Lincoln Park corner house covered in metal for sale

Dennis Rodkin is a senior reporter covering residential real estate for Crain's Chicago Business. He joined Crain's in 2014 and has been covering real estate in Chicago since 1991.

A metal and glass house on a highly visible corner lot in Lincoln Park is one of several that members of the family behind Novak Construction have all had designed by the same notable architect, Michael Graham of Liederbach & Graham.

"Everything Michael's done for my family has looked fantastic," said Grey Novak, who with his wife, Celia, put the Lincoln Park house, at Armitage Avenue and Howe Street, on the market April 18. Priced at $1.75 million, the three-bedroom house is represented by Vince Anzalone of Dream Town Realty.

Grey Novak is a project manager at the $232 million Chicago-based construction firm his father, John, founded in 1980. He said the look of the house was inspired in part by his work on contemporary commercial projects for the firm. Extra-wide plank floors, wood ceilings and a wood and metal staircase "make it feel like an old loft," he said. "The materials are speaking for themselves, not covered with a lot of drywall."

On its sides facing two streets, the house is clad in corrugated steel, with oversize windows whose lower portions are reed glass, whose texture blocks passersby from seeing inside in daylight hours.

For nighttime, when interior light exposes the occupants to street-side view, "we have curtains," Grey Novak said.

Before designing this house with a loft-like wood and metal interior in 2017, Graham designed a classically tailored house with a walled courtyard a few blocks west for patriarch John Novak in 2010 and a glass-walled house for Grey's sister Mimi Novak in Wicker Park in 2016. John Novak's house, on Burling Street, went up for sale in 2015 at just under $9 million and bounced on and off the market for several years. It has been off since November. Mimi Novak's house, on Marion Court, went on the market in 2021 at $2.5 million and sold in 2022 for $2.05 million.

Graham said he also designed a Chicago house for another Novak family member, and the move and rehab of an old farmhouse onto a farm John Novak owns in northwest Illinois. For other clients, Novak has done several handsome modern mansions in locations including Lincoln Park and Lake Forest.

For the Gray Novak house, Graham said, a modern look was a certainty because "it's a reflection of Gray's flair."

At 17 by 80 feet, the lot is smaller than a standard 25-by-125 lot, but its situation on a corner "is an advantage because the house can be light-filled as a consequence," Graham said.

The house has a full basement and a detached garage with a rooftop deck.

Dennis Rodkin is a senior reporter covering residential real estate for Crain's Chicago Business. He joined Crain's in 2014 and has been covering real estate in Chicago since 1991.

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