“George Robert Fuller grew up in Chicago but spent two decades in Hollywood doing hair, makeup and wardrobe styling for stars including Patti LaBelle, Olivia Newton-John and Chaka Khan, as well as former Ebony magazine CEO Linda Johnson Rice and Juanita Vanoy, the ex-wife of Michael Jordan.
“He’s now finishing a different kind of glow-up, the rehab of a rundown Kenwood mansion.
“The idea of bringing the shine back to a derelict home was ‘another pivot in my career,’ Fuller says. After his years in beauty, he pivoted into management of artists including Khan and Stephanie Mills, and now he’s pivoted into old-house rehab, along with business partner Michael Kushner.
“The house ‘needed somebody who could see it without makeup and know how beautiful it could be,’ Fuller says. Lost in foreclosure in 2014 and passed around among a series of owners for the next seven years, according to a tangle of records in the Cook County Clerk’s online files, the house was empty and mostly gutted inside when Fuller bought it in 2021 for $620,000. He later brought in Kushner as a partner and investor in the extensive rehab effort.
“The stately brick and stone facade evokes “the old English style,” as a 1904 article in The Economist described the house.
“The original owners of the house, according to O’Connor Davis, who is also the author of a book on Hyde Park and Kenwood history, were Ernest C. and Jennie Cole. Ernest Cole was one of three brothers from Iowa who came to Chicago and started Cole Manufacturing, which made hot blast stoves, and airtight and cleaner-burning coal-powered heaters.” (Rodkin, Crain’s 11/14/24)
Read the full story at Crain’s Chicago Business
- Former Hollywood hair and makeup stylist gives Kenwood mansion a glow-up, Dennis Rodkin, Crain’s Chicago Business, 11/14/24
- Cole House, 4730 Greenwood Avenue, Chicago Listed for Sale