A five-bedroom home built in 1897 at 218 West Hickory Street sold Friday, June 5 for $2.19 million, making it one of the pricier sales this spring for a 19th-century house in Hinsdale.

The two-story house sits on a 14,375-square-foot lot in the Ayer's Addition, a subdivision platted on former farmland in 1869 along the southern edge of Hinsdale's north side. The home spent 84 days on the market after being listed March 13 by @properties Christie's International Real Estate.

Shaw Local reported the sale at $578 per square foot based on 3,786 square feet of interior space. The MLS listing for the property shows 4,601 square feet, which would put the price closer to $476 per square foot. Either figure lands above the village's median per-square-foot list price of $431, according to Altos Research data as of June 23.

Both figures fall well short of what new construction commands. A brand-new home at 6 S. Elm Street in the Robbins Park Historic District sold June 2 for $3 million, or $691 per square foot for 4,340 square feet built in 2025.

On the same block, 117 West Hickory Street sold in July 2025 for $1.6 million, or $561 per square foot, for a smaller four-bedroom home. That remains the most recent comparable sale on the block before the 218 W. Hickory transaction.

The deed transfer had not appeared in publicly accessible DuPage County Recorder of Deeds records reviewed for this article. Buyer and seller names can be confirmed at dupageco.org.

Preservation on the block

The home's immediate neighbor tells part of the story. Across the street at 217 W. Hickory, Sarah Chase and her husband David own an 1875 "gabled ell" they purchased nine years ago and added to the Village's Historically Significant Structures Property List in 2023. Chase told The Hinsdalean in May 2026 that the village's preservation incentives helped push their renovation forward: "We'd been working with our architect slowly, and then all of a sudden the preservation incentives passed, and so we were like, 'Let's do this.'"

The village's Historically Significant Structures Property List includes more than 100 homes as of November 2025. Properties on the list are eligible for alternative zoning regulations, fee waivers, property tax rebates, and matching grants of up to $10,000. Whether 218 W. Hickory appears on the list could not be confirmed from sources reviewed for this article. Village Planner Bethany Salmon administers the program and can be reached at 630-789-7035.

On a street where 19th-century homes still stand lot by lot, the property's future depends on whether the new owner opts to preserve or replace the 129-year-old structure. That decision has gone both ways in Hinsdale in recent years. The Hinsdalean's May 2026 preservation editorial noted that homes continue to be demolished in the Robbins Park subdivision, including the 156-year-old Whitney House at 142 E. First St.

At $2.19 million on a lot of more than a third of an acre, the gap between what the 1897 home fetched and what a new-construction replacement on the same footprint might command leaves the teardown calculus open for the next owner to resolve.