Lombard has 1870s village-core masonry a few blocks from 1960s tract ranches. The same repair approach will not work on both.
Lombard incorporated in 1869 as a stop on what is now the BNSF line, and the original village grid still sits close to the tracks around Main Street. Most people know it for Lilacia Park and the lilac plantings that gave it the Lilac Village name, but for our purposes the useful fact is the age spread of the housing.
You can drive four blocks in Lombard and pass a Victorian with original lime mortar, a 1930s Colonial Revival, and a 1965 ranch. Each one needs a different mortar mix and a different repair sequence, and getting that wrong causes damage that shows up years later.
The postwar expansion north toward North Avenue and south toward Roosevelt Road roughly doubled the village. Those neighborhoods have the exterior side-wall chimneys typical of the era, and they are all reaching the point where repointing is due.
Each architectural period in Lombard has predictable chimney failure modes after enough decades of weather. Here is what to look for.
Chimneys near the old Main Street grid were built with lime-rich mortar that was intentionally softer than the brick. After 120 years the binder is largely gone. These must be repointed with Type N mortar per ASTM C270. Using a modern Portland-heavy mix on this brick will spall the faces within five to ten years, and that damage cannot be reversed.
Lombard has a good stock of interwar homes with decorative chimney detail, corbels, and ornate caps. Those details sit outside the flashing line and take weather from every direction, so they fail well before the main stack does. Rebuilds here usually mean salvaging and reusing the original brick.
The neighborhoods that filled in after the war have center-of-roof and side-wall chimneys with heavy original use. Glazed creosote in the flue tile is common in this group. A Level 2 camera scan is worth doing before any significant repair, because a cracked tile changes the scope entirely.
Multi-plane rooflines in Lombard's later stock create complicated flashing geometry around the chimney. Interior water damage that homeowners blame on the crown is, more often than not, a flashing failure two feet away.
Lombard makes this harder than most towns because the right answer depends on which era your house belongs to. A 130-year-old chimney and a 1965 chimney can show identical symptoms and need opposite responses.
The full chimney, fireplace, and commercial service catalog, dispatched from our Park Ridge office to Lombard addresses.
USDA Zone 6a; inland DuPage County climate with 30 to 40 freeze-thaw cycles per winter.
Lombard, IL
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