WINNETKA
List Price: $5.299 million
Sale Price: $5 million

A Winnetka mansion whose past owners included a member of FDR’s cabinet was sold in January for less than half of the latest seller’s original asking price. Designed by the architect Dwight Perkins, the Tudor house with a decorative beamed façade was built in 1916 for Harold L. Ickes, who headed the Department of the Interior and the New Deal’s Public Works Administration during Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency. Legend has it that the notoriously argumentative Ickes battled his architect on details as small as the placement of the shower curtain.

In October 1998, Tim and Kristine Healy paid $4.095 million for the seven-bedroom house, which sits on a semiprivate lane on one and a half acres of wooded land. (Tim Healy was later the CEO of Ubiquity Brands, which sold Jays potato chips and other products.) The Healys, who could not be reached for comment, listed the house for sale in April 2007 with an asking price of $10.9 million. That price came down over the following months, and in January 2009, Byron and Lori Brand—he is a trader at the Chicago Board Options Exchange—bought the place for $5 million. “Things ended up working out for us,” says Lori Brand, who, since moving in, has been enjoying the sight of the deer, owls, and other wildlife passing her sunroom.

Photograph: chrisguillen.com

Send tips about high-end home sales to dennis@rodkin.com.