The vistas from a unit with a 90-foot span of floor-to-ceiling windows in Trump Tower convinced a Glen Ellyn couple to move downtown. Now they’re off to Florida, and it’s soon for sale at $2.99 million. Take a photo tour.
Then she walked into this condo that faces east along the Chicago River from the 55th floor of the Trump International Hotel & Tower.
“I looked out there,” she recalls nearly 10 years later, and ‘I said, OK, I’ll leave Glen Ellyn.'”
The three-bedroom, 3,100-square-foot condo is at one of the rounded corners of the tower, with floor-to-ceiling windows running roughly 90 feet from one end of the home to the other. (See more photos below.)
“The view is spectacular,” Ed Spangler said. “In the morning the sunrise on the lake, then as it comes up it lights up the city all around you. And later the sunset lights up the city in a whole different way.”
That view, the dozens of restaurants and cultural institutions within walking distance and the high level of service in the amenity-rich tower gradually shifted the couple’s allegiance, and two years later the condo became their primary Chicago residence and they sold their Glen Ellyn home of more than two decades.
Ed Spangler, who retired a few years ago from a career in consulting, and Glenda, who retired from a consumer products company several years ago, plan to relocate to Florida. They’ll put their Trump Tower condo on the market in January. Represented by Phil Skowron of @properties, it’s priced at $2.99 million.
The curvature of the outer wall enhances the dynamic nature of the view; nothing is flat and static. Glenda Spangler designed the tile-covered fireplace wall to take it further. Most of the time, it looks neutral, but “it’s a mother-of-pearl tile,” she said, “so when the light hits it, it’s like gold.” She designed this wall, with the cutouts for shelving and a fireplace, to be contemporary with a hint of tradition.
The combination of den and kitchen is a warm, intimate family space separate from the large main room that’s designed for living and dining room functions. The windows here are oriented northeast, toward the towers of picturesque landmarks, the Wrigley building and the former Tribune tower.
Navy Pier’s fireworks, boats cruising along the river, and handsome buildings like the Hancock Center are all “part of the entertainment,” Ed Spangler said. “We’d like to thank the city for doing the Riverwalk,” which brought sculptural forms and countless pedestrians to the water level. “It’s like theater on the river,” he said.
The living and dining room stretches about 35 feet, lined all the way with windows. On the opposite wall, the design of both the limestone fireplace and the bookcase niches keeps them light and neutral.
Glenda Spangler used a time-honored design trick to emphasize the light and open feeling of the condo: at the right side of the photo is a mirror mounted on a portion of wall, there to multiply the view.
n the kitchen, the Spanglers added some cabinets and replaced out-of-date dark granite countertops with a lighter cream version. They bought the condominium in 2010 for $2.3 million, and spent an additional amount afterward on improvements such as these in the kitchen, the tile wall, and others. They declined to say what their total investment in the property is.
There’s another fireplace in the master bedroom, set into the tile-lined wall at left. “Before the sun comes up in the morning, it’s nice to turn on the fireplace and sit and look out the windows,” Ed Spangler said. The tile here is a light green, selected to match green frosted glass doors in the adjacent master bath.
Other than new lighter countertops and a television, the master bath is largely as the developers built it, in a neutral look that matches their later design of the rest of the condo.
There are two more bedrooms in the condo, this one used as an office.
The view, ever-changing with the season and the time of day, is the main event at this condo. Because of the building’s fortuitous siting at a prominent bend in the river, from inside some condos it looks as if the tower was built over the river itself. From the Spanglers’ unit, the view encompasses everything from Cloud Gate, aka The Bean, out to O’Hare, Glenda Spangler said. They plan to divide their time between Florida and California, two beautiful parts of the world, but “there’s nothing like this” in either place, she said.
