There’s a woman, who shall remain nameless, whose vision of her dream home depended on a very specific lot in a north suburban new development that would give her the view she’d set her heart on. She wanted to be able to look out her kitchen window, preferably while sitting at the table in the breakfast nook, “and know that I could jump right out that window and be within walking distance of the shopping center.”
So much for visionaries.
While the number of people who would relish living near the parking lot of a mall so they can gaze at stores is, hopefully, limited, the numbers of individuals and families who define their dream homes based on what they see out their windows is vast.
And eclectic.
How about the back yard of a suburban home that looks like a postcard from some exotic, rock-terraced hideaway?
Or, from the 15 windows of one home, a view of a flower-filled community park so appealing that every fine weekend finds newlyweds posing there for wedding photos?
In the heart of the city, it’s practically a given that dream-home condos, lofts and even town homes are acquired because of the view — be it Lake Michigan, the skyline, Lincoln or GrantPark, the Chicago River, the Museum Campus or Wrigley Field.
But, here, too, individuality reigns.
A couple moves back from suburbia to a condo in the city for a view that combines river, lake and cityscape. One spring weekend, she watched and counted a flotilla of sailboats — 21 in all — that traveled the river on their way to their summer harbors. She says, “It’s the view that makes this our dream home.”
A young man saves for years to achieve his dream: a loft with a fashionably landscaped terrace overlooking the city, a loft offering a stunning view of the skyline as well as warehouses and factories now transformed, like the young man’s building, into citified housing.
Then there’s the couple who lived in Lincoln Park, but left that behind for the new family’s dream home with views of what the city doesn’t have — tree-filled ravines.
Lovers of views may recall a lushly romantic Merchant Ivory film that captured the ramifications of a young woman’s burning desire for a view: She and a prissy cousin traveled to Italy for their summer holiday because the young woman wanted to see the beauty of Florence. She visualized throwing open the shutters each morning and drinking in the glories of the historic city. Instead, she looked out at a depressing back street akin to an alley. A gentleman comes to the rescue, of course, offering the quarters assigned to him and to his son, a deep-thinking, handsome creature, who later — surprise — falls in love with the young woman.
Their story becomes far more complex, but the film, “A Room with a View,” and the nugget of their story were the inspiration for finding Chicago-area people whose homes fulfill dreams because of what’s outside of them as well as inside.
The cover of this magazine features the garden and addition to the back of the 1951 Highland Park residence that Harriet and Leonard Klein turned into their own visual paradise.
Harriet, an artist, designed and worked with Chicago architect David Dotson on the curvy, glass-walled great room, deck and outdoor living space before she launched her plan to “maximize the beauty of a small lot.” Her project took the couple to, among other destinations, Rockford to study Japanese gardens and to Wisconsin to find “rocks with character.”
The back yard, approximately 2,400 square feet, became a non-stereotypical garden over the course of about 10 months, as 24 tons of New York bluestone boulders, a waterfall, evergreens and flowers were added, along with a pond that started with seven “prolific,” fan-tailed goldfish that multiplied to 70 this spring.
The front of the Kleins’ ’50s home — “carport and all” — hasn’t been touched. “That’s next,” according to Harriet. “We’ll never move,” she says.
Deanna Zalas and her husband, Michael Marrs, also enjoy looking out their windows at the natural beauty and the lively activities they see daily. In their case, there are 15 windows with stained-glass trim that run the length of their 74-year-old brick bungalow in Berwyn. Those windows overlook their community park, says Zalas, where there are “beautiful tulips in the spring, a picnic grove, a place that’s a popular wedding picture location year-round. We can see a grove of mature trees, a little stream and a playground from the dining room, the kitchen and even from the pantry,” she adds.
The young couple had been renting in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood, but they wanted to be able to walk to the train, to be close to “the city’s amenities but we didn’t want to buy a condo.” They both “had to have greenspace.”
Deanna and Michael “stumbled upon an open house” in Berwyn, she says, and got much more than they’d dreamed of. “It’s not on the lake and doesn’t have a city view. But we can get downtown faster on the Eisenhower than our friends do from Ravenswood and when our friends see what we have, they understand why we’re here . . . .”
Michael Parsons didn’t stumble into his dream haven. After 19 years of being in the creative end of the business world and, he admits rather than brags, “reaching a seven-figure salary,” he made a very deliberate choice to change careers and find his “dream of working and living the way I wanted.”
He “buried” his cell phone and social life and “did nothing but work for four years to have enough to support my dream — to be able to write for 8 or 9 hours a day and to have a quiet, comfortable, perfect haven for writing.”
He found that haven.
Born in Sterling, Ill., Parsons had lived in Chicago in the ’80s, then lived in California before moving back to Chicago. He rented lofts in popular neighborhoods before deciding on the West Loop, where one day he and a friend saw a sign on a vacant lot on the 1300 block of West Washington Street that led them to “literally, run to the sales center” for the loft building that would some day occupy that lot.
That was in 1998. Last fall, Parsons moved to “the exact place I wanted — a loft with enough wall space to make art focal to my living space, a 20-by-20-foot terrace nearly surrounded by a cityscape . . . .”
Now, he has “some social life, I take guitar lessons and I’m a hundred pages into my first novel.”
Phil and Ruthann Gray had enjoyed many of the perks of city living in Lincoln Park. But, with thoughts of having a family, the couple decided on the Town of Fort Sheridan, specifically a very large home in a natural setting, a home that overlooks a ravine, thick with vividly green trees through the summer before giving way to fall’s vibrant colors.
Barbara and Bill Hardt had also lived in the city, “years ago,” she said, referring to their home at Lake Point Tower, the black curved high-rise just west of Navy Pier. Their suburban move was to Glenview and now they’ve returned to the Lake Michigan view they’ve always loved.
Only this time, there’s more to look at, says Barbara, noting that the windows and balcony from their condominium, RiverView, face east, north and south. That means they can drink in the ever-changing city life that includes their former Lake Point Tower residence, the lake and the Chicago River, and the city’s fast-paced residential construction sites to the south.
Barbara describes the interior of their new condo home as “just comfortable — we brought our Glenview furniture with us. It might not look like anyone’s dream home, but for us, it is fine. We have so much here to look out at and to enjoy.”
