“Another sumptuous relic from Kenwood’s heyday as one of the city’s most stylish places to build fine homes has come on the market, with its plentiful 1880s features painstakingly restored by its owners of the past quarter-century.
“We stripped a lot of paint,’ replaced worn-out wood floors with historical-looking new ones and hauled long-disused chandeliers up from the basement, ‘but we’re glad we did,’ says Madelaine Gerbaulet-Vanasse, who owns the Kimbark Avenue house with her husband, Phillip Gerbaulet-Vanasse. She’s also the listing agent, through the brokerage she heads, Meliora Real Estate Group.
“The first time she saw the house, in need of rehab in the late 1990s, ‘I fell in love with its uniqueness,’ Madelaine Gerbaulet-Vanasse said.
“The couple is asking $2.35 million for the house, an eight-bedroom, 8,000-square-footer on a lot about 2.5 times the standard 25-by-125-foot lot. The house came on the market Sept. 20, a few days ahead of a different Kenwood eyeful that Crain’s featured recently.
“The Gerbaulet-Vanasses have not dug up the name of the architect of the house they paid $600,000 for in January 1997, but among the things they did dig up are glass-doored china cabinets that had been pulled out of the dining room, painted yellow and stuck in the basement.
“‘We really tried to keep with how this house looked originally,’ Madelaine Gerbaulet-Vanasse says.” (Rodkin, Crain’s Chicago Business, 10/2/23)