“I’m not an architect or designer, but I knew the name ‘Helmut Jahn.’ So when I heard this building was going to be developed, I was interested,” says Chicagoan Mark Gregor-Pearse as he watched the Chicago Air and Water Show from his floor-to-ceiling, living-room windows.
“I like modern architecture with natural materials. That’s what I have here — steel, glass, wood, granite.”
In 2007, Gregor-Pearse bought a two-bedroom, corner condo in the 600 North Fairbanks building, designed by the German-born architect Jahn, whose local buildings include an Illinois Institute of Technology residence hall, the Xerox Centre and James R. Thompson Center. Prices ranged from $320,000 to $2 million, though all the condos are sold.
Jahn is one of the architects those in the trade call “starchitects,” those whose names tend to be bigger than their designs.
“These homes tend to attract buyers who tell me, ‘I want a work of art,'” says Joe Kunkel, a Chicago-based Realtor with Baird & Warner who specializes in custom, architect-designed houses. “Some buyers — especially interior designers or architects — know which architects they like. Others are seeking out certain styles and the name of the architect is secondary.”
Count Dirk Lohan (grandson of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe), John Ronan, Daniel Wheeler, Lawrence Kearns, Brad Lynch and David Brininstool among the 21st-Century luminaries, at least according to Zurich Esposito, executive vice president of American Institute of Architects Chicago.
“Clients who can afford to hire architects from anywhere hire them from Chicago,” says Esposito. “Chicago has always had architects that push the envelope and create cutting-edge, award-winning designs.”
They join such fabled names from the past as Edward Dart, Henry Dubin, George Fred Keck, William Keck, Don Erickson, Edward Humrich, says Kunkel. Not to mention David Adler, R. Harold Zook and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Jennifer and Adam Nickerson admired Humrich so much, they bought one of his houses in Olympia Fields from the original owner as soon as it went up for sale in 2006.
The Nickersons’ 3,700-square-foot, 1956 ranch reminded Jennifer of the Humrich houses from her childhood in Riverwoods, which has one of the largest collections of his work.
“It has built-ins, cedar kitchen cabinets that still look very modern, a butcher-block countertop, passive solar design, concrete floors with radiant heat, protruding eaves and lots of windows that look out on mature trees,” says Jennifer.
But Jennifer said the home’s $400,000 price was not affected as much by Humrich’s name as by his ahead-of-his-time design. “Today, with the growing interest in mid-century design, I believe his name would have an impact if we sold it,” she says.
A similar feeling came over Larry Arbeiter and his wife, Karen Johnson, in 2002 when a 1957 Bertrand Goldberg house in Flossmoor was listed.
“We lived two blocks away and always stopped to look at it when we walked by,” says Arbeiter. “As soon as we heard the owner was going to sell, we knew we had to have it. Our previous house was just a house, but this was special.”
When they made changes to the house, says Arbeiter, they asked themselves, “WWBD?” What would Bertrand do?
“At one point, we considered finishing the attic,” says Arbeiter. “When a contractor told us how he would put dormers up there, we knew we couldn’t hire him because he wanted to alter the original design.”
When Arbeiter’s new job sent them to New York in 2007, they regretted having to sell the house. “We wish we could have taken it with us,” says Arbeiter.
It’s listed at $550,000, with its design attracting mid-20th-Century-architecture fans, Arbeiter says.
“The name alone didn’t affect our price,” says Arbeiter, who bought it in 2003 for $445,000 and spent about $60,000 to bring it back to its original condition. “But the quality of the design and the materials did. You can get more square footage in a cookie-cutter house for the same amount of money, but it won’t be so well sited and well designed.”
That’s what Bill McMahon thought when he bought a 1908 house in Oak Park designed by E.E. Roberts. “I didn’t buy it so much because of Roberts, who is well known here, as because it was so well built,” says McMahon.
Now that McMahon’s kids are grown and he no longer needs seven bedrooms, he is selling it for $990,000.
“I hope the buyer is someone who ‘gets’ it,” says McMahon of the prairie-style house. “This is a landmark house with tremendous details — 52 lead-glass windows, a third-story ballroom, built-ins everywhere, original tile work, beamed ceilings. You have to take care of it, but you’d have to be on drugs to want to change it.”
McMahon has owned it since 1975, when he bought it for $75,000.
Location and condition of a house trump the name of its architect, admits Kunkel. “But if the location and condition are the same as a house next door that isn’t architect-designed, the architect-designed house can command a bigger price,” he says.
“Thanks to TV and magazines, buyers are more aware now of good design and of certain architects,” says Kunkel.
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The architects and familiar designs
*Dirk Lohan is known for designs with large expanses of glass. The Dragon Tower in Chinatown, the Adler Planetarium’s Sky Pavilion and the Elmhurst Public Library are among his creations.
*John Ronan is known for ultramodern, upscale residences and public projects that include the colorful Gary Comer Youth Center in Chicago.
*Daniel Wheeler and Lawrence Kearns of Wheeler Kearns Architects are known for custom residences and public buildings such as the Chicago Children’s Museum and the North Avenue Beach House.
*Brad Lynch and David Brininstool of Brininstool + Lynch work in glass and concrete for their homes and Chicago high-rises, including 1620 S. Michigan Ave. in the South Loop.
*Edward Dart is known for Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired houses and churches and also was one of the architects that worked on Water Tower Place.
*Keck & Keck was a partnership of modernists. Their legacy includes dozens of Chicago-area houses known for their flat roofs, passive solar design and radiant-heated flooring. The 1937 apartment building they designed and lived in, the Keck-Gottschalk-Keck Apartments, at 5551 S. University Ave. in Chicago, has been designated a Chicago landmark.
*Don Erickson, a Wright apprentice, worked on many custom homes, especially in the northern suburbs. Wright’s influence is evident in his disk-shaped Mayes house in Glen Ellyn and boxy Matthies house in Park Ridge. He was also lauded for the Indian Lakes Resort (now part of the Hilton chain) in Bloomingdale.
*Edward Humrich left the Chicago suburbs many prairie-style houses, built mostly in the 1950s and ’60s. Riverwoods has about 40 that mimic Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian houses designed to control costs with no attics or basements and little ornamentation.
— Leslie Mann
