Elegant Three-Story Home
On Chicago's Gold Coast

What: Three-story, 18-room town house with six bedrooms, five bathrooms in 12,500 square feet.

Where: Chicago

Amenities: Four wood-burning fireplaces, back porch and garden. The kitchen has butler’s and cook’s pantries and a breakfast room.

Asking Price: $4.9 million

Opening Bid*: $4.3 million

Listing Agents: Margaret C. Boyle, Rubloff Real Estate, (312) 368-5916

Due Diligence: This Tudor Revival-style house, made of red brick and Indiana limestone, sits on Astor Street on Chicago's Gold Coast about a block from Lake Michigan. Chicago brewer Peter Fortune built it in 1910 from a plan by architect Howard Van Doren Shaw, a prolific Chicago-area designer during the early 20th century. The current owners are Helen Harvey Mills, who is a photographer and granddaughter of hotelier Fred Harvey, and her husband, Ralph Mills, who's an essayist, poet and professor emeritus of English at Chicago's University of Illinois. The third owners since the house was built, the couple bought the house in 1966. Some of the rooms have paneling and fireplace surrounds made of carved mahogany. The living room includes a coffered plaster ceiling and leads to a large mahogany staircase in the reception room. The master bedroom has an adjacent sitting room, and a guest bedroom has an adjacent study. Large leaded windows, prevalent in many Tudor properties, have views of Astor Street.

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