On the Market

The Newest Old House in Glencoe

List Price: $5.3 million
The Property: Although brand new, this 18-room house on a wooded half-acre in Glencoe could easily be mistaken for a holdover from a bygone era of handsome country homes. George Adamczyk, a veteran builder of (by his count) 115 houses on the North Shore, the North Side, and in Hinsdale, collaborated with Anne Montgomery, a real-estate agent and first-time developer, to create something that was worthy of “this magnificent, double-sided site,” as Adamczyk puts it.

On the front, the house faces a tree-lined street; out back, it looks over the sixth green and fairways of the 112-year-old Skokie Country Club. Thus the unusual arrangement where the house’s front yard includes a semiprivate courtyard, in order to leave the back open to the club. Montgomery, a member at the Skokie club for the past 30 years, says she felt compelled to build something “that added to the timeless atmosphere of the club.”

Adamczyk is a masterful designer—I’ve written about several of his houses over the years—and in the video he makes it clear that he lavished attention on this house. It shows in everything from the garages, with their picturesque roofs and mini-courtyard, to the basement wine bar, whose countertop extends through the glass wall into the refrigerated wine cellar, tying the two spaces together. Throughout, Adamczyk and Montgomery aimed for the look of a sumptuous but not ostentatious country house. The main stairs, a cascade of wood that divides above the front entry, typifies the home’s look: it’s impressive but, in its way, informal. It’s not the same old grand staircase that shows up in many new houses of this caliber.

With its walls of shimmery Venetian plaster, a library fireplace that is a simplified Gothic arch carved out of a wall of limestone, and numerous other meticulously managed details, the house meets the challenge that Adamczyk says Montgomery issued: to build a house “that nobody would say was built in 2009.”

Price Points: This is one of 11 homes priced at $5 million or more in Glencoe right now.
Listing Agent: Anne Montgomery of Prudential Preferred Properties, 847-571-4713; amontgomery@prupref.com

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