News | advice | area guide

Wrigley’s Mansions Across America

They’re the homes that Juicy Fruit built, but they’ll cost you more than 99 cents a pop.

Chicago confectionary tycoon William Wrigley Jr. and his family made a mint on chewing gum, a fortune that bought them trophy homes across the country. Currently, two of those properties are on the market—for $4.9 million and $7.5 million.

During his lifetime, Mr. Wrigley (1861-1932) and his wife, Ada, owned mansions and ranch land in Illinois, Wisconsin, Arizona and California—an impressive portfolio for a man who began his career as a traveling soap salesman. Upon his death in 1932, Wrigley’s estate was estimated at $40 million, according the Chicago Tribune in 1932, more than $700 million in today’s dollars.

While the Wrigley company is no longer family held—it was sold to candy giant Mars Inc. and Warren Buffett for $23 billion in 2008—all but one of Wrigley’s original homes are still standing.

Here’s a look at those historic properties and their estimated values today.

Lincoln Park Area, Chicago

With his flourishing business empire, Wrigley in 1911 purchased one of Chicago’s best-known homes: an Italian Renaissance-style property near Lincoln Park. The more than 13,000-square-foot mansion remained in the family for about 70 years until it was sold to a private investor in 1984. Bank of America foreclosed on the previous owner of the property in 2016 and listed the nine-bedroom, six-bathroom property earlier this year for $7.15 million, but the price has since been lowered to $4.9 million. Anthony Disano, the agent representing the bank, said the previous owners had found some remnants of the Wrigleys at the home, including a stash of Prohibition-era alcohol in a basement vault. According to reports at the time, the family decided to leave the home after the infamous kidnapping and murder of the infant son of pilot Charles Lindbergh in 1932, the same year as William Jr.’s death.

———

Lake Shore Drive, Chicago

The Wrigley family moved to a 10,000-square-foot, two-level co-op apartment on Lake Shore Drive in the 1930s. The apartment, in a Rosario Candela-designed building on Chicago’s Gold Coast, is still one of the city’s most opulent homes. The current owners, Chicago businessman David Hamilton and his wife, Catharine, bought it from the estate of Philip K. Wrigley, the founder’s son and successor, for $6.8 million in 1984 and recently listed it for $7.5 million. It features an imported French-designed limestone staircase, Parquet de Versailles wood flooring and 18th-century wall panels. Mr. Hamilton told The Wall Street Journal this summer that he turned down one buyer, saying the gentleman wanted to paint the walls white. “Can you imagine? This room was in the Place Vendome.”

———

Pasadena, Calif.

In 1914, Wrigley bought a 21-room, Italian Renaissance-style home in Pasadena, Calif., that featured paneled rooms, inlaid-marble floors and elaborate molding. They paid $170,000 for the main property and another $25,000 the next year for an adjoining home that they razed to make way for gardens. Following Ada’s death in 1958, the property was donated to the city of Pasadena for use as a headquarters for the Pasadena Tournament of Roses, which organizes the annual Rose Parade and Rose Bowl Game. If the property were converted back to a single-family residence, it would likely be worth about $10.5 million today, estimated Michael Bell, an agent with Sotheby’s International Realty in Pasadena. He said a similar 1920s-era property owned by the San Gabriel Pomona Valley chapter of the American Red Cross recently came on the market for that amount.

———

Catalina Island, Calif.

In 1921, Wrigley and his wife completed a 9,800-square-foot “summer cottage”on the island of Catalina near Los Angeles. Named Mt. Ada, their Colonial-style hillside mansion overlooking Avalon, Calif., is where they entertained guests such as Calvin Coolidge and Warren Harding, according to the 2005 book, “The Wrigley Family: A Legacy of Leadership in Santa Catalina Island,” by local historians William Sanford White and Kim Lianne Stotts. The island quickly became a hot spot for the Hollywood elite—Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne and Judy Garland all made appearances. Wrigley also made the island the spring-training location of the Chicago Cubs, the baseball team he owned. Currently, the property is a bed-and-breakfast run by the Catalina Island Co. “William said he wanted to build his home in the place where he could see the sun rise first and set last,” said his grandson, Steve Schreiner, who is 54 years old and lives Gig Harbor, Wash. Mr. Schreiner said his mother, Ada Blanche Wrigley Schreiner, often talked about her time on Catalina, where the family also owned a ranch. “It was her happiest place,” he said. “They could just grab a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, throw on their chaps and ride bareback.”

Following the Lindbergh incident, he said his mother and aunt lived on Catalina for a year. One local agent, Earl Schrader of Catalina Realtors, said the property would likely be worth upward of $9 million or $10 million were it to come on the market as a single-family home today.

———

Phoenix

In the 1920s and 1930s, Wrigley acquired substantial interest in hotels, including the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix. At the time, Arizona was popular among some of Chicago’s wealthiest families for winter retreats. In 1930, Mr. Wrigley commissioned a mansion near Phoenix, which they named La Colina Solana, as a gift to his wife, according to Ben Sinon, the general manager of the property, which is now operated as a wedding and events venue by the family of musician and Spam-heir George “Geordie” Hormel.

Mr. Schreiner said his mother, who died at age 87 in 2010, recalled the journey between Chicago and Arizona, where remote areas had “corduroy roads” made of tree trunks laid across sand. Helen Atwater Rich, 69, Mr. Wrigley’s great-granddaughter, recalled having Clark Gable as her babysitter while her parents played golf in Phoenix.

La Colina Solana incorporates elements of California Monterey and Spanish Colonial Revival styles. Wrigley died there in 1932, but the house stayed in the family until the 1970s. Mr. Hormel purchased the home, along with the Wrigley furnishings and original Steinway piano, for $2.6 million in 1992 and converted it into the venue, Mr. Sinon confirmed. Walt Danley, a local Arizona real-estate agent, said it was difficult to put a price on the property, since there are no comparable homes in the area, but that a value of between $20 million and $25 million wouldn’t be unreasonable.

Lake Geneva, Wisc.

About 75 miles north of Chicago, the Wrigleys owned a number of summer estates on the edge of Wisconsin’s Lake Geneva. Wrigley purchased Green Gables, a home that had been built for the multimillionaire sportsman C.K.G. Billings, in 1911. The original home, which was in disrepair, was torn down in 1955, and a new one was completed in 1966. The new property was considered “state of the art,” with electronically controlled drapes, according to local historian and real-estate agent Matt Petersen. At the peak, the Wrigleys owned a series of five or six waterfront homes. Philip K. Wrigley lived on Lake Geneva until his death in 1977. Green Gables is currently owned by local businessman Karl Otzen, who bought it in 1999, he said. Mr. Otzen said there are some remnants of the Wrigleys on the property, including a multistory barn that he uses to house his car collection and a small building that was used as an ice house by the Wrigleys before the era of refrigerators. Mr. Otzen declined to speculate on the value of the property, but noted that the residence next door, which was also owned by the Wrigleys and is known as Hillcroft, is similar in size and scale. It was recently on the market for $12.5 million.

The post Wrigley’s Mansions Across America appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

Source: Real Estate News and Advice – realtor.com » Real Estate News