File:Charnley-Persky House, Astor Street and Schiller Street, Gold Coast, Chicago, IL - 52877807071.jpg

English: Built in 1891-1892, this Sullivanesque and Chicago School-style townhouse was designed by Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright of Adler and Sullivan for James Charnley, a lumber baron and personal friend of Sullivan. Sullivan and Charnley, in fact, were such good friends that Charnley commissioned Sullivan to build himself and Sullivan adjacent summer cottages in Mississippi. The Sullivan cottage was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but the Charnley cottage survived, albeit with severe damage, requiring extensive reconstruction. The Charnley-Persky House is one of a few surviving residential works by Adler and Sullivan, with many being demolished in the 20th Century due to redlining, disinvestment, and urban renewal within the city of Chicago, as well as densification of the Chicago suburbs. Out of the remaining Adler and Sullivan works, the Charnley-Persky House is the most notable, and is located in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood. The house features many similar architectural elements to those associated with Adler & Sullivan’s more famous commercial work, including trim motifs and materials.

The three-story rectilinear and largely symmetrical house is clad in buff Roman brick, with limestone trim, a wooden balcony in the center of the second floor of the front facade with a railing featuring Sullivanesque ornament and beams on the bottom with decorative sullivanesque carved detail, a tapered doric column colonnade with eight columns atop the balcony below a carved sullivanesque architrave and low-pitch hipped roof, copper-clad trim at the eaves, one-over-one double-hung windows with subtly arched tops and stone sills, small square third-floor window bays boxed in by limestone trim, a three-story bay window with chamfered sides and a chimney on the south facade, a limestone base, limestone cladding around the entrance door below the second-story balcony, limestone belt coursing around the base of the third floor, decorative metal grilles at the basement window openings, a door with a Sullivanesque metal screen, casement windows in the center bays of the first floor of the front facade with leaded roundels, and a front stoop flanked by two planters. The interior of the house features ornate woodwork, built-in bookcases, a central atrium below a skylight ringed by a wooden railing on the second and third floors, decorative geometric and floral motifs, and marble fireplaces, making extensive use of mahogany and rosewood, and featuring opulent finishes and decoration.

After Charnley’s death, the house was later owned by the Waller family, and was at some point extended and modified with a three-story addition to the south, necessitating the demolition of an adjacent victorian-era townhouse, which featured balconies that opened to Astor Street on the first and second floors, but matched the general language and materials of the rest of the building, and saw the enclosure of the balcony with casement windows. In 1986, the house was purchased by the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, and the house was restored under the stewardship of the firm. In 1995, the house was purchased by Seymour Persky, and shortly thereafter donated to the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH), and has subsequently become known as the Charnley-Persky House.

The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, owing to its major architectural and historical significance, and is a contributing structure in the Gold Coast Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Additionally, the house was designated a Chicago Landmark in 1972, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1998. The house presently serves as the headquarters of the Society of Architectural Historians, and also serves as a museum, which is open two days a week.