We headed over to the Gap, on the Near South Side, last week to help developer, activist and raconteur Bill Lavicka celebrate his birthday and the completion of Celestial House, a stunning historic home he has restored at 3350 S Calumet Ave. Lavicka, of Historic Boulevard Services, is known for his crusades to save important pieces of Chicago history, including the Maxwell Street Market and the old Cook County Hospital building.
At Celestial House, Lavicka has preserved another slice of local history, an 1880s Italianate beauty. We’d seen the house during its renovation, but is there any better way to assess the comfort and style of a home than with 100 or so mildly tipsy party guests milling about the rooms?
Since we’d already seen many of the home’s creative and quirky touches, the fun came from watching delight spread on the faces of newcomers discovering the grand brick and glass bay Lavicka built onto the rear of the home to carve spectacular spaces for the kitchen and master bedroom, and the custom tile floor that maps the solar system in the semi-circular kitchen area. Guests cooed over the restored sugar pine trim, eight-foot windows and 10.5-foot ceilings in these highly livable rooms.
In the basement, they smiled at the giant fast food restaurant board mounted as found art opposite a chic wooden bar and a couple of whimsical barber chairs. They lingered to explore the wine cellar, where built-in terra cotta cylinders offer space for 400 bottles, and the downstairs bathroom, which has a custom tile surround depicting a lily pond that Lavicka himself spent 120 hours making.
Guests made a point of counting all five fireplaces, visiting all three bedrooms and examining each of the 10 stained glass windows. Upstairs, they were surprised by the niches created for sculpture and artwork and the three semi-circular stained glass windows that set off the master bath — sunrise on one end, sunset on the other and “naked people” in the middle.
In the end, the thing that surprised them most about the 4,000-square-foot home might have been the price tag of $899,000 — a steal in a market where even boring single-family homes along the lakefront seem to be priced north of $1 million. More info is available at 312-927-2792.
