Will the American-Style Open Concept Kitchen Ever Go Out of Style? 2550 N. Lakeview in Lincoln Park
This 1-bedroom in Lincoln Park 2550 at 2550 N. Lakeview in Lincoln Park came on the market in January 2015.
It is one of the large 1-bedroom units, at 1167 square feet, which also faces east so it has lake and park views.
The unit has 11 foot ceilings and oak floors.
The kitchen has Snaidero cabinets, Wolf, Subzero and Miele appliances along with granite counter tops.
The bathroom is a large master bath with a tub and shower. There’s no half bath in this unit.
The unit does have the rare side-by-side washer/dryer.
The kitchen, at 11×10, and the large bathroom, take up a sizable chunk of the space in this unit, which otherwise would be enough square footage for a 2 bedroom, 2 bath.
Are the large American-style open concept kitchens in condos a fading trend?
Or are large kitchens with big islands ingrained in the design psyche of buyers for ever?
Barbara Proctor at Baird & Warner has the listing. See the pictures here.
Unit A7-16: 1 bedroom, 1 bath, 1167 square feet
- Looks like it was never sold from the developer
- Originally listed in January 2015
- Currently listed for $899,000 (parking is extra)
- Assessments of $686 a month (includes heat, a/c, gas, doorman, cable, pool, exercise room, snow removal)
- Taxes are “new”
- Central Air
- Side-by-side washer/dryer
- Bedroom: 19×11
- Living room: 23×13
- Kitchen: 11×10
Yes, the open style kitchen will fade from demand eventually, and then it will come back, and so on. This is because there is a herd mentality in the design world that builders follow just behind in lock step. The reality is that at any point in time someone will prefer either style but the market won’t be very accommodating as it will always foolishly chase the latest trend and most sheeple will follow.
The America-Style kitchen works for people who do not cook or people who cook and do not care that the entire family room/living room has all sorts of smells. And by cooking I don’t mean taking out cheese platter our of the fridge or throw something into a microwave. We cook all the time and enclosed kitchen with an exhaust going outside is the only type of kitchen that works for us for that reason.
Large, open concept American style kitchens are here to stay until lifestyle changes or technology makes them unfeasible or undesirable. For most of mankind, rooms were small and separated because they were easier to heat. The kitchen was kept separate for the most part for wealthier people due to staff in the kitchen; and for the rest of us, to keep the smell and grease out of everything else (which was rarely washed and couldn’t be vacuumed!). The trend now for elaborate meals and lots of home cooking is different from the past where the (usually) woman would cook some nasty gruel with garbage ingredients in a small kitchen. My life partner and I talk about that, it would have been difficult to cook multi-course meals of any decadence with no counterspace, a small oven, and barely any room to move around. It often makes me wonder if people back long ago ate much, much crappier meals than we did today. Probably I imagine, my grandmother was known for her fried chicken and casseroles, both of which required only 1 pot or pan.
Maybe one of the nicest 1BR high rise condos on the northside…but not sure who would actually justify paying $900K.
I cook everyday and I make everything from scratch and yet use an open kitchen. It is nice to interact with family as one cooks. I think the open kitchen is there to stay. The era of domestic servants is over.
Nice unit. But a white box. It’s not “Stunning”. The bathroom only has 1 sink!!
“The unit does have the rare side-by-side washer/dryer.” I have side-by-side. What difference does it really make? Anyone?
“It often makes me wonder if people back long ago ate much”
What about the obesity epidemic? Have you ever seen pictures of Americans from the 1940’s-50’s? They were healthy looking. Go ride on the CTA in the 21st century, you’ll see the most misshapen bodies, ogres/ogresses, etc. This simple observation honestly makes me take somewhat credibly the conspiracy theories about Monsanto and our food supply being poisonous. Don’t make fun of the prior healthy era.
Good market analysis (as always) from Redfin out today:
Key quote: “Redfin real estate agents report that the market is rapidly cooling, with buyers reaching their limit on prices and showing less interest in hot home listings”
https://www.redfin.com/research/reports/housing-demand-index/2015/redfin-july-forecasts-hit-the-mark-as-housing-demand-cools-for-fourth-consecutive-month.html#.Vdz53_lVhBc?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1001612_Conversion+-+Demand+Index+August+2015_CB&utm_source=strongmail
HH,
the obesity epidemic isn’t from poisonous food (although there most certainly is lots of roundup in those corn based products you eat) it’s from too much processed food of poor quality.
The home cooking of years prior is a serious point; they may have been skinnier and healthier looking but their arteries were clogged with fat and butter (you know they built lots of homes up until recently with grease traps, right? because people would use lots of grease and pour down the drains)… and they smoked a ton of cigarettes, and my grandmother’s cooking and smoking killed my grandfather at 54 of heart disease.
But that aside, just think of the logistics of cooking in a 1920’s victorian kitchen. Tiny, small, no counterspace, how in the world can two people fit in there and cut up fresh vegetables and make elaborate meals? It’s impossible, which make me think that people didn’t spend much time in the kitchen or else the rooms would have been a little bigger or more purposefully designed.
The open kitchen/living “area” concept is so prevalent in all but vintage condos in Chicago. God forbid one isn’t able to watch the ballgame from the dining room. If you care about interior design, it’s very hard to have an elegant living room when a stainless steel refrigerator and range are the show pieces of it all. I obviously hate the open kitchen concept, but must accept that the type of convenience it offers to most people is paramount to them … but please, give me a vintage building where I can’t see my fridge from the sofa … any day.
The 1920’s victorian kitchens that I recall all had a breakfast table. The table would double as working space for dinner prep. The table provided plenty of space for cutting vegetables and marshalling elaborate meals. Two people can work in a victorian kitchen if only one person is doing all the sink/oven/fridge work and the other person is limited to the cutting board work. Small kitchens provide faster access to dinner materials. Everything needed is a step or arms-reach away.
I prefer a bigger “two-person” kitchen. But I’ve seen far too many American-open kitchens that make be say “roller-skates” at the thought of preparing any food in them.
HD – time to recalibrate the idea that the consumption of fat leads to high cholesterol. It’s been found that certain dietary fats play an insignificant role in increasing cholesterol levels. Heart disease is mostly attributable to genetics, smoking, drinking, stress and lack of exercise. In other words, Dr Atkins was right.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/nutrition-panel-calls-for-less-sugar-and-eases-cholesterol-and-fat-restrictions/
From this article:
“The panel also dropped a longstanding recommendation that Americans restrict their intake of dietary cholesterol from foods like eggs and shrimp — a belated acknowledgment of decades of research showing that dietary cholesterol has little or no effect on the blood cholesterol levels of most people.”
When fat was taken out of foods, it was replaced with sugars and carbs, both of which can cause insulin spikes. Insulin spiking can lead to diabetes and obesity. Gary Taubes is great reading on the topic.
But what it comes down to is that we can’t blame the consumption of fat for high cholesterol levels anymore.
“But what it comes down to is that we can’t blame the consumption of fat for high cholesterol levels anymore.”
On some levels the medical profession lacks credibility in that their standards and ideas change on a frequent basis, much of which is used just to push more drugs. The threshold for high blood pressure gets lower and lower, so that more doctors can prescribe high blood pressure medicine. Now the profession is saying that fatty foods don’t cause high cholesterol, so take some statins instead! One doctor I read said that high blood pressure in and of itself isn’t bad, it’s the spikes in blood pressure that causes strokes, so take some anti-anxiety medicine and chill out, man!
I guess what I’m saying is that the theory du jour in medicine cited in the NYT, even if based upon the best available evidence today, is still just one step above junk science.
compare this: https://historianjayyoung.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/subway-photo.jpg
to the human zoo you see, for instance, during rush hour on the Blue Line.
So, if we have all this better health, medicine, and know-how why do people look like misshapen, ugly, zombies today??
There’s an obesity epidemic in dogs and cats despite the availability of healthier food. I think people and pets eat way too much food. You can’t eat a bunch of donuts for breakfast, a burger for lunch, and go out for steak at dinner and expect to be thin.
I don’t care if people are fat. In some ways it is easier to date a fat guy than a thin one because the fat guy is always hungry and able to eat, so we can eat on my schedule.
I would rather spend time with a misshapen guy than one who wants to impress people with his muscles.
New high-rise condo and apartment units suffer from City of Chicago’s zealous notion of “handicap accessibility”, where every unit must conform to wheelchair accessibility standards that require full-circle radius of movement in every kitchen and every bathroom. So you get ridiculously large half and full baths, squarish kitchens w/super-wide aisle between counters, tight narrow living-rooms and bedrooms, loss of formal dining area altogether, rooms nearly unfurnishable, bathrooms larger than so-called 2nd bedroom, units with 50+ LF of in-unit snaking corridor, etc.
I thought every high rise had to have a few handicap accessible units rather than all units being compliant.
You ask why people are fat here?
– portion of food: it is just huge. Compare just the size of drink (say cappuccino in US with rest of world).
– type of food: junk processed food
– physical inactivity: taking cars to go everywhere. Often folks lament on CC about lack of parking for an apartment in the city with pretty good connectivity, or taking a few flights of stairs. Living in a 3 or 4 story house without elevators is common in almost everywhere else and people with small kids, even elderly (less than 75) live in them.
– social activity is centered around eating and drinking: seems people never get out of their frat boy habit of partying drunk.
EVERY new multi-family residential unit is ADA compliant. Unit purchaser can remove those accommodations, but its often difficult to shrink the typical over-sized bathroom and kitchen aisle widths afterwards.
sold for $850k.