Richard Marx's Lake Bluff Mansion Sells For $4.2 Million

LAKE BLUFF, IL — The sale of the David Adler-designed Lester Armour house closed last month for $4.2 million, more than five years after musician Richard Marx and actress Cythnia Rhodes put it on the market with an $18 million asking price.

Now subdivided, the estate was built in 1931 for Lester Armour, heir to a meatpacking fortune and the president of Harris Bank, and his wife Leola, a friend of the prominent architect Adler, as a country estate on about 75 acres.

"According to the testimony of Armour's second wife, Lester Armour did not interfere with the architect when the plans were being drawn and erected the house exactly as specified, thus building one of the purest Adler houses of the architect's career," according to its nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. It was one of the largest pure country estates in the region and the only one of its size along lake Michigan.

The nearly 30,000-square-foot home sits on 5 acres of lakefront property, with more than 400 feet of private beach, its listing said. The home includes a total of 19 fireplaces, floor-to-ceiling windows, wood panelings and large open rooms across four floors. It has been updated with a recording studio and screening room, while its back yard offers the "utmost in privacy" with brick patios, a fire pit and views of the property and lakefront.

Earlier: Richard Marx's Lake Bluff Mansion Relisted For $11.3 Million

Marx, 56, the "Right Here Waiting" singer, and Rhodes, 63, the "Dirty Dancing" actress, purchased the home for $4.7 million in 1997, according to its listing. After 25 years of marriage and raising three children in the Lake Bluff mansion, the couple announced their plans to divorce and listed the property for sale in 2014.

Days before the March 9 sale of the estate, Marx, a Highland Park native, cancelled a sold-out European tour, his first in nearly a decade, due to the coronavirus pandemic, he said in a social media post.

According to the Chicago Tribune, which first reported the sale, the Robert Altman movie "A Wedding" was filmed in the mansion in 1977, close to the same time the descendants of the Armours sold it a development company.

The sale was the most expensive in Lake Forest or Lake Bluff since Nancy Hughes purchased a lakefront mansion for $12 million in 2018, according to Crain's Chicago Business.

In 2019, the most expensive home sold in Lake Bluff was purchased for $2.5 million. Lake Forest's priciest sale changed hands for $3.8 million.

• Address: 700 Arbor Dr, Lake Bluff, Illinois
• Price: $0
• Square Feet: 29,745
• Bedrooms: 7
• Bathrooms: 8 full, 6 half
• Built: 1931

Listing information originally appeared on realtor.com. For more information and photos, click here.