Historic Lincoln Park Chicago Home Sells for $2.2 Million

A historic Lincoln Park home sold to the president of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for $2.2 million.

Jiseon Lee Isbara and her husband, Melik Isbara, bought the 4,600-square-foot home July 1, Crain’s reported. The price for the home, at 1908 North Halsted Street, works out to $478 per square foot.

The five-bedroom home was built in 1883 and features red brick siding and stone window lintels. The interior has been remodeled, and there is a roof-top deck and an alley-side garage.

The home was listed May 6 and went under contract May 14 for $5,000 above the asking price. Ryan Gossett and Omar Gonzalez of Compass represented the seller, Colin Marshall, and the Isbaras were represented by Souk Supantavong of Coldwell Banker.

Isbara, who started her job a year ago, is an exhibited artist and was previously provost of Otis College of Art and Design in California.

Recent sales and listings of Lincoln Park single-family homes have ranged in the single digit millions, most notably a 7,800-square-foot mansion on a double lot that listed in June for $7.2 million, more than 30 percent above its 2022 sales price. Also in June, Novak Construction’s John Novak sold his 7,800-square-foot mansion for $6.75 million, or $865 per square foot in the neighborhood’s priciest home sale so far this year. That five-bedroom home at 1970 North Burling Street was listed by Emily Sachs Wong of @properties Christie’s International Real Estate and went for 75 percent of the asking price. Another North Burling Street mansion listed for $9.5 million in June.

The home is a little under 5 miles from the SAIC’s downtown campus and near the former studio and home of late Chicago painter and sculptor Roger Brown, which he donated to the Art Institute in 1996, a year prior to his death. Brown was prominent in a group of 1960s-70s artists in Chicago known as the Imagists. — Eric Weilbacher