“It will only be a matter of time until the building becomes a clubhouse and that time will arrive in a few months. The building is at 1516 N. Lake Shore Drive, one of seven mansions that remain on a street once lined with them.
“As such, it echoes a bygone time but also represents, optimistically, a splendid future, and no one is more aware of that than Adam Bilter and his wife, Victoria. They were in the mansion on Monday, showing a visitor around, and Adam was saying, ‘This is the original herringbone mahogany floor. Let’s walk on this original marble staircase. Let’s go up another floor.’
“Blair Mansion had been put on the market in 2015 by its owner, the International College of Surgeons, which also owned the building next door, originally priced at $17 million, but considerably less by 2019.
“That year, the Bilters were in the process of finalizing a deal to buy it, but COVID-19 scuttled that, and instead they would end up buying an 8,120-square-foot basement space that had once been a restaurant and disco called Maxim’s in what had been the Astor Towers Hotel. They moved into a top-floor apartment and, over the next few years, transformed that basement space into the private Astor Club dining club.
“On Monday, they offered many of the details and dreams for their new operation, which will be called the Astor Club Clubhouse. They showed off an old and heavy and sadly empty safe. They showed the high ceilings, modernized bathrooms, the eight or was it nine or 10 fireplaces? The windows gave you water and sky.
“As of now, plans are for the clubhouse to be open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and offer coffee service, light breakfast and light lunch throughout the day; have meeting rooms for members and small gatherings; and have seven or so overnight guest suites.
“There is something timeless about staring at only water and sky, easy to drift back to 1914 when this building was designed by the New York architecture firm McKim Mead & White. It was built for Edward Tyler Blair and Ruby McCormick Blair; he a hardware mogul and writer, she the niece of Cyrus McCormick, inventor of the mechanical reaper. Their home was known as the Blair Mansion.
“Other McKim Mead & White buildings include the Patterson-McCormick mansion on Astor Street (now condominiums) and what is the Fortnightly Club on Bellevue Place.
“The Blair Mansion and the adjoining building were purchased in the early 1950s by Chicago surgeon Max Thorek, a founder of the Switzerland-based International College of Surgeons, who donated them to the society for its headquarters and fascinating museum. These buildings, as well as four buildings in the 1200 block and 1530, were declared a landmark district in 1989.
“‘Yes, we are lucky,’ says Victoria, who only a few years ago told me, ‘We are both deeply appreciative of the past, and we want to be part of the future.'” (Kogan, Chicago Tribune, 3/25/26)