Ernest Alton “Tony” Grunsfeld III has designed dozens of homes along the bluffs overlooking Lake Michigan. Most are in the distinctively modern idiom exhibited in the newly-listed Highland Park home pictured above.
The five-bedroom / 7.5-bath home at 2087 Windy Hill Lane is priced at $1.59 million and listed by Julie Deutsch of Coldwell Banker.
So what’s with that rather forbidding façade? Grunsfeld explains in his oral history at the Art Institute:
“I think houses are very private. That’s where you go hide, that’s where you’re with your family, where you can take your shoes off and be comfortable. I think that’s sort of the idea of the gate and the moat and drawbridge. Then there’s the lake and the ravine or a beautiful garden that is all your private space. I think [my] houses are intentionally closed in the front. I’m not sure they’re unfriendly. They are certainly private.”
Last summer Joe Zekas did a video walk through a Tony Grunsfeld home in Winnetka. See part one and part two at YouTube.