A seven-bedroom, 10,000-square-foot red-brick, Romanesque Revival mansion on Astor Street in the Gold Coast neighborhood sold Thursday for $4 million.
Built-in 1886 and designed by the Cobb & Frost architectural firm, the mansion later became known as the Wrigley-Offield mansion after Dorothy Wrigley Offield, the only daughter of chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. She owned the mansion for more than 50 years until her death in 1980.
The mansion had been on and off the market since 2013 when it was first listed for $6.9 million. The listing price was reduced five times before finding a buyer.
The seller was the estate of the late Robert Growney, a retired Motorola vice-chairman who died last year. Growney and his wife paid $5.2 million for the mansion in 2008 and then worked to restore it.
The sale appears to be the highest-priced sale on Astor Street since a 7,500-square-foot, Romanesque mansion to the south sold in 2011 for $4.154 million. That mansion now is on the market for $5.8 million. Astor Street's record is the $14.5 million that Democratic gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker paid in 2006 for a mansion.
The Wrigley-Offield mansion was built for Perry H. Smith Jr., whose father had worked in the railroad industry and later was unsuccessful in a bid for Chicago mayor before dying in 1885. In 1991, the mansion's then-owners built a 3,000-square-foot addition, including a turret with a brick exterior, on the back of the home.
Other features include 7½ baths, mahogany paneling, millwork throughout, eight fireplaces, an elevator, and a 570-square-foot gazebo.
Public records do not yet identify the buyers.
