mcmansionhell
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the good house: prestine marina city condo
🕑 Added 2024-10-09 19:50:04 +0000 UTCHere's one for the Wilco fans and mid-century modern lovers.
So, I've got condo fever again (with no down payment, of course) and have been checking the listings day and night with envy that would put me very deep in Dante's Inferno. Lo and behold, I discovered an absolutely brilliant condo, a tiny studio, in Bertrand Goldberg's famous Marina City.
Built in 1962, and made famous by Wilco, who used the building as their cover art for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Marina City is one of the great icons of Chicago architecture, and, along with its sister development River City, a remarkable example of Late Modern architecture.
One of the blessings of Chicago is that you can still live in an architectural masterpiece with one of the best views in the world on a mortgage of $200k. It's also amazing that in a building of this age and fame, the HOA is still only $400 or so a month.
It just doesn't get any more 60s than Marina City. The futurism, the sculptural concrete, all those goddamn parking spots, the still-alive and glamorous dream of high-rise city living in the modernist mode. It's a blessing this building survived the onslaught of hate against it that raged in the 90s. Wilco may or may have not intervened as unexpected architectural preservationists. When people come to visit me in Chicago it's one of the first buildings they want to see. Can't blame them!
You do, however, have to kind of suffer to live here. For all its sumptuous mid-century architecture, the interior plans are extremely small. This one is only 500 square feet, and you basically can't have anything more than the basic amenities. There's a blessing in that a wall separates the kitchen from the rest of the interior, but, still, you'll need a murphy bed as the folks here figured out.
The blessing of the architecture, though, is that the windows make the space feel bigger than it really is. The curtain wall opens the space up into all of Chicago itself. If I didn't own so many coffee table books and didn't want to have kids, I think I'd give up a lot just to have that feeling of being impossibly high up and infinitesimally small, yet still the master of the whole universe.
The kitchen is definitely a one-person kitchen. I've seen some original kitchens in this building before -- pink appliances and stainless steel countertops were the norm! This one, however, is giving bachelor pad in a derogatory way. The cabinets look like they belong in one of those Millennial-core ex-brewery loft apartments in Ohio. The porthole, however, rules.
Since this is a studio, it's a pretty short house tour. I look at a lot of house listings and something that's always surprised me about architect-designed condos is how much the modern masters loved their gray bathrooms. The gray, thankfully is more "austere modernism" than it is "real estate flipper chic" but still - an interesting continuity. The Mies van der Rohe apartment buildings in Chicago and Baltimore all have similar bathrooms. I find them rather akin in tone to the bathrooms in office buildings. All business no pleasure.
Yeah. YEAH! The balconies are what make the building and what make the flats. Without them they'd be completely denuded, boring, and cramped. Who wouldn't pay $200k to look out at the Chicago River like that everyday. Imagine the sunsets!!!! Imagine the fourth of july fireworks!!! Imagine just, like, chilling. I know I am. Enviously.
Link to listing (with the hope that one of you tasteful architecture lovers buys this thing!) https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/300-N-State-St-Apt-3904_Chicago_IL_60654_M71029-42418?from=srp-list-card
Comments
Laura Louzader
To Tim Emanual- that $400 a month ALL goes to common area utilities, maintenance, and payroll- water, HEAT, hot water, common area maintenance, and the salaries of maintenance men, doormen, housekeepers, and repair people, none of whom work for free. As the owner of an older condo myself, I think $424 a month is actually cutting it sort of lean for a 60-year-old high rise and wonder if the Association is making regular contributions to a reserve fund.
SamuelTurn
Hehehe Smeg. In seriousness, these are so pretty and I wish there were more affordable options in the Loop or in Lakeview West or Ravenswood (the later two mainly so I can either walk or hop a Brown Line rq to my biggest love in Chicago, the Music Box Theatre).
Sam Nichols
I always thought my dream retirement location was in one of those Margaritaville developments but...this speaks to me
Prairie Rose Clayton
Condo HOAs are different from house HOAs. Condos they go to overall building maintenance and insurance, primarily, and depending on your setup they might pay for things like a pool, door security, parking, or other shared amenities. You're usually not going to change the exterior of the condo (what yard? paint where?) and if it's a fancy building they might get on your case about curtains or patio furniture visible from the street. Otherwise, it's mostly the collective plumbing fund.
Gerald Moose Stacy
https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/another-view-inside-marina-city-iker-gil-and-andreas-eg-larsson This page also has a shot of the original tile in the bathroom. I have a pang of longing every time I see one of these.
Gerald Moose Stacy
And before you get too jealous... The hot water heater for the unit is in that corner of the kitchen under the countertop. They're still that way in the 1BR and Studio units.
Gerald Moose Stacy
https://www.metalocus.es/sites/default/files/styles/mopis_news_carousel_item_desktop/public/file-images/metalocus_inside_marina_city_art_institute_13_1180.jpg?itok=QsuOOm2T That's an example of an original studio kitchen.
Tim Emanuel
Fair! The good side of HOAs we never hear about!
McMansionHell
yes!!! thanks so much for the insight!!! I saw an interior floating around that was from the 1960s with the original shag so I was going off of that but maybe that one was custom back in the day. Great to see someone on here that has the inside scoop -- also I'm so jealous!!!
McMansionHell
i think in these old buildings it mostly goes to maintenance because trust me there are WILD interiors in some of these
Tim Emanuel
"Only" $400 a month to have some bossy people telling you what you can and can't do with your own home. Oh, America!
Charles Hammerslough
Hi, Gerry! It's truly amazing to wake up to the city from the 52nd floor. The balcony is essentially my dining room 8 months of the year.
Gerald Moose Stacy
We sold our car shortly after moving there. The garages are owned by a commercial landlord. They don’t come with the units, and the monthly fee is STEEP.
Royce Ellen Hamel
also: do you do parking in that building too???
Royce Ellen Hamel
as someone who lives just outside of the city...wow. lucky!!!
Gerald Moose Stacy
I live in Marina City, and it makes me SO HAPPY to see you giving us some love! I wanted to live in these towers since I was a kid and my parents would bring me downtown to go see the symphony in Grant Park. It truly is one of the coolest places in the world. A couple of notes on your writeup: - Those kitchen cabinets are a full-on crime. They're original to the unit and would have been enamel coated in some wonderful 60's color that matched the stove and oven. Some criminal decided to sand off the enamel, and what you're seeing is the result. You can see that they're actually RUSTING. We had the same thing done to the cabinets in our unit, and we painted them. - The bathtub is original, but the toilet and sink in the bathroom are not. They would have both been EXACTLY the same grey color as the tub. - Alas, the wall tiling in the bathroom is also not original. The original units had individually hand-set, one-inch tiling in that super-cool 60's mosaic that makes you think of newscasts. The color family of the tile matched the bathroom appliances. Almost none of this has survived. Apparently, the tiles began popping off within a few years.
Christoph Moench-Tegeder
Wrong continent :) And the mortgage rates you have over there are like crazy (compared to what's advertised here right now).
