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Story and Photos by Catrina D. McCulley
Down a narrow country road on the outskirts of a small town called Paris, sits a beautiful old farmhouse that, less than ten years ago, sat abandoned and slowly falling apart. The slanted and bent porch that once covered the front door has been removed. The windows, smashed and jagged, have been replaced. The flecks of mold and mildew that once covered the speckled brick foundation, are long gone. Built in the 1850s, the Westbrook Farm is an authentic piece of history. The house was the dream of its original owner, Smallwood (Bud) Redmon, who built the house with double brick walls, ten rooms - eight with fireplaces and mantels - and five porches. Redmon passed away in 1859 at the age of 49, and didn't live long enough to complete or even enjoy his new dream home. Since then, various owners have tried to remodel and improve the unfinished home. Finally in 1991, more than 130 years later, it became the new dream of Andrew and Cyndi Patrick, who, after years of remodeling, transformed it into a quaint restaurant known as Andrew's at the Westbrook. The Patricks, who met in Paris, always shared a common interest -they both had a love and nostalgia for the old. "We just love the old. Andrew has kept every car he has ever owned," said Cyndi, "and I mow the yard with an old 1950s Cub tractor. I have a 1967 Firebird convertible and in the future, we plan to get a really old truck and paint 'Westbrook Farm' on it." The Westbrook farm was always a treasure for Andrew who can remember passing by it as a child with admiration. "When Andrew and I were first dating," Cyndi recalled, "he brought me to the farmhouse. The grass was up to my shoulders and he hoisted me through a window. We walked around inside and he turned to me and said 'I am going to buy this someday.'" Back then, the Westbrook Farm was a dream that was far in the future for this young couple who ended up purchasing an old Victorian home on the Gold Coast in Elgin, "It was a grand old home," Cyndi remembered, "but it was, in. terrible need of repair and that was, in essence, Andrew's job while he was going to school." After the Patricks completed that project and Andrew finished culinary school, they sold the home and moved back to Paris with the idea of opening a restaurant. They wanted to buy the Westbrook farm and make it their home, but "the gentleman who owned it would never sell," said Andrew. "I called him two or three times and he said that he wasn't interested in selling the place." The Patricks instead bought another old home in Paris that 12 ILLINOIS COUNTRY LIVING JUNE 1999
they intended to restore and make their home. "It was a Gothic Revival style home with Cathedral windows at the top," said Cyndi. The Patricks were merely two weeks into the renovation of that house when the owner of Westbrook Farm passed away and his widow decided to sell them the farmhouse. The Patricks then had two projects to complete. "We knew that the Westbrook home would have to be in design for quite some time, so we finished the Gothic home while it was in transition," said Cyndi.
Andrew, after years of wanting and waiting, was finally the owner of the Westbrook Farm. The fun was about to begin. "My brother is an architect," said Andrew "and when he saw this house, his first reaction was to tear it down and build a new house in its place." Andrew could not dream of demolishing such a significant slice of history, he wanted to save it. "I want to stand and look out of the very same window that someone over 100 years ago looked out," said Andrew, "taking this farm and keeping its history within it is really important to me."
The Patricks originally bought the farmhouse with the intention of making it their home. They planned to open a restaurant in Paris. "We saw ourselves with this little place on the square in town with little tables out front," said Cyndi. Then, in the midst of the renovation of Westbrook, the Patricks decided to make their restaurant and their home both within the walls of the Westbrook farmhouse. This transformation was going to require major construction because the house needed bathrooms and a commercial kitchen to meet government codes. This would be impossible to do in the old structure of the house because there was no running water and the exterior and interior walls were both brick and would have made it very difficult to put in plumbing or wiring. "That is when we decided to build an addition onto the house that would include bathrooms, a commercial kitchen in the back and a basement for a furnace," said Andrew. The couple wanted to keep everything as original as possible. Adding on to the structure allowed them to leave the old part of the house exactly as it was. "We just wanted to renew anything that had rotted and keep everything else basically the way it was built," Andrew said. The renovation process was long, hard and expensive. "It took us about a year just to clean up the place," said Andrew. Most of the windows were missing, and in keeping with the antiqueness of the house, Andrew watched for old houses that were having windows replaced. He gathered the wavy old glass from those houses and used if to replace the broken windows of Westbrook. "It seemed that every time we turned around, something was costing more than it had originally been quoted to us," said Cyndi. The couple wound up spending about a third more than they had planned when they purchased the old home. "I think if we were to do it again," explained Cyndi, "we'd do it differently." Andrew added, "We would do it less expensively, but knowing what I know now, it would be easy." Open for business in 1995, this month marks Andrew's at the Westbrook's fourth anniversary. "Business is going well," said Cyndi, who distinctly remembered
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