At the mere mention of penthouses, the most down-to-earth people lapse into an ethereal vernacular.
They lean their heads back and roll their eyes up to see some of the penthouses that are part of Chicago`s skyline, from the lakefront communities of South Shore up to Edgewater.
Architects, housing professionals, real estate developers and the everyday working person describe penthouses as mansions in the sky, dwellings in the clouds, ultimate apartments, secluded palatial hideaways and love nests.
Love nests? Yes, love nests, confirms one poker-faced architect whose expression gives way to a Cheshire Cat smile.
No matter how they describe them, most people would agree that they`re special.
”A penthouse is like no other apartment,” says Murray Wolbach III, vice president of Draper & Kramer Inc. ”It`s unique in every way.”
”It`s a place made for sunrises and sunsets,” says Helen Baker, an agent with Sudler Marling Inc. ”There are views in all directions. There may even be terraces, four, maybe five.”
Architect John Holabird agrees. ”One of the most important things to have in a penthouse is marvelous views and presumably no one around to bother you,” said Holabird, who has been an architect in Chicago for more than 30 years. ”It`s hard to tell just how many there are or where some are located. Penthouse owners tend to keep where they live quiet. It`s like hiding a house inside a building.”
”To me, it`s a house on top of a high-rise building,” says Jacqueline Cadkin, who lives in one of two penthouses in the 15-story Park Edgewater condominium building at 6101 N. Sheridan Rd. ”You have the space usually seen in a house, space for a rooftop garden and you have heavenly views.”
But Chicago architect Larry Booth says a real penthouse is truly one of a kind in a building.
”A penthouse means separate to itself,” says Booth, who designed a residential penthouse on top of the 320 N. Michigan Ave. building, which was later converted into office space.
”You are the only one on the top. There is no one around you, no one above you. A true penthouse has the top floor to itself,” he says. ”There might be one other spacious unit on your floor, but when there are more than two what you probably have are very nice, luxurious apartments that are called penthouses for the sake of marketing.”
Hugging the lake
Penthouses-both the true variety and those billed as such-are generally found up and down Chicago`s lakeshore. On the South Side, they`re concentrated in the South Shore and Hyde Park communities. On the North Side, they`re most often found in ”penthouse row,” which begins at East Lake Shore Drive and continues north, taking in North Lake Shore Drive, Astor Street, State Parkway and other fashionable streets.
Some of the oldest and most well-known penthouses are in buildings constructed in the 1920s and designed by architect Benjamin Marshall or the architecture firm of McNally and Quinn. Marshall, who designed the Drake Hotel and the Drake Towers, 179 E. Lake Shore Drive, had a penchant for neoclassical exteriors and palatial floor plans. Chicago architects say it was commonplace for the luxurious apartments built in the 1920s to have one or two apartments, sized like homes, on each floor. Many of them were built as apartments and later turned into condominiums or co-ops.
”The original owner of the 1242 N. Lake Shore Drive penthouse had a smaller, more intimate penthouse added for his daughter who was an artist,”
says Baker, who has had 30 years` experience in Chicago`s high-end real estate market.
And what are such ”penthouse row” homes worth? They generally sell for between $2 million and $5 million, Baker says.
Big sky country
Farther north, at the Park Edgewater condominiums on Sheridan Road, Jacqueline Cadkin and her husband, Alan Cadkin, have what they call their
”big house in the sky.”
Jacqueline Cadkin says her duplex penthouse was just the kind of house
”an Indiana farm girl” like her was hoping to find.
She and her husband had lived in a fashionable new high-rise on the Near North Side, but became unhappy with it because it didn`t have enough space and they couldn`t open the windows to let in fresh air.
”The way the building was made, you could just barely open the windows,” Cadkin says. ”My husband and I also needed more space. We have six children between us, and at any given time some of the children stayed with us. We wanted a place that was conducive to family living.”
So the Cadkins set their sights as high as they could and looked at penthouses, settling on one in the Park Edgewater. The building was built in 1928 by two brothers who once resided in the two penthouses in the building. Each of the two penthouses has about 3,500 square feet of space.
”The space, the views and the history are what attracted me to this building,” Cadkin says. ”It was also a wonderful compromise for my husband and me. My husband has horrible allergies and a house with a large yard was not attractive to him. What we found was a big house on top of a building where I could grow things.”
The Cadkins are now empty nesters who are trying to sell their condo. But she says she`ll miss the space and the rooftop garden.
Their deck faces the lake, but the view is partially obscured by two newer and taller high-rise condominium buildings on Sheridan Road.
”Fifteen stories was pretty high for a building that went up in the 1920s,” said Charlene Baute, manager of the Park Edgewater. ”We`re not as tall as some of the newer buildings around us, but I think the true definition of a penthouse is what you see here. We even think the building is landmark material, but we`ve been unable to find the records at City Hall.”
Large and luxurious
The 68-story Lake Point Tower has its top two floors set aside as
”penthouse” floors. The size and unusual layout of the units (five or six on each of the two floors) qualify them as penthouses, the management argues. One of the units, which is under contract to be sold for about $950,000, measures about 3,000 square feet. The rooms have a circular movement like the cylinder-shaped building they inhabit.
”This penthouse was built as a penthouse,” says Betty Kramer, Lake Point Tower`s design center manager, who works with interior designers on projects there. ”There are no terraces or rooftop gardens, but we more than make up for their absence with the space and very open floor plans.”
Some people always associate terraces with penthouses, ”but it`s still possible to have a penthouse without them,” Baker says. ”Terraces provide something extra.”
While most penthouses are in condo or co-op buildings, the Chicagoan, a rental building at Chicago Avenue and Rush Street, has four penthouses on its top floor, the 35th.
”It`s true some of the oldest and grandest penthouses in the city are located on East Lake Shore Drive,” says Wolbach, who is vice president at Draper & Kramer, which developed the Chicagoan.
”We`ve brought some of that feeling to the penthouses here,” says Wolbach, who grew up playing in many penthouses of his childhood friends.
”It is a large living environment, equal to a large house, that has been set on top of a building,” he says. ”It has something beyond the norm, well, really a lot beyond the norm.”
Each of the four penthouses at the Chicagoan has more than 2,200 square feet of living space. The west penthouse has 2,566 square feet with a 530-square foot terrace. The east penthouse, which is different from the others because of its duplex floor plan, has a two-story living room and a winding staircase that leads to a loft. Rents are about $5,000 a month.
Since the 1920s, the definition of a penthouse may have evolved, but it still means being ”above it all.”
”Only now you`re not the only one on top,” says architect Booth. ”And, there`s still something to be said for that.”
