Dennis Rodkin
@Dennis_Rodkin
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I cover residential real estate for @CrainsChicago and do the "What's That Building?" segments on WBEZ.
Chicago, IL
Joined February 2009
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I'm going to miss these old wooden sidewalks after the Lake Street bridge is replaced next year, as announced this week. They're a throwback to 1916, when it was built, and are, I'm pretty sure, the last wooden sidewalks on any of the 20 downtown bridges.
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It's a cold, blowy, wet morning, but the Water Taxis are back in weekday service for the first time since 2020, so none of that matters.
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Who says Michigan Avenue is dead? La Catrina, newly installed on Michigan Avenue for Dia de los Muertos. Artist: Jose Luis Martinez Pasillas
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Purdue State Bank (now a Chase branch) by Louis Sullivan, 1914, in West Lafayette, Indiana.
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Because I've made public the details of so many people's real estate transactions over the years, it's only fair that I make my own details public.
I sold this house in Highland Park today for $355,000. I bought it in February 2003 for $305,000.
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An August morning swim in Lake Michigan is heavenly.
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Happy 50th birthday to this tall, dark and handsome icon. We'll celebrate today at noon on
@WBEZreset
.
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The Chicago skyline was visible this morning from Illinois Beach State Park, 39 miles north.
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Riding around Oak Lawn this morning, I traveled back in time so completely that I thought my bike would turn into the watermelon green Schwann stingray I got for my first communion in 1967.
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The facade of this house that just hit the market in Riverwoods makes me want to retire and never look at real estate again. (Price: <$1.3 million)
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What's the fine for criminal damage to a classic bungalow?
(For sale at $1.2 million in Park Ridge)
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On a cold and gray Chicago morn, an idea for a bike ride was born: go find color.
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Chicago River doing its impersonation of a hotel swimming pool
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This one gets a double oooh. It's the new Chicago Park District headquarters, designed by John Ronan and opened in May at 48th and Western in Brighton Park. I got my first look at it yesterday.
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I spent this beautiful morning riding my bike around Austin filling up my eyes. Here’s what I saw.
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New newsroom, new view, part 3
A view of the Carbide and Carbon Building, 1928, from a conference room
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Happy 70th birthday to Elwood Blues, distinguished alumnus of the St. Helen of the Blessed Shroud orphanage.
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US Post Office, Oak Brook, designed by Helmut Jahn, 1981
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In Sauganash there are so many pretty homes in so many styles, but this morning I focused on Art Deco and Art Moderne.
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Elmer Carlson is a somewhat unsung Chicago architect of the 1930s through the 1950s. I’m here tonight to sing him.
These are some of his houses in Beverly, where he lived and where many of his buildings are. (The last 2 are different angles on the same house)
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Driving in the countryside near Norway, Illinois, yesterday, I stumbled on this very unusual roadside monument. It looks like it’s a memorial to a plane crash, but then you read the sign.
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Vintage bathroom of the week: it's in a house in Beverly built in 1931 and sold yesterday for $529,000.
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Nick Cave’s interiors for the CTA Green Line’s Washington Park station, 2018-2019, are the perfect antidote to this gray morning.
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Just because it was so pretty when I passed it this morning: the Pierce Street, Wicker Park home designed by William Ohlhaber in 1888 for Hermann Weinhardt.
Weinhardt was a partner in Niemann & Weinhardt, his father-in-law’s company that made tables.
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'Bye, everybody. I'm moving to Whiting, Indiana.
This house is priced at a cool $200,000.
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I just walked through a house in Hinsdale that is so loaded w/history + historical details, I have to tell all. For now, I'll just say this is 1 of 3 cast-iron deep sinks still in the house. Trust me: that's only the beginning.
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After almost two and a half years closed, the southern portion of the Fort Sheridan preserve re-opened this weekend. It's a mile of Lake Michigan shoreline, as well as ravines and bluffs.
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This morning in Elgin, where it’s no no accident that the casino is called the Grand Victoria.
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Built in 2020, this never-opened restaurant in a Chino Hills CA shopping center is an homage to the Temples of Abu Simbel in Egypt.
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I'm not sure if this is one house, or three houses that crashed into each other, but it sold today for a little over $1 million in Glenview.
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Every time I take a walk through Pullman, I fall in love all over again. It happened this morning.
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I call these ice lilies. There were hundreds of them along the shallow edge of the Des Plaines River in Ryerson Woods this morning.
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A house on Washington Boulevard in Austin is for sale in rough shape, but wow, look at the dining room finishes that are intact. (Price is $175,000)
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And now it’s time for today’s episode of “Ooh, look at these wonderful vintage bathrooms.” These 2 are in a house in Skokie that sold Dec 1 for $675,000.
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Vintage Bath of the Week!
It's been a while since I spotted anything as sharp as this one. It's in an Oak Park house built in 1937 and sold today for 1st time in 55 years. Sold for $565,000.
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Portage Park
Left: sold for $221,550 in July 2021
Right: For sale now, at $695,000
📷
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It’s finally happening! The Old Heidelberg building is coming back to life as a Blick art supplies store Sept 1. Built 1934 for the Eitel family’s German restaurant, later Ronny’s Steak Palace, still later Argo Tea, and closed since early 2020.
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5 decades ago, Elijah Muhammad of the Nation of Islam brought in an Egyptian architect to design 5 houses at 49th and Woodlawn for himself, family + aides.
1 is for sale, following the death of a UChicago prof who owned it with his wife +fellow prof.
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Three fine Art Moderne houses on Morse Avenue in Skokie. I have no details on their history. Thanks to
@sbwillson
for telling me where they are.
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If he becomes Chicago's next mayor, Brandon Johnson will revive the push for anti-homelessness "mansion tax," where buyers of residential or commercial properties at $1 m or more pay $19,000 per $1 m purchase price to combat homelessness.
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Nope. Nope. Absolutely not. Do not try to call the West Loop WeLo.
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Early sunsets aren’t so bad when this is what you see on the way from the newsroom to the train.
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I went for a run around downtown Cincinnati early this morning and filled up my eyes. First, the Cincinnati Times-Star building, 1933
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Others may have mentioned this already, but I was happy to notice this morning that Joseph Kromelis, the Walking Man who died in December after brutally being set aflame, lives on in a portrait on the Riverwalk. 1 of 55 by Dontfretart. (Photo from Sun-Times)
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Right now the last mass is being said at St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church in South Chicago, 129 years after it was built, in 1892.
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Here's the latest fast-selling midcentury. It's in Glen Ellyn, built in 1956 (no architect named in the listing). Hit the market Oct 5 priced at $475,000, got snapped up that day and sold Oct 28 for $500,000.
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It's my first time seeing almost-finished 1000M from Roosevelt Road. That cantilever is Helmut Jahn's last gift to us.
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A stone mason spent a decade restoring this E Garfield Park greystone from the 1890s, both outside and in. Now he's retired and moving out of state, so it's on the market at $750,000.
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Happy 182nd birthday, Chicago. Here’s Wolf Point, where the city began, in mid-1830s and this morning.
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I’ve seen so much of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work, you’d think I couldn’t be surprised by it anymore. But then today I toured the Dana-Thomas house in Springfield, and was blown away!
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This back yard in Ravenswood is a dream for a Chicago summer. Pergolas over dining and lounging, a koi pond, a secluded little sitting area in the back. So serene.
Oh, and it comes with a house attached. Asking $2.24 m.
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Art Deco houses (and one school) in Edgebrook and Wildwood
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Did you know the Salvation Army built some of the most interesting Art Deco and Art Moderne buildings in Midwestern cities, including these two in Chicago? I have details in today’s “What’s That Building?” after 12:40 on
@WBEZreset
.
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Hyde Park is the world's 19th coolest neighborhood, according to Time Out's annual list of the world's top 50.
With only 3 US neighborhoods above it on the list, that makes Hyde Park the 4th coolest in the country.
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Ooh, look at the retro basement in this house for sale in Lombard. Built in 1955 by a man who recently died, and being sold by his family. Asking $275,000.
His grandson is building something inspired in part by this. I'll have a story out on that later today.
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Here's today's oooh: the inglenook in a house on Mason in Austin that appears to be completely intact and untouched since the house was built in 1905.
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In 1952, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe designed a fraternity house for the Indiana University chapter of Pi Lambda Phi fraternity. It wasn’t built until now.
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If you dream of living next to a Colorado mountain stream but you have to be in the office in Chicago, I may have found a solution for you.
This house in a Palos Park ravine is for sale 1st time since it was built 50 yrs ago. Asking $1.1m.
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1 degree at Ravine Street Beach, Highland Park, this morning. But there’s no wind, so it’s a comfortable 1 degree.
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When we scheduled the appointment, nobody mentioned it would be taking place in 1930.
Wow! 3520 S. Morgan
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This is the first time I’ve ever seen a turtle in the urban parts of the Chicago River! I’m on the South Branch, a little north of Ping Tom Park. The second photo is the view the turtle has from its perch.
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These two Streamline Moderne factories from the 1930s, next door to each other on Augusta Blvd in Austin, have more than their location in common.
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A previous owner described this transparent Olympia Fields house to me as "an aquarium for people." A rare and significant house, it's immersed in its wooded natural setting. Came on the market today at $699,000.
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350 years ago on about Sept. 1, a group of Kaskaskia people of the Illinewek showed an exploration party led by Louis Jolliet with Father Jacques Marquette a short route to from the Des Plaines River to the Chicago River.
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Mayan Apartments, Aurora, built as an Elks lodge in 1926. Zimmerman, Saxe & Zimmerman, architects
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I came across this adorable little gallery in Evanston this afternoon.
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OTD in 1916, packets containing bits of the ashes of Joe Hill were passed out to 150 people at an Industrial Workers of the World meeting at the West Side Auditorium in Chicago.
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25,000 Chicagoans marched to protest an announced plan for Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany's propaganda minister, to lead a German delegation to the Century of Progress World's Fair here, Trib reported OTD in 1933.
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My niece recently moved into a fantastic Art Deco building on Blackstone in Hyde Park, the Blackwood.
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This super-sharp midcentury by Don Erickson in Winnetka with a tent-like ceiling and (my favorite) a serpentine courtyard wall is coming on the market for the first time since 1979. The price is $1.75 m.
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@zoegalland
“no one could possibly think there was anything left to learn from a reporter flying in to a largely white Midwestern town, relitigating the 2016 election, and flying out again,” so I stayed a whole month and learned all the cliches about reporting on the lost industrial Midwest.
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Granny flats could soon be ok city-wide.
2 Alds (including Zoning Cmtee chair) and the mayor's policy chief all told me they want to expand ADUs beyond the pilot zones. It's mostly a question of when.
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It’s great to see a new tenant is lined up for the most huggable building in the Loop, built in 1934 as the Old Heidelberg restaurant. The last user, Argo Tea, shut down in early 2020, before the pandemic hit. Here’s a history we did in late 2019:
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The house where Carl Sandburg lived when he wrote his poem describing Chicago as "Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat" and "City of the Big Shoulders" is for sale.
Price: $2.35 million
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Snow sculptures in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, today, the last day before temperatures go above freezing and they start to melt.
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Some people cruise the Chicago River by yacht. This boat is for the rest of us.
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Park Ridge: not just a pretty town, but for hungry eyes like mine it serves up a hearty sampler platter of architectural styles.
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Here's the latest midcentury house for us all to crush on. It went up for sale this morning.
Built in 1966 on a hillside in Kildeer, wrapped on three sides by a stream. Woven brick fireplace chimney. Price: $525,000.
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If
@ChicagosMayor
's transfer tax increase goes through, rents will go up as much as $100 per unit after a building is sold, landlord group's report says.
Many renters “don’t understand at all that this would affect them,” a 3-flat owner told me.
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From up here on the 31st floor, you can enjoy the sight of Millennium Park's flowering pear trees covered in white blossoms without having to smell their icky fragrance.
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Vintage bath of the week! It's in a 1928 house in River Forest that came on the market yesterday at <$1.4 million.
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