List Price: $4.3 million

The Property: This two-story penthouse with views of the lake and the city to the north, east, and south is a complete period piece from the late 1980s. The glittery aesthetic of the era shows through in everything from the sleek round-edged cabinetry painted with gleaming auto-body paint to the spiral staircase surrounded with mirrored glass panels and steel supports painted mauve.

The penthouse has an indoor pond, numerous built-in banquettes and tables, shelves of multicolored granite, a tanning bed, and an underlit glass catwalk to the master bedroom. The master bedroom and family room hang in glass pods above the living room, and the master bath offers a striking abstraction of the loveseat: a soaking tub paired in an embrace with a speckled granite chaise.

Occupying the east side of the 62nd and 63rd floors of Olympia Centre—the high-rise attached to Neiman Marcus at Michigan and Chicago avenues—this penthouse was designed in 1986 by the architecture firm Krueck & Olsen (whose successor, Krueck & Sexton, designed the new Spertus Institute that opened recently on South Michigan Avenue). The penthouse was created for Barry and Beverly Crown—he was in the third generation of the super-wealthy Crown family—who lived in it and in Florida until both died in 2006.

“Beverly wanted it to be dramatic,” says Donna Shanley, the Rubloff agent representing the four-bedroom penthouse for the Crowns’ estate. “It really is a work of art.” The architects did nothing the usual way: even the toilets are encased in huge granite boxes.

Shanley says some potential buyers have wanted it only for the space and the views; they talk of renovating the whole place. “But those are the Chicagoans who look at it,” she says. “The ones from the coasts wouldn’t touch it. They want to keep it the way it is.”
           
Price Points: When the Crowns’ penthouse first went on the market last January, its asking price was $6.5 million. After several price reductions, it’s now down to $4.3 million, or about $632 per square foot. “It’s very well priced,” says Shanley, who lives in the building and says one unit there went for $1,039 a square foot, while more typical sale prices are in the range of $722 to $880 per square foot.

Listing Agent: Donna Shanley, Rubloff, (312) 368-5341

Photos courtesy of Rubloff