Julia Sweeney Sells Suburban Chicago Bungalow
By Mark David
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Actress, comedian and TED Talk-er Julia Sweeney, now appearing in the unflinching, uncomfortably funny and critically acclaimed Hulu series “Shrill,” has sold a thoughtfully restored and comprehensively updated late 19th-century home in Chicago’s suburban community of Wilmette for its full asking price of $1.3 million. The former “Saturday Night Live” cast member, best known for her ambiguously gendered character Pat, acquired the Arts and Crafts-y bungalow in late 2008 for a tetch more than $1.1 million.
Built in the late 1870s and moved to its current location in 1911, the main residence originally housed Wilmette’s Village Hall. The relaxed and unassuming residence, expanded in the early aughts to just over 3,600 square feet and listed with broker Kevin Rutherford of Baird and Warner , is now configured with five and potentially six or more bedrooms and three full and two half bathrooms. A detached coach house offers the wintertime luxury of a heated two-car garage plus — for long-term guests, rental income or live-in staff — a self-contained one-bedroom and one-bath apartment on the upper floor.
Ample formal living and dining rooms give way to a renovated vintage-style kitchen arranged around a marble-topped island and open to a family room that features a dynamite built-in dining banquette. Three bedrooms that share a single bathroom are joined on the second floor by a master suite that includes a fitted dressing room and a compartmentalized bathroom with steam shower. In addition to a potential bedroom with en suite half bathroom, the rambling, finished basement contains a frat house-worthy 32-foot-long, wood-paneled recreation room and a home theater with tiered seating featuring puffy leather recliners.
Sweeney and her scientist husband have long maintained a residential outpost in Los Angeles where research suggests they own at least two modestly sized 1920s Spanish bungalows, the smaller in an up-and-coming neighborhood near Silver Lake and the larger in the charming Larchmont Village area.
