Mrs. McCormick’s Lake Forest Teahouse

List Price: $1.5 million
Sale Price: $1.05 million
The Property: Nestled into the trees at the edge of a ravine in east Lake Forest, this tile-roofed teahouse is a remnant of Walden, the 80-acre lakefront estate of Cyrus H. McCormick II. Built in the 1920s, it was converted to a house in the 1950s…

Before and After in the South Suburbs

Jim McClelland, the CEO of the Tinley Park–based Mack Industries, is helping some hard-hit south suburbs recover from the foreclosure crisis by creating some well-equipped and well-managed rental housing for residents of those towns. A longtime builder, McClelland began the project about five years ago…

Coach DiNardo Executes a Switch Play

List Price: $1.5 million
Sale Price: $1.25 million
The Property: Two years ago, this 13-room house in Western Springs seemed like a good fit for the former college football coach Gerry DiNardo, who was moving with his family from southern Indiana to Chicago…

Condo Embraces Playboy Mansion's Garden

List Price: $2.9 million
The Property: It’s a safe bet that when tourists on buses ogle the mansion at 1340 North State Parkway, they are more interested in the mansion’s swinging years as the Playboy Mansion rather than in the sumptuous Beaux Arts details of the century-old façade designed by James Gamble Rogers or the secluded formal garden on the building’s south end…

Open House at Lake Forest Home Owned by Vince Vaughn’s Mother

An open house is scheduled for Sunday, June 27th, at the Lake Forest home of Sharon Vaughn, the mother of the movie star Vince Vaughn. Priced at $2.395 million, the five-bedroom, six-bathroom house has about 6,000 square feet of living space and stands on a two-acre site that overlooks the Lake Forest Open Lands Association’s Mellody Farm Nature Preserve…

Incorruptibly Wisconsin

Sellers of homes typically tout a location’s best qualities: its excellent schools, quaint shopping areas, or easy access to major commuting routes. But the owner of one southern Wisconsin property opted to extol a very unusual advantage of his location—buy there and you can get away from the corrupt politicians of Illinois…