The Carlyle,
Life Span: 1966-Present
Location: 1040 N. Lake Shore Drive
Architect: Hirshfield, Pawlan and Reinheimer
Introduction.
Just across the street from the Rockefeller McCormick house, William Borden hired Robert Morris Hunt to build his Chateauesque mansion in 1886. Borden was a partner of Marshall Field, a mining engineer, and an adventurer. In his lifetime, he led expeditions in the Bering Sea north of the Arctic Circle. Borden’s granddaughter Ellen lived in the home with her husband, Adlai Stevenson II.
The house was made of smooth-faced Indiana limestone and featured a slate roof articulated with turrets and dormers. It remained with the Borden family until it was demolished in the early 1960s.
The 36-story Carlyle is considered Chicago’s first luxury high-rise condominium, planned shortly after the Illinois legislature produced the enabling legislation. For it the financing agent Dovenmuehle issued its first condominium loan.
Far more generous in square footage than other apartment buildings of the period, the Carlyle’s layout and services still reflected important changes from luxury buildings constructed before the Depression. Room dimensions and the number of servants’ rooms had shrunk, although, unlike its contemporaries, the Carlyle featured formal dining rooms. There were conveniences that soon would be available in many new lakefront buildings: balconies for every apartment, a swimming pool, and a health club. Apartments were as large as five bedrooms and up to 5,200 square feet. A typical floor was divided into two tiers, each with its own set of elevators, containing four somewhat smaller units.
To sell the more than 100 apartments, the “Little Carlyle,” a furnished residence on nearby Cedar Street, displayed sample layouts. The Carlyle remains a luxury condominium building today where even one bedroom units sell to close one million dollars.
Chicago Tribune, August 22, 1964
The opening of a dark green house with white trim on Cedar street on Chicago’s near north side is causing comment from neighbors, pedestrians, and drivers on Lake Shore drive.
The bay-windowed residential structure is the Little Carlyle, a model apartment and sales office for the skyscraper condominium being constructed at 1040 Lake Shore drive. Standing on the building site just west of Lake Shore drive, the Little Carlyle inside is a replica of a four-bedroom, five-bath apartment.
The 36-story Carlyle, in Regency design, will offer condominium apartments ranging in size from 5,300 square feet in a five-bedroom, six-bath apartment, to 1,780 square feet of the one-bedroom, 2½-bath unit.
Showing of the model, whose furnishings were selected by a design consultant, William Pahlmann and Associates of New York, is by appointment only. Architects for the building are Hirschfeld, Pawlan and Reinheimer. Robin Construction company, Chicago builders for 50 years, is the developer and builder of the Carlyle, which will be ready for occupancy late in 1965.
Chicago Tribune, October 30, 1965
The Carlyle, the 132-unit skyscraper under construction on Lake Shore drive in the Gold Coast between Bellevue place and Cedar street, is going up on schedule.
With 26 of the 38 floors in position this week, the 12-million dollar project is two-thirds up, and the sponsors, Albert A. Robin of Chicago and the Futterman corporation of New York, count on having it ready for occupancy in June, 1966. Buyers will not move in until carpets are down, everything shipshape, and workmen are out of the building.
Each buyer, under the condominium form of ownership, acquires title in fee simple to his own quarters and he enjoys tenancy in common with other owners of grounds, halls, common walls, general equipment, swimming pool, the sundecks, and all other elements that he does not occupy exclusively. He is free to sell or mortgage his property as he sees fit.
When he purchases a unit, he becomes automatically a member of the Carlyle Apartments Homeowners association, a not-for-profit corporation that oversees the business of the building and hires a managing agent to conduct the business.
Units in the Carlyle will vary from one bedroom to five, and from $63,000 in price to $120,000. Units of more than four bedrooms, however, are special jobs, and there will be only three, as plans now stand.
The one-bedroom homes will number 26 and will carry tags of $63,000 to $74,000; two-bedroom, 15 units, $79,000 to $87,000; three-bedroom, 28, $88,000 to $100,000; and four-bedroom, 60, $102,000 to $116,000.
Robin’s company, the Robin Construction company, which has been operating in Chicago for 50 years, is handling the construction. As late os 1872, Chicago sportsmen were hunting ducks in the sandy marshes along Lake Michigan where the Carlyle now stands. The area later became associated with the great names of Chicago’s history, especially those of Potter Palmer and William Borden, who laid out a subdivision there.
The American equivalent of castles soon lined the lake front, exhibiting many types of imported architecture. The Carlyle will carry on the idea with traditional English regency. Its units are to be spacious and luxurious, the three-and four-bedroom homes having more than 3,000 square feet of living space and 4½ or five baths.
LEFT: Carlyle units will have his-and-hers bathrooms, and hers will have a Roman sumken tub, 6 feet long. All rooms are to be pre-wired telephone outlets.
RIGHT: Christina Crawford, actress-daughter of Joan Crawford, tries out the standard drawing room, 18 by 25 feet, in a model unit of the 38-story Carlyle structure being built on Lake Shore drive. Miss Crawford is appearing here in “Barefoot in the Park.” Buyers will move into their units in the skscraper next June.
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