Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Live in John Wellborn Root's house: just $3,250,000!

This is the 1887 house that architect John Wellborn Root built for himself on Astor Street in Potter Palmer's then new Gold Coast. It is less than 19 feet wide. This is the house where he lived, and the house where, on a blustery January evening, he hosted a reception for the illustrious team of architectural superstars, the pride of both Chicago and the East Coast, who would design the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.

This is where he insisted on seeing his guests to their carriages in the bitter cold, and where he died, only days later, from pneumonia. And this is the house where, just down the stairs from the bedroom where Root's body was already growing cold, in a state of shock from his partner's passing, Daniel Burnham agitatedly paced like a wounded lion, muttering to himself
I have worked. I have schemed and dreamed to make us the greatest architects in the world. I have made him see it and kept him at it—and now he dies—Damn! Damn! Damn!
In the Fall of 2006, the house changed hands for $1,950,000. A year later, it was again on the market with a price tag of $4,500,000. Now Prudential Rubloff is offering to you for a measly tariff of $3,250,000.

You can see purchase information, and photo's of the current interior, on the realtor's website here. You can read our previous history of the house here.

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