A Chicago couple fashions a classic apartment in the sky — an ambitious ode to the city’s architecture.
By Alyson Pitare
Chicago’s skyline is a canvas of bold architectural statements, a portrait rendered in mile-high towers, historic beaux artsbuildings and modernist structures envisioned by the likes of Louis Sullivan and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It’s a citythat lives in the clouds and among dreams, where the world’s first skyscraper was ever conceived. It’s a city meant to be experienced from both within and from above.
One comes to fully understand this paradox from the vantage point of a glorious penthouse on the 87th floor ofTrump Tower, designed by Adrian Smith (the mastermind behind the world’s tallest structure, Burj Khalifa in Dubai). Framed by12-foot windows, the entire city of Chicago unfolds below, with unparalleled views to the north, east, south and west, glimpses ofthe Willis Tower, Aqua Tower and Lake Michigan’s seemingly never-ending stretch of blue.When Chezi Rafaeli, affiliated sales associate with Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Chicago, first showed the 6,850-square-foot raw space to Tom and Michelle Gross in 2012…
