Deal of the Week: Pritzkers Sell Their Evanston Mansion
List Price: $4.5 million
Sale Price:  $4.1 million

The Property: Now that they have moved into their $30,000-a-month rental on the Gold Coast , J. B. and M. K. Pritzker have sold their Evanston home of 14 years, a 19-room brick and limestone house designed in 1926 by Hooper & Jansuch, the architects behind several classic 1920s Lake Shore Drive apartment buildings.

Over the years, the Pritzkers had added many upgrades to the house, including double bathrooms and dressing rooms in the master bath, a family room addition by Marvin Herman, and two offices and a copier room in the basement, according to their agent, Susan Tash of Koenig & Strey GMAC. They also restored some of the house’s vintage features, such as the slate roof and the mahogany paneling in the library. “It was all done tastefully, not flashy—not a lot of gold finishes and things. Very understated,” Tash says. “It was done for someone who didn’t need everyone to know how much they had spent on it.”
The house has six bedrooms, seven-plus baths, and five fireplaces, as well as a business-grade phone system, three furnaces, two oversized water heaters, and a brick driveway made of reclaimed Chicago street pavers. J.B. Pritzker is part of the fourth Chicago generation of the moneyed family and a partner in the Pritzker Group and New World Ventures, a technology venture capital firm.

Price Points: The Pritzkers bought the house through a land trust in 1993 for $1.025 million. (The price of their numerous upgrades and renovations—Tash’s list is three pages long—is not known.) Tash says the house was an “exempt listing,” meaning she had an agreement with the sellers to market it to select potential buyers without listing it openly with the Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois—a way for a prominent person to sell a home without attracting attention. It took about a month to sell, Tash says. The deal closed August 20th.

Buyers: Not yet identified in public records

Listing Agent: Susan Tash, Koenig & Strey GMAC, (312) 802-9450