Price: $1.85 million
If you have a summery home to sell, now would be the time. The threat of frost has finally left and gardens are peaking. Lincoln Park queues up a long line of pristine private gardens attached to grand properties, though garden designs generally don’t consider a house's interiors. That’s the grace and ingenuity on display with this new-to-market four-bed on Dayton Street near Halsted Street. The architect is Michael Coan who has worked on other neighborhood homes and additions. With this house, he added a simple white stucco exterior rounded off at its edges. He also slanted the roof line to allow for large windows that are halfway to skylight, and incorporated warm earth-tone interiors via slate floors and wood paneling.
The rise and fall of the open main level creates separation between the kitchen, staircase, and dining and living areas, and mimics a naturally uneven landscape. As you step down these levels, headspace increases until it hits 14 feet in the living area. A window wall comes into play here and helps discard the strict notion of inside and outside. There’s barely any remove from outdoor light and surface.
Upstairs are three bedrooms—two large paneled spaces absorbing the dramatically slanted roofline, and a third small but tall space with clerestory windows. The stairwell is also something to remember—compact and spiraling with a continuation of the main level’s slate flooring, a skylight, and a papery chandelier. Shooting down two flights to the basement, a bonus room (or, alternately, a fourth bedroom) is secreted away beyond the laundry area. This front space figures in well to overall living space since it’s flush with the sunken bamboo garden and has a floor-to-ceiling window keeping things brighter than you’d expect in a basement.
Landscaping is a passion for Tami Mizrahi Stone, a chef who partners on local restaurant projects with husband Eddy Stone. The two have made comprehensive improvements to the house—two new bathrooms, new hardwood flooring, HVAC—but the outdoor transformation outshines the rest. Bracketed by secretive gardens, the bamboo garden sunken behind a stucco privacy wall feels like a slice of Japan. The rear landscape, meanwhile, latches on to more of a Tuscan vibe, ringed by small trees, flower beds, and planters, and with a concrete walkway, hot tub, loungers, and deck with pergola atop the two-car garage. The garden’s angles recall those of the house.
Price Points: The Stones bought the house in 2004 for $1.23 million, and the new asking price accounts for appreciation and the laundry list of improvements. There’s hardly anything for sale on nearby blocks to match size, style, and price. Newer traditional homes scattered on Dayton, Bissell, and Fremont Streets tend to be substantially larger and priced between $2.5 million and $4 million. A couple places are even vaulting into $6 and $7 million territory as big money leaks west of Halsted from the de facto Orchard-Burling-Howe mansion district. I found two similarly-priced modern homes (here and here), united only by broad categorization, and three classic row homes on Fremont are in the same ballpark for price and size. Recent sales prices support what’s being asked.
The sellers are parents of twin five-year-olds and, quite simply, are looking for more space. Randi Pellar and Sharon Glickman of Baird & Warner are jointly listing the property.