Mansion Featured in Robert Redford’s “Ordinary People” Listed

A Lake Forest estate that has hosted Chicago’s elite for more than a century — and played a supporting role in an Oscar-winning film — is up for grabs for just under $7.5 million.

Designed in 1907 by architect Howard Van Doren Shaw and built the same year, the estate is hitting the market for the first time in 30 years, Crain’s reported. Shaw’s Georgian red-brick mansion, one of more than 40 he designed in Lake Forest, sits on 2.5 acres at 788 East Woodland Road and spans 7,300 square feet with five bedrooms, formal gardens and sun porches. The asking price equates to $1,030 per square foot.

The home served as the set for the 1980 drama “Ordinary People,” directed by the late Robert Redford and starring Mary Tyler Moore and Donald Sutherland. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture as well as three other Oscars. The home’s cameo cemented its place in Hollywood-Chicago lore.

The sellers are the heirs of Peggy Crowe, who bought the house with her husband, Jack, in the 1990s. The Crowes preserved the estate’s historic character while adding modern touches, including a pool house by Liederbach & Graham. Compass brokers Marina Carney and Andrew Mrowiec are handling the listing.

Describing its condition as “timeless” and “meticulous,” Carney told the outlet that all prior owners preserved the early 1900s design touches, including the ornate pine-paneled walls of the living room and limestone floors in the entrance hall. The listing also describes original French doors with restored brass cremone bolts, a garden room with panoramic views of the south lawn, hand-scraped pine floors and custom cabinetry in the kitchen, butler’s pantry and breakfast room and a geothermally-heated swimming pool.

If it trades above $7 million, the estate will join a small club of Lake Forest homes to cross that threshold this decade. Only two have done so in recent years, though another — an 8-acre spread listed at $15 million — has been under contract since July.

The house’s pedigree extends beyond its architecture. Commissioned by banker Leverett Thompson and his wife, Helen, the estate quickly became one of Lake Forest’s “show places,” with gardens designed by Boston’s Rose Standish Nichols and New York’s Charles Platt. Later owners included members of the Chicago meatpacking dynasty Swift family.

— Eric Weilbacher