KENWOOD — The first home designed by the architect behind the Drake Hotel, the South Shore Cultural Center and many other iconic Chicago buildings is back on the market in Kenwood.
Benjamin Marshall is not as well known as Louis Sullivan or Frank Lloyd Wright, but he’s designed many of Chicago’s iconic buildings, and one of his earliest houses at 4950 S. Ellis Ave. is up for sale for $1.5 million.
The nine-bedroom, three-story greystone still has much of the original elaborate woodwork and fireplaces and details essential for a late 19th century upscale home, like a butler’s closet.
Marshall’s career included buildings essential to the city’s history, like the Iroquois Theater, where a 1906 fire that killed 602 people prompted widespread improvements to fire safety measures. He also added major components to the city’s skyline, like Renaissance Blackstone Hotel at 636 E. Michigan Ave. and the Burlington and Quincy Railroad building at 547 E. Jackson Blvd.
Before any of those buildings, Marshall got his start in Kenwood, designing many of the mansions on Ellis Avenue for Chicago’s richest families in the 1890s.
The 4950 S. Ellis Ave. house was the first of the earliest phase and was designed in 1896 for H.M. Wilcox, a developer who later gave Marshall more work in Kenwood, according to the book “Benjamin Marshall: Chicago Architect.”
Marshall was only 22 years old and fresh out of Harvard University when he designed the home, only a few blocks from his own house at 4730 S. Drexel Blvd., which has since been demolished, according to the book.
The first house Marshall designed is dense with wood. Large wooden columns connect to wooden beams and delicate spindles lead up a heavy banister on the main stairway of the three-story house.
The home also includes a coach house that has its own apartment on the second story with three bedrooms.
The residence was last sold in 2009 and has been on and off the market several times since 2014, according to Midwest Real Estate Data.
Now back on the market again, the house was listed Sunday for $1,525,000.
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