March 28, 2008

Restoration of an Uptown Mansion


Excerpt from the Chicago Reader:

David Teplica has Helen Brach’s sink. Apparently, one of the many things the candy heiress left behind when she disappeared in 1977 was an American art deco fixture in precisely the right style, vintage, and shade of white to go with the milky glass walls in one of the bathrooms at Teplica’s 98-year-old north-side mansion. He tried to get by with French deco porcelain at first, but the color was wrong. Brach’s basin, which he bought at Salvage One, was perfect, right down to the two little pegs in its feet that matched up so satisfyingly with two old dents in the bathroom floor.

Details like those pegs have been Teplica’s obsession since he bought the mansion he shares with his partner, Kalev Peekna, in 1997. Designed by the prestigious firm of Schmidt, Garden & Martin, the place first belonged to Levant M. Richardson, who made his fortune on a patent for the use of ball bearings in roller skate wheels. Teplica supposes the house—near what was then the lakefront—served as Richardson’s “little getaway” from the stresses of life downtown...

For full article and more yummy pictures, go to The Restorer.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Where is this home? Amazing.

Joanne said...

The article didn't say; my guess is that it's in the area east of Sheridan and north of Lawrence. There are some gorgeous mansions in there, including one owned by Studs Terkel.

Anonymous said...

Southwest corner of Hutchinson & Clarendon.

Joanne said...

Thanks, Anonymous! That puts it in the Hutchinson Street District.

old guy said...

Then that would be that gray stone house that was owned by Eugene Field. There is a picture of his home at Knox College in Galesburg Il. where he went school.
Al

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