Tom Kus resides in a Queen Anne residence in Maywood built over 100 years ago, so he knows quite a bit about the upkeep required for a vintage home.

"I've been here eight years, and maintenance is an open-ended statement," Kus said. "People say: 'When are you going to be done restoring it?' I say: 'I'm not.'

"I've rebuilt almost the whole second floor, major tuck-pointing, refinishing floors. I've put quite a bit into the house. But when you look around, you're really happy with what you have."

His house was built in 1894, and its original owner was Maywood's first mayor, Jacob Bohlander, who sold it around 1908.

The home is one of about a dozen residences open for viewing on Sunday during the Historic Maywood Housewalk. It's the third annual tour.

For several decades, the Queen Anne was used as a rooming house, starting after World War II. Visitors can look for elaborate vintage wallpaper on the first floor.

"All the woodwork is intact," Kus said. "Interestingly, when the house was built, the owner was a bachelor and successful dry goods merchant. However, he included a wonderful bridal staircase in the foyer, which he soon made use of.

"Maywood is full of architectural gems."

The housing stock ranges from mansions (with servants quarters) to modest worker cottages. "Maywood has something for everybody, and in the last few years, the town is again being rediscovered," Kus said.

"People have done some serious work," he said of the rehabbing. "Some of these older homes, there have been only two or three owners over the last 80 years. The older people, they didn't want to do any work on it, so the homes are intact. The new owners are saying: 'This house would have cost me $600,000 in Oak Park. I got it for $250,000 here in Maywood.'"

One home on the tour features an observation tower for a large telescope. "How often do you see something like that? A famous scientist lived there," Kus said. "The current owner is in the process of having the retracting dome restored. He's getting bids, but as you can imagine, it's not a cheap thing."

Trolleys will take visitors to various sections of the west suburb on Sunday, eventually going past a home once owned by aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh. "He would fly the mail out of Maywood's airport," Kus said. The landing strip Lindbergh used, called Checkerboard Field, was at First Avenue and Roosevelt Road.

The Lindbergh home is for sale. "But it's not in too good a shape," Kus said. "It's been unoccupied for several years."

The trolley also will go by Maywood's southern section, sometimes referred to as the Bungalow Belt. "It's kind of like Chicago's, but we have California-style bungalows too, unique for the Midwest," Kus said.

Another home on the housewalk has been in the owner's family since 1905. The Robinson House is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Maywood's first post office, built in 1872, has been converted into a house, and it will be open on the housewalk as well.

Maywood was built in several spurts, and that's reflected by the varying architecture in the periods when the houses were built.

"Many young, successful architects of the late 19th, early 20th century came to Maywood to practice their trade," Kus said. "Many of them worked for Frank Lloyd Wright. However, as it's well-known, he was not an easy person to work for.

"Prairie school architecture is well-represented in Maywood -- by some of the school's most famous students: [William] Drummond, [John] Van Bergen, E.E. Roberts and Talmadge and Watson," he said.

"One of Van Bergen's finest homes will be on the tour. It's supposed to be one of finest Prairie styles around, and there is a wonderfully elaborate Japanese garden, too."

Talmadge and Watson designed the Akin House on the tour. "It's very large, originally built for a prominent banker. It's currently being restored and is for sale.

"There is plenty of other lore to go around too about former residents and their homes -- Al Capone's accountant, someone notorious in the numbers racket and other gangsters," Kus said. "We have a house that still has a barn in back, too. I could go on and on."

Maywood was chartered in 1869 on the site of two Indian trails and several large farms. Maywood was founded by Col. William T. Nichols and six other businessmen from Vermont, it's noted in Maywood, part of Arcadia Publishing's Images of America series.

"Nichols presided over the Maywood Land Co., planted 20,000 trees and laid out his town on a grid like a huge board game with a park in its center," writes author Douglas Deuchler. During the first year, about 30 homes were built. The Chicago and North Western Railroad began passenger service, and the train became the catalyst of Maywood's early boom period. By 1875, there were 16 trains stopping daily in Maywood.

"The new prairie community was so rural in those days that the tracks had be lined with fences -- to keep livestock from being hit by the locomotives."

The foursquare style of home (solid, box-like, with centered dormers) dominated Maywood residential streets in the early 1900s. During the 1920s, hundreds of bungalows and scores of apartment buildings were constructed. (The bungalows were priced at around $2,000 in 1924, the book notes.)

Bill Cunniff