The best matches are made when you’re not looking, which is precisely what Anita Nagler and Bob Moyer were doing one afternoon in the fall of 1999. Not looking, that is.
They were “walking the dogs and complimenting ourselves on how our life had fallen into place at last. We’d just finished our house, it was perfect and we loved living there. Things were finally stable and calm,” says Nagler.
Not for long. One day they happened upon a place just a few blocks from their Lincoln Park home. “We were taking a new route, and there was this unusual building behind a high-wire fence. Someone was clearly developing it, but there were no signs up,” says Moyer.
Nagler was so intrigued by the place that she skirted the fence and snooped around. Her report inspired Moyer, who became equally fascinated with the structure. “We kept walking by it to see if they’d put up any for sale signs, but they never did,” says Moyer.
Then the couple got downright lucky a few weeks later. Moyer was reading The Wall Street Journal and saw a real estate ad with a drawing of a building that drew him in. With a shock, he realized it was “their place.”
“I called Anita, and we had them on the phone within half an hour. But we were the third party to express interest in it,” he says.
It was a landmark structure that had started life as a Victorian brick cottage in the late 19th Century. Around 1949, it was enlarged into an apartment building for artist lofts by Clive Rickenbaugh, a former partner of the legendary Chicago development team of Sol Kogan and Edgar Miller, who were known for their quirky artist lofts with fanciful tile installations done by Miller. At that time, Rickenbaugh gave the building a streamlined, modern architectural demeanor punctuated with craftsman details such as carved doors and cast-iron trims.
“Luckily for us, the place had landmark status and the first two buyers couldn’t achieve what they wanted to there because they couldn’t alter its exterior. So we were able to buy it in two months,” says Moyer.
By then the building had become “an obsession,” admits Nagler–which was fortuitous, because transforming it into a home for the couple and their two children took even more patience and perseverance than acquiring it. The structure, which had housed nine art studios, was in shambles, and the couple wanted to rework it into an airy home that would be conducive to family life and sensitive to its novel architectural pedigree.
They hired Evanston interior architect David MacKenzie, whose ideas on executing the project were “very sympathetic to the building’s exterior.” For the interior, “he had a very interesting way of cutting back details to achieve a stronger effect rather than adding on more layers to make it fancier,” explains Moyer.
MacKenzie carved the space into spacious, elegant rooms accentuated with appropriate yet unpretentious architectural elements, such as cantilevered bookcases, slate and glass tiles and a variety of wood veneers. He wanted to use as few elements as possible, but intersperse them throughout the home, explains Nagler. To that end, the bookcases are used in the library and an office on the lower level directly below it; the slate tiles sport different patterns and finishes in the foyer, dining room and master bathroom; and Bizzaza glass tiles in different colors and patterns on surfaces in the kitchen and bathrooms. In the dining room, instead of frothy Victorian art glass windows, MacKenzie installed a panel system as a shade over the existing fenestration with a Mid-Century aesthetic made by Higgins Glass Studio in Riverside.
To furnish the space, they called on Chicago interior designer Eva Quateman, who had just done such an adept job on their current home that it had recently been published in a shelter magazine. Since “they were really happy with the furniture they had, but were moving to a space three times as big, we had to re-interpret some things and buy more,” she says.
Some things worked in the new place; others didn’t. Their salon-style living room furniture with a Parisian flavor had to go because the new living room was four times larger and called for furnishings with a more streamlined, modern aesthetic, which were custom designed and fabricated by Quateman. The dining and family room pieces were fine in the new home with a bit of tweaking.
In the dining room, which was dark to begin with, Quateman heightened the impact of a graceful dining table by contemporary master furniture-maker James Jennings paired with Frank Gehry’s fanciful Powerplay chairs by painting the room a bold yet burnished shade of persimmon. The color had just enough red to energize dinner parties, and just enough brown to add a rich, earthy warmth to the room. The color also proved to be an ideal backdrop for a major work of art in the couple’s collection, a verdant landscape by Chicago artist Don Pollack.
Quateman also added elements to the family room to make the huge, custom-made angled sectional look as if it had been made specifically for the space, while in actuality it had been created to fit in an oddly shaped room in the couple’s former home. The additions included a custom-made curved table designed to echo the curves of the sofa and provide a surface for a lamp, and a coordinating oversized easy chair on the far side of the room to counterbalance the enormous sofa.
Now that they’ve finally reached that same state of equilibrium that prevailed before they decided to move five years ago, the couple has found one aspect of the place enduringly alluring. “We like to buy art and are always getting new things. One of the appeals of this house over our last one was all the wall space,” says Nagler. Fortunately for them, there’s still plenty left to fill, which should keep life calm for a while.
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RESOURCES
Interior architecture: David MacKenzie, Evanston. Interior design: Eva Quateman Interiors, Chicago. Stairwell portrait: Oil on canvas by Margarette Dawit, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Library: Upholstered pieces–Design Within Reach, www.dwr.com; coffee table–Susanin’s Auctioneers, Chicago; cantilevered shelving–design and fabrication through David MacKenzie. Tableau: Ebonized birch table–design and fabrication through Eva Quateman Interiors; sculptures on table–personal collection; bronze sculpture on window sill titled “Nixon and Phan Thi Kim Phuc,” Around the Coyote, Chicago. Dining room: James Jennings table–Holly Hunt Chicago, Merchandise Mart, Chicago; Frank Gehry Powerplay chairs–Knoll, Mart; art-glass panels–Higgins Glass Studio, Riverside; drapes–Brunschwig & Fils, Mart; pendant fixture–Boyd Lighting, Mart; oil on linen titled “The Nature of Painting” by Don Pollack–Perimeter Gallery, Chicago; wood sculpture–Wright, Chicago. Living room: Upholstered pieces–custom made through Eva Quateman Interiors, fabric–Bergamo Fabrics, Mart; pair of oils on canvas by Robert Kelly–Linda Durham Contemporary Art, Galisteo, N.M.; bronze sculpture–personal collection; oil on canvas titled “The Red Dress” by Monica Rezman, Chicago. Dining-room detail: Asian chest–Susanin’s Auctioneer’s, Chicago; carved leather mask titled “Le Guerrier” by Guy Levesque, Quebec City; oil on canvas by Georges Nazilu–Eastwick Gallery, Chicago.
