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Dennis Rodkin
An Armour Mansion in Lake Forest
By Dennis Rodkin
List Price: $5 million
The Property: This classically styled 12-room mansion on a bluff in Lake Forest that overlooks Lake Michigan has its fine points, and I’ll get to them. But first, a nod to its former resident, the formidable Sarah Wood Armour, who was a key supporter of the Lyric Opera of Chicago for over five decades and the daughter of Robert Wood, who helped build both the Panama Canal and Sears, Roebuck & Co. Mrs. Armour bought the house in 1980 with her husband, the philanthropist and businessman Andrew W. Armour III of the meatpacking family... Read more
Lincoln Park’s Two Battlefields
By Dennis Rodkin
In recent months, two groups of Lincoln Park residents have been fighting proposals that they believe will have a negative impact on their neighborhood—and the two battlegrounds are just three blocks apart on Webster Avenue. “There’s a lot going on over there on Webster these days,” says Alderman Vi Daley (43rd)... Read more
Doctor Chooses True Love Over Kenwood Greystone That Marries Old and New
By Dennis Rodkin
List Price: $2.45 million
The Property: When Dr. Srinivas Reddy bought this 1893 greystone on Drexel Boulevard in 2002, it was empty and recently foreclosed. Its exterior urgently needed maintenance, and its three-story interior had been chopped up into six apartments that might charitably be described as shabby... Read more
Che “Rhymefest” Smith’s Green Hopes for the 20th Ward
By Dennis Rodkin
In the last few hours before the blizzard hit last Tuesday, Che “Rhymefest” Smith, the Grammy-winning rapper who is now running for alderman in Chicago’s 20th Ward, drove me around his neighborhood. The ward has over 30,000 vacant lots (most of them city-owned) and hundreds or perhaps thousands of foreclosed homes (there is no accurate count available), many of them boarded up... Read more
Open Season
By Dennis Rodkin
An architect uses salvaged materials, Craigslist, day laborers, and his own ingenuity to build a crisply detailed, light-filled house Read more