Former Illinois Chief Justice Buys $1M Lake Shore Drive Condo

Anne M. Burke, the retired chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court and wife of disgraced former Ald. Ed Burke, bought a Lake Shore Drive condominium in Chicago for a little over $1 million.

The deal, recorded Nov. 12, marks a rare move outside the 14th Ward for a figure who has lived there since her husband first won office in 1969. Crain’s reported that the deed lists only Anne Burke for the condo at 850 North Lake Shore Drive, with Ed Burke absent from the document. He was released in July from federal prison into community confinement after serving less than half of a 24-month sentence tied to his conviction on 13 felony counts, including racketeering, bribery and extortion.

The sale record shows Anne Burke’s prior address as the couple’s custom home on 51st Street in Chicago, completed in the early 2000s and still owned by the pair. The property isn’t publicly listed.

A court spokesperson told the outlet that the couple are simply “two older people looking to downsize to a smaller space.”

Their new condo — a two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit with roughly 1,740 square feet — sits in a 19-story 1920s building that Florida-based multifamily developer Crescent Heights began converting to condos after buying it last year. The sale price amounts to about $580 per square foot. The structure’s long, varied history includes stints as an elite athletic club and a Northwestern University dorm.

The move caps a storied legal and civic career for Anne Burke that began well before she entered the judiciary. She co-founded the Special Olympics in 1968 alongside Eunice Kennedy Shriver, a contribution later lauded by the American Academy for Park & Recreation Administration as the “real spark plug” behind the program’s launch. After becoming a lawyer in 1983, she rose quickly, becoming the first woman appointed to the Illinois Court of Claims in 1987 and later securing a seat on the state Supreme Court in 2006. She won two full terms and served as chief justice from 2019 to 2022 before retiring.

Her husband, once one of Chicago’s most powerful aldermen, was convicted in 2023 on charges stemming from strong-arming developers for legal work, pressuring business owners over permits and leaning on Field Museum officials for an internship for a child of one of his friends, The Real Deal previously reported. His sentencing followed a decades-long run that shaped City Hall machine politics.

— Eric Weilbacher