at BAPA, I didn’t realize how much effort it takes to encourage, protect and preserve the historical beauty of our community. I have always known that BAPA makes housing preservation a priority and that will continue. The results of preservation are everywhere, most eloquently in the homes that young families are updating, taking so much care to keep the details and history that made them – like me – choose this community to call home.
Modern reality has brought home buying online, a major change in the way people make choices of where to call home. What hasn’t changed is what we see block to block: a foundation of remarkable homes, a neighborhood with good bones full of residents who are committed to keeping it that way.
