Goddard-Reagan Family Website

1882 in Riverside, the former Ellen Edmonia Ware married J. Sterling Goddard in 1905. Widowed 11 years later, the then mother of five children, married Herbert Reagan (a widower, also with five children) in 1918 and they had two children between them before he died in 1922. It was on one of her frequent trips to Europe after that that Ellen Ware Goddard Reagan met her third husband, an Italian musician and composer, Mario St. Cyr. At the Paris Exposition of 1932, the St. Cyrs fell in love with a home they saw there that had won first prize in the architectural competition.

They purchased the plans for the home and eventually returned to Riverside with the intent of building the house here. World War II and the tragic death of St. Cyr put the project on hold, but several years later, Ellen St. Cyr went ahead with her dream. To help her, she commissioned the noted Riverside architect, Edward Gray Halstead, (the founder of the architectural firm of Jensen and Halstead Ltd.) to help her adapt the home's plans to Riverside's building codes and her needs. 

Building the house

What evolved was worth her efforts. On a double lot Mrs. St. Cyr had purchased on the corner of Millbridge and Scottswood Roads, builder A. H. Viren constructed the rectangular concrete house (at a cost of $15,000), setting it on the lot farthest from Scottswood, as she instructed, so she could take full advantage of the neighbors' lovely gardens. The home's foundation was set on gravel and six inches of poured concrete, through which the pipes for the home's radiant heating system were placed. The concrete was then covered with a dark brown asphalt tile, (which is still in place in good condition.) Every window in the house is of casement design and identical in size--84" X 44".

Halstead's main contribution was to change the home's original two large bedrooms to four smaller ones, and, except for that alteration and a few changes in construction to conform with village housing requirements, plus some decorative additions, the house was built true to its award winning design. (Mrs. St. Cyr at one time considered adding a second floor to the house, but changed her mind). An interesting note, too, is that the old Riverside Hotel was being torn down at the same time the St. Cyr house was being built and Viren used some wood from it in the construction of the house.

The resulting structure, an unusual design for Riverside, both then and now, was completed in the fall of 1946. To make it more unique, and more personal, Mrs. St. Cyr commissioned Mrs. Eugene Wesselman of Riverside to fashion the family crest of her ancestors, the Jaquelin family of Virginia, in colored pottery, which then was placed permanently in the concrete above the front door. It remains there now, painted in gold. Mrs. St. Cyr lived in the home until 1967, when, at the age of 85, she moved to Hinsdale to live with a daughter. She died there six years later. 

A dramatic design

The dimensions of the rectangular house are small (approximately 48 x 32 feet) but deceiving, and that is the beauty of the structure. As soon as one enters the front door they are immediately treated to a spectacular surprise, a sweeping view straight ahead down the five foot wide hallway, through a rotunda bordered by columns (twelve feet in diameter, the rotunda is capped with a dome encircled with glass brick windows), then through the living room and a huge glass pocket door to the garden beyond.

Just outside the sliding door are the remnants of a reflecting pool and a stone platform that one of Mrs. St. Cyr's sons, Sterling Goddard, built for her. Her granddaughter, Nancy Grim Tonkin, who now resides in Hinsdale, said that her uncle Sterling had a fountain made for the pool and that a stone statue of a cherub once graced the raised platform.

Beyond the pool a ways, there is a stone wall with steps leading down to yet another garden.  At one time there was a rose covered trellis above the steps. The trellis is gone now, a victim of the elements, but the wall remains. This lovely setting was the scene of Nancy Tonkin's wedding to her husband, William, in 1959. Nancy, who lived with her grandmother (everyone called her "Grannie", she said) before she was married, naturally has many special memories of the house.

The gardens are a particular delight to the home's current owners, particularly Mary, who, even with her busy and erratic schedule as a pediatric intern, finds the time to tend to her flowers. In fact, in her former home in a Hyde Park condominium, she was elected to be in charge of gardening for the building's courtyard, and found herself on more than one occasion planting bulbs late at night with the aid of a flashlight.

Easy to Maintain

The house has weathered well. Even though Mark and Mary are the fourth owners of the home, almost everything, except for some cosmetic changes, remains the same. The starkness of the home's dramatic beauty is just one of the reasons the couple decided it was the house for them.

The other reason, Mary confided, was the minimum upkeep it needed, and, with their busy lifestyles, that was most important. Mark, a Ph.D and associate professor at Northwestern University Medical School, is involved in research and teaching in the department of microbiology and cell biology. Mary, a graduate of the University of Chicago Medical School is completing her internship in pediatrics at Wyler Children's Hospital, currently working with liver transplant patients.

Still another reason that Mark and Mary bought the home is that they both had wanted to live in Riverside ever since they first visited here at the suggestion of some Minnesota friends who were former residents of the village. Mark, who hails from California, and Mary, who grew up in Pennsylvania, were both "intrigued by Riverside's uniqueness".

Indeed, the whole story behind the home on Millbridge Road is unique--the stuff that novels are made of. An unusual woman finds the plans for her one-of-a kind dream house in Paris and journeys back to her roots in a special little village in the midwest to build it. We found it a saga worth repeating. 

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And this additional information about this home from Tiz Lambert:

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For all of us who knew and loved that house, (this) is a very evocative description - but, of course, we all have our own memories of a house.

They forgot to mention all the tennis balls that we grandchildren "lost" up on the ledge at the top of the rotunda.

Or the heavy drawer of toys in the kitchen, we were always underfoot getting toys out, just at a crucial moment in making the gravy.

Or the carpet with long loops of shag pile that were such an obstacle for teenage girls in their first pair of high heeled shoes.

Or the patch of lily of the valley to the side of the drive in spring.

Or the spare room where Danny taught us all to play poker one Thanksgiving.

Or Grannie's wonderful system for setting up a big round table in the rotunda for Christmas. She had two half circles of plywood stored in the garage and a few days before Christmas Dad would go over to help her move the bedside tables, conveniently the same height, into the rotunda. The plywood went on top of them, white tablecloths were somehow laid out to cover all that, and there it was, a very grand new dining table in that very grand rotunda.

Or lining up outside the front door, freezing cold, for a family photograph. Or, coming back inside, shoes off, to get the full benefit of the underfloor heating. Or did I kick those shoes off so I wouldn't trip in that shag pile carpet?

They were happy days.