Beachfront mansion in Winnetka, Illinois
 

WINNETKA
LIST PRICE: $6,750,000
SALE PRICE: $6,621,300

A new 16-room mansion with a 112-foot private beach on Lake Michigan was sold in March for more than $6.6 million—Winnetka’s priciest house sale in four years. Built on a nearly one-acre lot on a secluded block-long lane, this house has an elaborately detailed limestone façade and a hefty slate mansard roof. The three main floors comprise about 10,400 square feet, and there are another 4,000 square feet in the finished English basement. The house has seven bedrooms, seven-plus baths, six fireplaces, a modern kitchen, a wine room, a media room, and a cherry-paneled library. The new owners, Gerry and Maureen Corcoran (who could not be reached for comment), have taken out permits for extensive landscaping on the property.

According to public records, Heritage Luxury Builders, the home’s developer, paid $2.5 million in May 2009 for the lakefront lot and the house that used to occupy it. In 2007, Heritage sold another new lakefront home in Winnetka for $6.4 million; this recent sale tops that one by more than $200,000 and appears to be the priciest sale yet for Heritage, which has been building homes for nearly two decades. Representatives of Heritage declined to comment.

This transaction involved the most money spent on a house in Winnetka since 2006, when a Chicago couple paid $8.1 million for the Spanish Revival home formerly owned by the insurance magnate, philanthropist, and positive thinker W. Clement Stone.

 

Photograph: Dennis Rodkin