Chicago’s residential real estate may not be selling as briskly as it did a few years ago-particularly on the high end. That hasn’t stopped people in the city and suburbs from putting their pricey pads up for sale. Case in point: a trio of distinctive 19th-century mansions that have recently hit the market.

Sotw060407Georgian Revival – Kenwood, Chicago
List Price: $2.295 million
The Property: Designed in 1899 by the architect Benjamin Marshall-who created the Drake Hotel and other notable Chicago buildings-this handsome 16-room mansion is situated in the heart of the Kenwood neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. The house’s kitchen and the four full and two partial bathrooms have all been redone since 1999, while vintage details like the stained glass in the first-floor pocket doors remain intact. According to the sellers’ agent, all that is left to be done is finish installing the upstairs’ air conditioning.
Listing Agent: Toi Salter, Signature Real Estate Group, (312) 543-6000

Sotw060407Lumber Baron’s Townhouse – Chicago’s Near West Side
List price: $2.25 million
The Property:  Built in 1883, this red-brick Queen Anne was originally owned by the lumber baron Benjamin Franklin Ferguson, who endowed the city’s B. F. Ferguson Monument Fund. Filled with elaborate hand-carved woodwork, the interior has 6,000 square feet of living space on the house’s three main floors and basement, plus a coach house with at least another 1,100 square feet. The property, which occupies three city lots, is part of the Jackson Boulevard strip of 19th-century townhouses immediately west of Whitney Young High School on the Near West Side. The seller has owned the house for four decades, investing in many repairs and costly upgrades, but the place likely needs a new kitchen.
Listing Agent: Maria Sabatini of Sudler Sotheby’s, (773) 412-4484

Sotw060407A Suburban Victorian – Palatine
List Price: $1.799 million
The Property:Chuck Patten, who is selling this 109-year-old Victorian, is the great grandson of the house’s original owner, Charles Patten, a banker, entrepreneur, and onetime mayor of Palatine. (Chuck’s mother lived in the house until her death in 2002.) Several of the 15 rooms are circular, and the beaded woodwork and other vintage details are in good condition. What’s more, the house, which sits on two acres near the center of Palatine, has something very rare for a home from its era: a two-car garage space in the basement instead of in a detached building. The property-two acres near the center of town-is zoned as four buildable lots (or three lots if the house were left standing). The kitchen is old and small, but there is room to remodel.
Listing Agent: Ron Goldstein of Sudler Sotheby’s, (312) 255-3335
Photos by: VHT Tours [this house only]