Who Will Buy The Frances J. Dawes Mansion? 503 W. Wrightwood In Lincoln Park
The Frances J. Dawes Mansion at 503 W. Wrightwood in Lincoln Park has been on the market since March 2011.
The French Provincial mansion was built in 1896 and is on an oversized 80×134 lot.
The listing says it has been restored to “perfection” by Botti Studio of Architectural Arts.
It is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Its vintage features include wood ceilings, stained glass and numerous fireplaces.
At $9.9 million its among the most expensive homes on the market in Chicago.
What kind of buyer will ultimately end up with this mansion?
And at what price?
Mary Bennett at Koenig & Strey Real Living has the listing. See the pictures here.
503 W. Wrightwood: 7 bedrooms, 7 baths, 2 half baths, 12000 square feet, 4 car garage
- Sold in March 1997 for $1.66 million
- Sold in April 2001 for $1.316 million
- Bank owned in August 2004 (???)
- Originally listed in March 2011 for $9.9 million
- Currently still listed at $9.9 million
- Taxes of $26,322
- Space pak central air
- Bedroom #1: 40×30 (third floor)
- Bedroom #2: 26×16 (second floor)
- Bedroom #3: 20×15 (second floor)
- Bedroom #4: 20×17 (second floor)
- Bedroom #5: 17×15 (second floor)
- Bedroom #6: 20×10 (lower level)
- Bedroom #7: 12×12 (third floor)
Regardless of price, I find the interior borderline horrifying. Different strokes for different folks, but I kept searching for Miss Havisham in those photos.
The interiors aren’t really my taste either but they seem appropriate for the house, and VERY well done. Honestly, that’s one of the only places I’ve seen on CC that looks worthy of a $10 million price tag. Surprised some status-seeker hasn’t snatched it up yet.
Was/is this Jamie dimon’s place?
“Was/is this Jamie dimon’s place?”
No, he lived in the Gold Coast. This place is absolutely amazing! Probably one of the most unique places I’ve seen.
also i think *those who shall not be named three times thrice has/had a video on this place with some neat historical facts.
Aren’t the taxes a bargain on this place?
While not my taste, hats off to whoever ends up living in this beautiful house.
You’d need full time staff to live here, which I guess isn’t a problem if you’re shopping for $10M properties. It’s obviously objectively beautiful, but you have to be REALLY into this time period to want this house – it would be like living in a museum. I didn’t realize this place had stopped operating as a party venue – I guess that happened in 2001?
Love it. If only our furniture would work in this place we’d only have 9.9 million other reasons why we cannot buy it.
Seriously though, whether you trying to sell a mansion in the gold coast or a crapshack in Old Irving Park, if you’ve been on the market for almost a year without a price drop, you’ve priced it too high for the market.
” looking to buy (January 16, 2013, 9:08 am)
Aren’t the taxes a bargain on this place?”
hahaha, you get taxed more on a 1.5 million dollar condo than this place 😉
“Seriously though, whether you trying to sell a mansion in the gold coast or a crapshack in Old Irving Park, if you’ve been on the market for almost a year without a price drop, you’ve priced it too high for the market.”
i disagree with that theory, this house has a lot smaller pool of buyers than a crapshack in OIP and the odds of the smaller pool having buyers in the market is even, well, smaller.
I agree if your price it low enough it will sell in days, but in the real real mirco market of this 9mil property i think the rules are different
Who is the current owner of this place?
“Aren’t the taxes a bargain on this place?”
Still being assessed (in part) on prior sale price. if it sells for anything close, taxes should go up, but likely will remain underassessed.
This would be ideal for some sort of foundation, or perhaps as a place people rent for big, fancy parties, but I can’t imagine wanting to live there.
Actually, it failed as a party venue, so strike that, I guess. I agree with others who say living here would be like living in a museum.
“Who is the current owner of this place?”
Fred Latsko, right?
“Fred Latsko, right?
Rating: -1 (from 1 vote)”
Here it is:
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-11-12/classified/ct-mre-1114-elite-street-20101112_1_wall-coverings-paneling-mansion
Also, note that it is Francis with an I and Dewes with two Es.
Dawes ‘mansion’ s a building in Evanston owned by Northwestern .
“i disagree with that theory, this house has a lot smaller pool of buyers than a crapshack in OIP and the odds of the smaller pool having buyers in the market is even, well, smaller. ”
I agree that its a smaller pool of buyers. What I’m posing is that in a years time (okay technically 10 months) someone in that pool should be out for a swim. I’m not suggesting giving the house away, just that perhaps they’ve overestimated its present market value.
Based on my experience with Realtors, it’s *illegal* to make a low ball offer on any house. Therefore I suppose no one interested would dare insult the owner by offering 7 or 8 million.
“Based on my experience with Realtors, it’s *illegal* to make a low ball offer on any house.”
Really?
“Based on my experience with Realtors, it’s *illegal* to make a low ball offer on any house”
i know that you asterisked the word but if you have a decent agent its not an issue. they will remind you and gets annoying in the rhetoric when you want to make an offer like that
I was going to say that the buyer would like be some sort of wealthy foundation, but Dan 2 beat me to it.
low ball offers will get you put on the black list. the days of low balls are over. that was 2008-early 2012.
Whose black list? Why would I care?
“Whose black list?”
The realtors, who have a criminal conspiracy to violate their duties as ‘agents’ (their form ‘agency’ contract does NOT create a full agent/principal relationship) by refusing to present offers made by people who have annoyed one of their number sometime in the past.
it’s called the realtor cartel for a reason.
I went to my cousin’s (first) wedding here. Exact dates are my kryptonite, but I want to say it was in the 2002-2003 timeframe. Gorgeous house for sure.
Also a lot of work was put into the place, as I’m almost positive the master bedroom (if you can call a room big enough to play half court basketball in a bedroom) used to be the ballroom. Either way, a lot of work has been done, that’s for sure.
I went to a Halloween ball fundraiser here… must have been 2003, because I was dressed at Steve Bartman.
Not my taste at all, but I guess there are some who this would appeal to. But like the similarly prices Wrigley mansion around the corner, I just don’t see many people who have the wealth/fame to afford a $10 million house wanting on that people can just walk right up to the front door. If I were looking in that range, I’d either want the privacy of being either atop a high rise like Trump, Elysian, Park Hyatt, etc. or else on an estate on the North Shore.
I was about to put down an offer on this place and then realized it had space-pak AC.
I like how this place has twice the square feet, and virtually twice as many bedrooms and bathrooms as the penthouse at 21 E Huron, yet has half the property taxes.
Interior looks like it could be the movie set for “The Shining 2” or maybe “Clio’s Haunted House of Horrors” guest starring Helmuthoffer
“I was about to put down an offer on this place and then realized it had space-pak AC.”
so you would really thrash the footprint of this building to have central a/c?
Icarus,
Of course, where else can the 1% tear down or compromise historic landmarks for their own irrational and exuberant lifestyles? ‘MERICA.
Was at the Swedish American Museum recently and discovered this house the Swedish Engineers’ Society for some time: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pnp/habshaer/il/il0100/il0112/data/il0112data.pdf
Also, my dad grew up the first half of his childhood on this block and insists that he broke one of the large stained glass windows on the side while playing football…supposedly that window is still broken.
I realize it’s been restored, but I still question the idea that it’s worth almost 9 times what it sold for in 2001. At that pace, in another decade someone will be listing it for $81 million!
Looks more like a museum than a place to live in.
When is Downton Abbey filming here? Of course this is for Shirley McClain, American relative.
Beautiful from the outside but HORRENDOUS on the inside. Sorry no way. There is a wonderfol new home at 3000 N LSD that was recently build by a super-wealthy lawyer. It is more to my taste. I wonder how much he bough the multi-unit that he tore down for. Anyone know?
“Other features include two caryatids on pedestals supporting a second-floor balcony”
I noticed those, check them out…
PS gotta love marble base and door trim, that’s the real deal. Forget the “Pine” and mdf. This place isn’t that bad, at least compared to the Contemporaine with its concrete walls and no trim or style whatsoever.
PS again.. I like that older woman broker (not that I know her, I don’t) but she looks-like the perfect person that could sniff out all the poseurs within 10 seconds, so don’t try and bullshit her that you could buy this.
Oh, and the interior designer really did this one right, the three colors used in the palette: pale/light green, dark red, and gold are common colors for interior palazzos in Europe. You see it in all the Rizzoli books.
This place is missing the collection of various old oil paintings with the exquisite gold frames that are well beyond “omega” brand frames or whatever they sell here at “custom framing” shops on Clybourn to dilettantes. You really have to go to Europe or see the Rizzoli books to see those frames, they are works of art themselves.
I secretly like this place. It’s perfect for a nouveau riche American unfortunate enough to be born a citizen of a country that in 1787, banned titles of nobility in Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution. In this beautiful home, any one with money and old world tastes can be a modern times duke or vicomte complete with servants quarters. This is everything the robber barons of late 19th century used their money to buy. I love it, it’s so real and lasting yet ephemeral at the same time.
The woodwork is old world, something you could see in a French Cathedral; and the marble ionic columns give a nod to the late stages of the neoclassicism and the enlightenment and the age of reason; The archways above the doors and the wallpaper are clearly rococo in style and taste. The kitchen with modern conveniences harkens enteraining as if it were a parlor room, complete with snifters filled with the finest apple brandy, calvados, pressed from the finest apples from most storied estates of Basse-Normandie.
The master bedroom harkens to a day when business was conducted and court was occasionally held the in bedroom; completely opposite the crampy, confining bedrooms of the victorian era in homes built across the channel. The bathrooms are luxurious and I could only imagine Marie Antoniette herself would find suitable for cleanliness. The outdoor gardens while quaint (this is a house in an urban area, not a country estate) are more than adequate for summer entertaining.
In short, this second empire home is a perfect fit for an american earl or a count.
I love modern, don’t get me wrong, but modern is merely a transition in a timeline true cultural mores and styles, true design developed over 1,500 years from the early days of la mère Patrie and the long haired Merovingian kings through the Tudors, Napoleon and back again the days of the Sun King. This way of living is not conducive to a modern lifestyle, but it harkens an age that American fortunately, or unfortunately, missed.
Of note, the Ms. Haversham comment above, is not quite appropriate for this home. The Satis House was built in the style of Elizabethan architecture which is markedly different than French Provincial and about a few centuries off too. Elizabethan is a twist upon late medieval styles and early Renaissance styles whereas by the time of the Second Empire, the French had already colonized much of the new world.
Love the woodwork. Imagine the heating costs for this place!
“I secretly like this place. It’s perfect for a nouveau riche American unfortunate enough to be born a citizen of a country that in 1787, banned titles of nobility in Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution. In this beautiful home, any one with money and old world tastes can be a modern times duke or vicomte complete with servants quarters.”
Heh. Kind of perfect in the description, since they used this house (exterior) as a foreign consulate in that failed “PanAm” show.
If someone can’t see the beauty in this place inside and out, they are a retard. Just like other disciplines like science, literature, etc…. mankind always worked towards progress. Ever heard the phrase “stood on the shoulders of those that came before us” ? (Lol, kinda like Obama’s “you didn’t build that company (all by yourself)”). This place, to a trained eye represents a culmination (agreed, a “copy” of) of centuries of advancement in high arts and culture.
Only an idiot would pretend that the Contemporaine, with concrete walls and ceilings, is progress. It’s obvious anti-progress. The only progress is the technology, which the subject property has been updated with too. Modernism, in architecture, represented a clean-break from the continuum of the past. It’s primary proponents and cheerleaders were those who disliked (I’ll say hated) white European, and Western Civilization’s fine achievements. Consumed by ferocious jealousy that they didn’t create or couldn’t create such achievement or beauty….they just went about duping people into believing the radical replacement/departure, clearly inferior and totally devoid of any artistry, was an improvement, when any unindoctrinated child could plainly see that’s untrue. There is a reason many people visit the old European capitals on their honeymoons, crave to get married in the unmodern churches, etc. Innately, they know the replacement is inferior even if they are duped in their consciousness into believing otherwise. All you have to do is visit the “Bluhm Family Terrace” at the Modern wing to see how un-beautiful the places the imposters create truly are. Only an idiot would allow themselves to be propagandized into thinking this has any beauty whatsoever:
http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4035/5164911420_f75610c99f_z.jpg
Agreeably this is a fantastic work of its time, but to shrug off modern architecture in one fell swoop is ludacris. To produce something like this today would be an abomination as it would either be a rediculous waste of resources or a horrible knockoff made of cheap materials ( mdf, plastic, etc). Modernism about the function of the object and simplicity of the form, it’s technical execution, precision and proportions. Some one earlier commented on lack of trim in the contemporaine….did you ever ask yourself why you need trim? Crappy detailing or poor workmanship (or both) lead to excesses like this that as an ideal were aboloished by modernists. The terrace is a place to focus on the art and be able to view the city all while protected from the wind by the surrounding glass wall. Beside the fact the the photograph of the modern wing was poor, its criticism missed the point.
I think there’s alot of “hot” money sloshing around, perhaps people are getting skittish about the stock market and want to plop it into so-called real assets?
“Chicago real estate investor Fred Latsko recently raised the list price on his seven-bedroom Lincoln Park mansion to $12.5 million, up from the $9.9 million he was asking since 2010. Records show a trust benefitting Mr. Latsko, principal of Chicago-based Structured Management Midwest LLC, seized the home through foreclosure in 2004 after acquiring the mortgage secured by the historic property on Wrightwood Avenue. The 12,000-square-foot Frances J. Dewes Mansion, a mix of German Baroque and French architecture added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, has been completely restored with luxury details throughout, according to a listing. Mr. Latsko’s listing agent, Mary Bennett of Koenig & Strey Real Living, declined to comment. – See more at: http://www.chicagorealestatedaily.com“