“Just ahead of turning 125 years old, a rundown mansion in East Garfield Park with a distinguished architectural provenance has changed hands, and the new owner’s ambitious restoration plan entails not only living in it but making it a community asset.

“‘I want this house to shine a light on the West Side,’ said Marseil ‘Action’ Jackson, the entrepreneur and radio host who, with his wife, Valencia Jackson, in July bought the Washington Boulevard landmark known as the King-Nash House. Built in 1901, the limestone mansion was the work of Prairie School architect George W. Maher and retains many of its original artistic details in carved stone and wood and mosaic tile.

“‘I hope we inspire West Siders to come home to the West Side,’ said Marseil Jackson, who’s the CEO of The Dream Center, a co-working and business incubation space in Austin, and one of the hosts of The Brunch Bunch, a business talk show with a religious infusion on the gospel radio station WGRB 1390 AM.

“‘We’ve got to reinvigorate the whole West Side,’ he said, ‘bring light into this community, show people you don’t have to leave the community to shop, to eat, to own a house.’

“Owning this particular house is an element of that effort. It’s a surviving relic of a time when the streets leading west from downtown to Garfield Park were dotted with stately mansions. One other remnant of that time was a mansion a block away that was built for the meatpacker who financed the early Schwinn bicycle company. The home had been declining since the 1990s and was demolished by order of the city last month.

“The Jacksons paid $415,000 for the King-Nash house, buying it from the family of an attorney who had owned it since sometime in the 1980s and died in 2023. Marseil Jackson said they estimate the work to “bring this home back to life” will cost about another $500,000. The work includes replacing the roof as well as mechanical and utility systems, updating a decades-old kitchen and making the decrepit coach house habitable.

The work that will be more fun, he said, is “taking care of the historic look inside.” That may entail recreating mosaic fireplace mantels that were long ago removed and now are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. They were the work of Louis J. Millet, who frequently did decorative finishes for Maher and Louis Sullivan.

“‘This is a historical masterpiece,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to take anything out that we don’t have to.’

“‘I bought this house for my family,’ Marseil Jackson said, ‘but I also bought it for the community here on the West Side and the community of architecture (buffs).’

“‘I didn’t want somebody to come in here and just tear this thing apart,” Marseil Jackson said, ‘make it a multiunit building or a commercial space. That would lose its essential character.'” (Rodkin, Crain’s Chicago Business, 9/2/25)

Read the full story at Crain’s Chicago Business

• Rehab of East Garfield Park mansion aims to ‘shine a light’ on city’s West Side, Dennis Rodkin, Crain’s Chicago Business, 9/2/25
• BUYER WANTED: Landmark King-Nash Home by George Maher at 3234 W. Washington Blvd. Listed For Sale
• King – Nash House, 1901, George W. Maher, 3234 W. Washington Blvd. Listing
• George W. Maher Society Website
• King-Nash House City of Chicago Landmark Designation