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Have you always dreamed of living in the Playboy Mansion? Maybe you’ve envisioned yourself lounging poolside with bunny-tailed beauties in barely there bikinis, playing a mean game of Pac-Man or other ancient arcade classics with your best buds in the game house, or taking a relaxing dip in the gloriously over-chlorinated green waters of the infamous grotto? Well, you’re too late. The Beverly Hills, CA, mansion was sold for $100 million to the co-owner of Hostess Brands (the makers of Twinkies) last summer.
But wait! A luxury, 4,000-square-foot condo just went up for sale in the building housing Hugh Hefner‘s original Playboy Mansion on the Gold Coast of Chicago. This is the palace where Hef lived—and partied—during his early heyday in the hazy, crazy, sexually liberated 1960s and early ’70s. It was known to all by the brass plate hung on the door with the inscription Si Non Oscillas, Noli Tintinnare —Latin for “If you don’t swing, don’t ring.” And swing they did!
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The three-bedroom, five-bathroom abode on the top floor of the mansion is on the market for $3,395,000, according to realtor.com®. The sunlight-drenched condo, one of just seven in the building, features oak floors, high ceilings, a private terrace, and comes with an oversized parking spot.
“There’s no other home in the Gold Coast of Chicago that looks quite like it,” says listing agent Nancy Nugent, of Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty. “You expect to see the same style as the exterior [of the French Beaux Arts-style mansion], and then you come into this extremely dramatic, modern interior. … It’s just very refreshing.”
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Hefner bought the 72-room home for $400,000 in 1959 and made a few improvements—like a large pool in the basement, which could be directly accessed via a fire pole from the floor above.
Yes, there was a sunroom, steam room, and a bowling alley. But that glass-walled pool! The site of countless unbridled, unclothed parties, and a generation of male fantasies.
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The home was originally built in 1903 for a wealthy surgeon who entertained luminaries of the day, like President Theodore Roosevelt and the explorer Robert E. Perry.
“It became the headquarters for his lifestyle. Not only did he live there, he turned it into a meeting place and a gathering place for the beautiful people of the time,” says Steven Watts, author of “Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream.” “It became the hip place to go.”
Guests included the likes of Bill Cosby, Warren Beatty, and the Rolling Stones, just for starters.
Look back at the time the Rolling Stones stayed at the Chicago Playboy Mansion. https://t.co/HfbvWEMiaf http://pic.twitter.com/ve9Id11GF8
— Playboy (@Playboy) August 25, 2016
“The Chicago mansion was Hefner’s bachelor pad to the nth degree,” says Watts. “It became the epicenter for the scene that Playboy was creating. So there were parties there constantly.”
But Hefner’s loyalties changed as he became enamored with Hollywood and began spending more time in Los Angeles. Eventually, he decided to get a home out there as well.
In 1971, he bought a new Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills, for just more than $1 million. And he began spending less and less of his time in his native Chicago.
In 1984, the Chicago mansion was leased to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where the Playboy-in-Chief had once taken a figure drawing course—for just $10 a year, according to the Chicago Tribune. The mansion was used as a dormitory for students until 1990.
It wasn’t until 1993 that a real estate company bought the mansion and turned it into seven condominiums.
“High-rise condos are a dime a dozen, even in this price range,” says Realtor Nugent. However, she added, Chicago has only “a very limited number” of units of this type of luxury real estate in converted mansions.
Sorry, though: The fire pole and pool are history.
realtor.com
The post You Can Live in Chicago’s Original Playboy Mansion—Bunny Pole Not Included appeared first on Real Estate News & Advice | realtor.com®.
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