Lincoln Park’s Priciest Home Sale Closes at $6.75 Million

The founder of one of Chicago’s most prolific construction firms has parted ways with his longtime Lincoln Park mansion, notching the priciest home sale in the neighborhood so far this year.

John Novak, head of Novak Construction, sold his five-bedroom, 7,800-square-foot home at 1970 North Burling Street for $6.75 million, Crain’s reported. The price comes out to about $865 per square foot. Emily Sachs Wong of @properties Christie’s International Real Estate had the listing.

The price is about 75 percent of Novak’s $8.95 million asking price when the home was first listed nearly a decade ago, but still enough to top the charts for single-family deals in Lincoln Park this year.

Designed by high-end architecture firm Liederbach & Graham in 2010, the house features a walled courtyard, industrial design touches and extensive use of Chicago common brick inside and out. Other standout details include steel staircases, a glass solarium roof supported by exposed beams and a barrel-vaulted shower with balcony access.

A long glass wall opens the home to its hidden courtyard, which once famously featured a towering blue sculpture — “Chevron” by John Henry — that neighbors despised. A 2013 compromise with then–Alderman Michele Smith led Novak to remove the sculpture in exchange for keeping the extra-tall garden wall.

The home changed hands in late July at just under 97 percent of its most-recent asking price, tying with an April Gold Coast sale as the 14th most expensive residential transaction in the Chicago area this year. Only one home in the city, a River North mansion that sold for nearly $7.2 million in June, has traded for more this year. The top five home sales citywide so far have all been condos.

Novak has built thousands of residential, commercial and institutional projects through his firm, which reports over $500 million in annual revenue and employs more than 150 people.

His family’s ties to Liederbach & Graham extend beyond the Burling mansion: the architects also designed a Wicker Park home for Novak’s daughter, sold in 2022, and a metal-sided home on Armitage for his son, which was listed last year.

The buyers of the Burling Street property have not yet been identified in public records.

— Judah Duke