What Would You Do With 12,000 Square Feet and 40 Skylights? 5801 N. Glenwood in Edgewater

This 4-bedroom single family home at 5801 N. Glenwood in Edgewater has been on the market since April 2013.

At least I think it’s a single family home. That’s how it is listed.

Built in 1918, it is on a 50×125 corner lot.

The property is 12,000 square feet on 2 levels.

The listing says it has 40 skylights.

It has a first floor garage and a restored freight elevator.

The highlight appears to be a floating staircase supported by 10,000 pounds of custom steel.

It has air conditioning.

Could this be rehabbed into one of the coolest houses ever?

Lina Jocis at Jameson Sotheby’s has the listing. See the pictures here.

5801 N. Glenwood: 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, 12000 square feet
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  • Sold back in the 1990s
  • Lis pendens foreclosure filed in August 2011
  • Lis pendens filed in May 2012
  • Originally listed in April 2013 for $1.5 million
  • Reduced
  • Currently listed at $1.295 million
  • Taxes of $9594
  • Central Air
  • Bedrooms are just listed at 10×10 each on the second floor

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9 Responses to “What Would You Do With 12,000 Square Feet and 40 Skylights? 5801 N. Glenwood in Edgewater”

  1. wonder what this was originally.

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  2. I don’t really know much about this part of town. A property like this is kind of my unicorn, BUT, I think that this is going to take easily 7 figures for even a decent buildout of part of this space. Just to make it legally habitable would be crazy money. No one will want to live in a warehouse and it will be major money to unwarehouse it with windows, etc. This one might end up as condos, commercial space, who knows.

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  3. “easily 7 figures for even a decent buildout of part of this space”

    Yeah, *easily*. Lets assume (against better judgment) that they actually got the mechanicals decently stubbed in, and in locations one would be willing to retain–it still would be a bigger undertaking than buying a teardown and building a ‘normal’ big house in the city. Just making the facade look non-awful when you install windows will be 10s of thousands.

    Being *on* Ridge wouldn’t be great.

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  4. Seeing as I live exactly a block north of this place, I know it pretty well.

    Rumor has it this was originally a vaudeville theater but I don’t think that’s accurate. Either way, it was last set up as an auto-body shop and in complete disrepair. An artist (with apparently more money than sense…and eventually ran out of both) bought the place, gutted it, and put an entirely new brick facade on it (although they left the plaster detailing – which was an awesome decision). They even paid to have decorative brick inlaid in the sidewalk surrounding it….very nice. The idea was to make it both a studio and a gallery but the the money ran out.

    My understanding is the place is effectively finished except for what you see on those main floor pictures with the staircase and the windows. Still a pretty penny to finish that off, I imagine. And I imagine some s***heel from Senn would eventually scratch or smash a part of your $100k in windows, just because.

    The main downsides here are that half of it fronts Ridge, there is what could be a phenomenally beautiful terra cotta building directly across the street but is instead a nasty flop laundromat, and commercial uses are difficult due to a general lack of parking (dense residential area) and being very close to Senn High School (I’m assuming a liquor license would be impossible).

    All of that said, it’s a unique place (about a mile due south of the Butter Factory on Devon) and could be awesome. Not in my wheelhouse, though.

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  5. Ha, I used to have my laundry done at the flop laundromat when I lived around here. They did fluff and fold for dirt cheap. Back then this place was the autoshop and i always thought it was a cool building. It’s a great space. If I lived there I’d totally throw raves in that garage.

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  6. “Rumor has it this was originally a vaudeville theater but I don’t think that’s accurate.”

    In 1928 (per Polk), 5801 was a garage operated by a David Thompson. 5805 was a grocery, 5807 a deli and 5809 a laundry.

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  7. really cool so much potential, if only money wasn’t a thang

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  8. As for parking – you realize, it kind of comes with parking – since you know – the entire first floor is a parking garage….just saying. 🙂

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  9. I read somewhere that the building began as an automobile showroom.

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