GLENCOE
LIST $2.25 MILLION

Curt Teich, the German immigrant whose Chicago company was once the world’s largest manufacturer of post cards, built this North Shore palazzo in the Italian Renaissance Revival style around 1902. Likely designed by Teich’s brother, Frederick, an architect who worked in Chicago and St. Louis, the house might have been inspired by family trips to Lake Como, says Camille Rudy, the Prudential Rubloff agent who is selling the home for herself and her husband, Robert.

After paying $850,000 for the then-dingy house in 1995—“it was like the Addams Family house,” Camille says—the Rudys began a series of renovations, expanding a basement-level garage and updating the top floor’s suite of rooms. They also replaced the original dining room with a large kitchen that has a view of Lake Michigan. (Because the property was subdivided after Teich sold the house in the mid-1950s, the residence no longer has its own lakefront.) A palatial foyer and marble staircase, hand-painted frescoes (including a mostly intact portrait of Neptune), cast-plaster ceiling details, and hefty mahogany doors speak to the home’s lavish origins.

Send tips about home sales to dennis@rodkin.com.

Photograph: Dennis Rodkin