La Grange Highlands mansion listed for $2.3M, making it that community’s most expensive home on the market

A five-bedroom, 5,756-square-foot, recently built Victorian-style mansion in La Grange Highlands was listed in November for $2.35 million.

The multicolored, three-story mansion was designed by architect Donald E. Morris, and he and his wife, Melissa, have owned and lived there since building it in 2011. It’s also far and away the most expensive home on the market in La Grange Highlands, an unincorporated Cook County community that has about 3,700 residents and that is adjacent to its namesake suburb, La Grange.

The second-highest-priced home on the market in La Grange Highlands is a four-bedroom split-level that is available for $575,000. The highest-priced house in nearby La Grange is a six-bedroom, 6,072-square-foot house on Waiola Avenue that was designed by architect C.F. Jobson and has a $1.95 million price tag.

Listing agent Jeremy Vitell of Baird & Warner told Elite Street that the Morrises’ Victorian-style is “one of the newest Victorian-style homes as far as I can tell in all of Illinois.” It replaced a three-bedroom, “prototypical” house in the La Grange Highlands area that the couple razed to make way for the Victorian, Vitell said.

“They made the decision to knock it down and build their forever home, or so they thought, but then their daughter got married and moved to Plainfield,” Vitell said. “They didn’t think their daughter ever would move that far away, and they want to be close to their grandkids, so they will build (a) house there.”

The Victorian-style house has three full bathrooms with marble floors, two half-bathrooms, 11-foot ceilings, solid oak doors, oak trim, 96 Pella windows, oak stairs and balusters, a spiral staircase to all four levels, a kitchen with slate floors, three porches, one exterior balcony and a lower level that has a workshop and a movie theater with eight reclining seats.

Other features include a foyer with hand-painted tile, a first-floor bedroom with bamboo floors, a primary bedroom suite with a sitting room and a dressing room, a third-floor bell tower with 360-degree views, a book room with a barrel-vaulted ceiling, a separate shoe closet whose oak shelves can hold 500 pairs of shoes, a wraparound front porch and a 3½-car garage.

“They love the Victorian style. This is called their ‘autumn grove house,’ which is why their (paint) colors (for the house) were autumn grove,” Vitell said. “This house has so many features that are fantastic, from the basement on up to a bell tower with an actual bell up there, and 360-degree views.”

One additional colorful feature is a gargoyle on the home’s roof, next to the bell tower.

The Morrises first listed the mansion for $2.75 million in May and cut their asking price to $2.65 million in June. They took it off the market in September and then relisted it in November for its current asking price.

The home had a $20,220 property tax bill in the 2022 tax year.

Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.

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