“A 19th-century greystone in East Garfield Park that a stonemason spent a decade restoring sold quickly, although not at his ambitious asking price.
“The four-bedroom greystone on a little more than three standard lots on Francisco Avenue sold April 25 for $699,000. That’s about 93% of the $750,000 that seller Robert Franklin was asking when he put it on the market earlier this year.
“‘That house speaks for itself with all that stone and woodwork,’ said Jaime Delgado, the 606 Brokers agent whose clients bought the house. ‘And it has such a big yard.’
“The buyers, who are not yet identified in public records, were looking for a large family home and had checked out others in the area, Delgado said, but ‘there was nothing else like this.’
“When the house first hit the market, Franklin told Crain’s that he bought the house in 2011 as a project.
“‘The deciding factor of buying it was all the original detail was salvageable,’ although the stone exterior was shrouded in vines and soot and the interior was run-down. He paid $48,000.
“According to Pauley’s research, the greystone was designed and built around 1896 by a firm called Crowen & Richards. The same firm and its successor, S.N. Crowen, built numerous greystones and other apartment buildings in this neighborhood, Woodlawn, Washington Park and Uptown at a time when all of those neighborhoods were upper-middle-class sections of the city. Many of the buildings are still standing.” (Rodkin, Crain’s Chicago Business, 4/27/22)