We are starting to suspect there’s some sort of “Ugly Penthouses Are Us” developer operating along the Sheffield Avenue corridor in Lake View/Lincoln Park.

Last week we showed you R&B star R. Kelly’s conversion of a church into a party pad, today we present a similar adaptive reuse a few blocks away. Some sort of red brick commercial building has been topped by a cream A-frame penthouse, complete with pillars, presumably the home of a gangsta rapper or hip hop mogul.

We know that the whole point of a penthouse is that it is supposed to stand out, but these developments don’t convey grandeur, they just look silly and create a blight on the streetscape when the property owner could have created something great.