It will only be a matter of time until the building becomes a clubhouse and that time will arrive in a few months. The building is at 1516 N. Lake Shore Drive, one of seven mansions that remain on a street once lined with them.
As such, it echoes a bygone time but also represents, optimistically, a splendid future, and no one is more aware of that than Adam Bilter and his wife, Victoria. They were in the mansion on Monday, showing a visitor around, and Adam was saying, “This is the original herringbone mahogany floor. Let’s walk on this original marble staircase. Let’s go up another floor.”
He and his wife are sincere and passionate, palpably enthusiastic. Also, quite stylish. He was born and raised on a horse farm in Oswego and became a marketing and advertising executive, a real estate developer and a hospitality business investor. She was born in Ukraine, the daughter of a nurse, and was living in Bellagio, Italy, when she met Adam and fell in love. They were married in Grant Park and had their reception at Gibsons.
They lived in the Gold Coast and enjoyed nothing more than walking their dogs on its quiet streets amid its distinguished architecture. They were always looking for a place to buy and, indeed, their first choice was where they are now standing, 1516 N. Lake Shore Drive, long known as the Blair Mansion.
It had been put on the market in 2015 by its owner, the International College of Surgeons, which also owned the building next door, originally priced at $17 million, but considerably less by 2019.
That year, the Bilters were in the process of finalizing a deal to buy it, but COVID-19 scuttled that, and instead they would end up buying an 8,120-square-foot basement space that had once been a restaurant and disco called Maxim’s in what had been the Astor Towers Hotel. They moved into a top-floor apartment and, over the next few years, transformed that basement space into the private Astor Club dining club.
I wrote about that venture before it opened in the summer of 2023, with 100-some members. Now there are more than 400, and all of them will become members of the new operation — grandfathered in, as the saying goes. They have been able, for a while now, to also avail themselves of the reciprocal arrangements with the Union League Club; Biggs Mansion, the cigar-friendly spot on Dearborn Street; Rich Harvest Farms, a private golf course and country club near Sugar Grove; and the Columbia Yacht Club.
On Monday, they offered many of the details and dreams for their new operation, which will be called the Astor Club Clubhouse. They showed off an old and heavy and sadly empty safe. They showed the high ceilings, modernized bathrooms, the eight or was it nine or 10 fireplaces? The windows gave you water and sky.
The building is in the process of renovation, workmen wandering about its floors on projects the Bilters estimate will run well into the seven figures.
As of now, plans are for the clubhouse to be open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and offer coffee service, light breakfast and light lunch throughout the day; have meeting rooms for members and small gatherings; and have seven or so overnight guest suites.
At a time when the city has storefronts along the storied Magnificent Mile sitting empty, the Bilters’ expansion is an encouraging sign, though it will come at a price. Membership at the Astor Club runs from a $2,400 initiation fee and $100 in monthly dues to higher levels. But the Bilters are understandably optimistic, with Adam saying, “From one location, we will become full service. Think about it. Members can come here, have breakfast, have a meeting, do some work. And then, as the sun goes down, they can walk a few blocks to the supper club for dinner, maybe music, maybe a special event.”
“And this,” Adam says, walking into a coach house behind the mansion, “we’d like to have become our fitness center.” And, a few minutes later and four flights of stairs up atop the mansion, “This will be a rooftop deck with amazing lake views.”
There is something timeless about staring at only water and sky, easy to drift back to 1914 when this building was designed by the New York architecture firm McKim Mead & White. It was built for Edward Tyler Blair and Ruby McCormick Blair; he a hardware mogul and writer, she the niece of Cyrus McCormick, inventor of the mechanical reaper. Their home was known as the Blair Mansion.
Other McKim Mead & White buildings include the Patterson-McCormick mansion on Astor Street (now condominiums) and what is the Fortnightly Club on Bellevue Place.
The Blair Mansion and the adjoining building were purchased in the early 1950s by Chicago surgeon Max Thorek, a founder of the Switzerland-based International College of Surgeons, who donated them to the society for its headquarters and fascinating museum. These buildings, as well as four buildings in the 1200 block and 1530, were declared a landmark district in 1989.
The Bilters plan to live in the Clubhouse, moving from the apartment they now occupy in Astor Tower. They will have fine views of the lake.
“We consider ourselves very lucky, this has been a full-circle story,” says Adam.
Indeed. In the small world department, two of the Astor Club’s early members were J. Michael and Julie Whitted, successful executives and philanthropists with a deep regard for history. The Bilters learned that they were the people who had purchased the Blair Mansion for $4.25 million in 2021. They and the Bilters formed a partnership that has led to the current state of private club affairs.
“Yes, we are lucky,” says Victoria, who only a few years ago told me, “We are both deeply appreciative of the past, and we want to be part of the future.”
And so they are.
rkogan@chicagotribune.com
