The Property: Perched on a hilltop in St. Charles, this 16-room house was built in the mid-1960s for a psychiatrist who didn’t care for air conditioning. That and the oak woods all around prompted the architect Robert Cantrell to create a series of rooms that jut out from one another, thus maximizing both the natural ventilation and the views. Energetic and angular, the all-white house appears to sprout from its hillside site... " />
List Price: $1.299 million
The Property: Perched on a hilltop in St. Charles, this 16-room house was built in the mid-1960s for a psychiatrist who didn’t care for air conditioning. That and the oak woods all around prompted the architect Robert Cantrell to create a series of rooms that jut out from one another, thus maximizing both the natural ventilation and the views. Energetic and angular, the all-white house appears to sprout from its hillside site.
In almost every room of the house, oversized windows fill the space with light on two or more sides; skylights are numerous, so light also pours in from the ceiling. There are 176 windows in all. The six patios and three balconies further the connection between indoors and out. The master bedroom has a lavish bathroom that includes a four-person shower and a two-person sauna; a patio with a hot tub; and an overhead loft space accessed by a slim glass-tube elevator that also descends to the basement workout room.
The sellers, Brian and Susan Fitzpatrick, bought the secluded 2.4-acre property in 1986 and promptly air-conditioned the house (they have since updated the air conditioning). “The wildlife we get is amazing,” says Brian Fitzpatrick, who recently retired from trading commodities at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and now lives with his wife in Florida. “The most deer we ever had at the feeder was 13, and we’ve had foxes walk through on snowy mornings.”
The house has garage space for three cars, but the Fitzpatricks built an additional four-car garage at the rear of their property, with an unfinished 2,000-square-foot second floor. The Fitzpatricks are selling that newer structure along with 1.1 acres of buildable land separately from the main house. The newer property has an asking price of $499,900; the remaining 1.3 acres are included with the main house.
“I could have sold [the smaller property] a dozen times already,” says the Fitzpatricks’ agent, Lynn Purcell. But the sellers want to wait for the larger house to sell first, in case that buyer opts to take the smaller one, too. A buyer who wants both properties would likely get a discount from the combined price of $1,798,900.
Price Points: In this home’s price bracket, Purcell says, the St. Charles market has enough inventory for sale right now to last 18 months. The slowdown has been pronounced here at almost all price levels. Purcell notes that from Saturday, October 20th, through Monday, October 22nd, just one home sold in St. Charles at any price. Purcell says that, on a typical weekend when the market was more active, the suburb would have 10 to 15 sales.
Listing Agent: Lynn Purcell, Baird & Warner, (630) 380-6427; lynnpurcell@bairdwarner.com