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Housing Bulletin—X/O, Lakeshore Athletic Club, and Two Former Blog Homes

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The fates of two controversial Chicago real-estate projects were decided over the past week—and both decisions involved freshmen aldermen. The first bit of news concerned X/O, the pair of sinuous towers, designed by Lucien Lagrange, slated to go up in the South Loop at 18th Street and Prairie Avenue. Reacting to residents’ fears that the tall buildings would overwhelm the landmark Glessner House and other historic residences nearby, Robert Fioretti, the newly elected alderman of the 2nd Ward, had proposed an ordinance that would have cut the site’s allowable building height in half, from 450 to 225 feet. Fioretti’s proposal would have essentially repealed the Planned Development Ordinance for the property that the Chicago City Council had approved in October 2006, before Fioretti was elected.

But then came the report late last week that Fioretti had withdrawn his ordinance, thus giving the $300-million project the green light. According to Keith Giles, who is developing X/O with his partner…

Sale of the Week—Joseph Cari’s Lincoln Park home

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List Price: $3.45 million
Sale Price: $3 million

The Property: Though it looks like two townhouses of different vintages, this is actually a single Lincoln Park residence, its two sides built decades apart. From 1999 until October 2007, the 12-room house belonged to Joseph Cari Jr., a once-prominent Democratic fundraiser. In 2005, Cari was indicted on federal charges related to a complex series of board appointments and campaign-fund donations—a tangled web unraveled by Chicago’s Steve Rhodes in…

On the Market—Wilmette

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List Price: $1.695 million
The Property: From its triangular floor plan to its hanging chimney, internal balconies, and master bathroom tiled in black polka dots, this Wilmette house built in 1981 is a study in unconventional design. The work of the late Marion Gutnayer—a University of Illinois architecture professor whose own even more unusual home is just a block away—this four-bedroom house has a big eight-sided living room whose brick walls shut out the sight and sound of the busy street outside, while its tall, slender windows frame views of trees and garden space. Upstairs loft spaces near two children’s bedrooms overlook the living room, and they are matched in the rear of the house by a broad balcony off the master bedroom that looks out over the glass-walled family room and into the yard. There is also a wide spiral staircase, vertical cutouts in some brick walls, a large-panel terrazzo floor, and…

Housing Bulletin—Dimon in the Rough

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November 28, 2007
Housing Bulletin: Dimon in the Rough
Jamie Dimon, the banking executive who now heads New York–based JP Morgan Chase, has cut 11 percent off the asking price of the 26-room Gold Coast mansion where he lived while he ran Bank One. Originally listed at $13.5 million, the house now has a price tag of $12 million.

The broad house, faced with rough-hewn orange limestone, was built by Potter Palmer in 1889 as part of his effort to make the nascent Gold Coast into the fashionable new neighborhood. The architect Ernest Graham, of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White (think Wrigley Building and Field Museum), did a later expansion and remodeling. The house’s exterior is a many-textured composition of hefty stones, arched windows, copper-topped turrets, and dormers puncturing a…

Sale of the Week—Winnetka Charmer

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List Price: $2,394,500
Sale Price: $2,190,000

The Property: A handsome new home whose rough limestone exterior and creamy shingles fit comfortably among the vintage homes in a tucked-away corner of Winnetka, this house has 11 rooms (five of them bedrooms), four-plus baths, a ten-foot-long kitchen island, and three fireplaces. The builder, Tamara Kasey, bought the lot, which then contained a smaller house, in 2000 for $549,000. With this replacement house, she took advantage of the extra-deep corner lot, giving the residence an elongated layout that strings together living and dining rooms and an open kitchen–family room combo. Out back, beyond French doors, sits a bluestone terrace and a cottage-look…