The condo for sale is on the third floor of one of the city’s most distinctive buildings. The main entrance, on Pine Grove, was originally the Ladies’ Entrance. Men entered on Diversey.

The kitchen is updated with maple cabinets, a granite countertop and breakfast bar, and stainless steel appliances.

List Price: $265,000
The Property: This two-bedroom condo, nicely renovated in the past year and a half, is on the third floor of one of the city’s most distinctive 19th-century residential buildings, The Brewster. Situated at the northwest corner of Pine Grove Avenue and Diversey Parkway and originally known as the Lincoln Park Palace, the 1893 structure was the design of Enoch Hill Turnock, an architect who worked for a while in Chicago with William LeBaron Jenney, but spent most of his career in Elkhart, Indiana. Charlie Chaplin lived on the building’s top floor while making movies in Chicago more than 90 years ago,and Dion O’Bannion, a rival of Al Capone, lived in the building in 1929.            

While the building’s rough-hewn quartzite exterior topped by a terra cotta frieze invariably delights passersby, it is surpassed by The Brewster’s stunning interior. An eight-story atrium is traversed by a series of glass-block walkways through which light, both natural and electric, spills down from above. An antique steel-cage elevator, exterior-style windows opening from the apartments into the atrium, and plaster wall ornaments round out the picture.

Though renovated, this 520-square-foot two-bedroom condo retains its original wood window trim, exposed brick walls in the bedrooms, and a window looking onto the atrium. The seller, Ryan Sadowy, who is an architect, updated the kitchen with maple cabinets, a granite countertop and breakfast bar, and stainless steel appliances. He listed it for sale in early September.  

Price Points: Condos in The Brewster vary in size and in the date and quality of their renovation. There have been three sales in the building so far in 2008, ranging in price from $137,000 to $260,000. In 2007, there were eight sales, which ranged in price from $115,000 to $290,000. The highest recorded price in the building, according to data from the Cook County Recorder of Deeds, is $545,000, which bought a penthouse unit in June 2005.

Listing Agent: Edward Schwind, Schwind Realty & Development, 773-883-5400