Oct 4, 2007

New on the Market—A Lake Forest Villa Still Looking for a Buyer

List Price: $10.999 million
The Property: A lakefront house designed by David Adler and Henry Dangler, this 90-year-old, 21-room mansion evokes the elegance of an Italian villa. Because its first owners—the Chicago banker and attorney Charles Pike and his wife, Frances—often arrived here by boat, the house originally had its main entrance on the east, where a pair of limestone staircases climb up from the lawn, which is about 70 feet above the lake. Atop the bluff, the lawn runs for 75 yards between rows of statuary toward the house. Since the foundation of an earlier house survived a devastating fire, builders set this mansion closer to the street than most homes along this privileged avenue; a walled courtyard on the west side of the house creates a privacy zone near the road.

Over time, the western entrance became the main portal to the house, so today’s visitors—their approach scrutinized by five Romanesque busts—arrive via a columned arcade that skirts a formal walled garden. The colonnade continues inside to a 50-foot-long, two-story-high gallery. The formal rooms have limestone doorframes and ornate plaster wall and ceiling decorations. Gold trim and plaster pilasters adorn the salon, hand-carved wood paneling highlights the second-floor library, and limestone lends majesty to the wide main staircase.

The sellers, Yoonok Kim and Hi Kyung Kim, are doctors (he’s an anesthesiologist at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge; she’s a retired pediatrician) who bought the estate in 1984. They repaired extensive erosion to the bluff and built a new set of stairs down to the private beach. They filled the house with their collection of antiques and art, but did not update the kitchen and six-plus baths. Yoonok Kim says the couple plans to “retire to someplace warm.”

Price Points: The Kims listed the property in mid-2006 for $15 million, but reduced their asking price to $10.999 million later that year.

Listing Agent: Houda Chedid, Baird & Warner, (847) 615-7917. For more photos and information, go to www.houdachedid.com.

Posted at 05:58 AM in On the Market | Permalink

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