The University of Chicago on Oct. 31 paid $3.4 million to buy a Hyde Park mansion with an architectural pedigree and deep political ties, including having been owned by the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia from 1977 until 1983.
Built around 1900, the 5,112-square-foot brick house, at 5725 S. Woodlawn Avenue, was designed by the Rapp & Rapp architectural firm, which was known most for designing movie palaces. The mansion was built for Cora Howland, who was the daughter of onetime Chicago Mayor John A. Roche, and her husband, lawyer and professor George C. Howland, who was part of the U. of C.’s original teaching staff and who also wrote editorials for a time for the Tribune, according to Susan O’Connor Davis’ book “Chicago’s Historic Hyde Park.”
Scalia, who taught at the U. of C.’s law school from 1977 until 1982, and his wife, Maureen, bought the mansion in 1977 from the Chicago Theological Seminary. After President Reagan appointed Scalia to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 1982, the Scalias sold the home the following March for an undisclosed amount and moved to Virginia. Antonin Scalia was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1986.
Since 1987, the Woodlawn Avenue mansion had been owned by the McGarry family.
Gerald McSwiggan, the U. of C.’s associate director for public affairs, declined to specify to Elite Street the university’s plans for the mansion. However, given its location so close to the campus — it’s next door to the university’s Howard van Doren Shaw-designed Hillel building, it’s across the street from numerous campus buildings and it’s two doors north of the Seminary Co-op Bookstores — the mansion eventually will have some educational use, he said.
“The university owns and maintains multiple properties in that vicinity for University offices and programs, including the nearby Institute of Politics, the Department of Comparative Human Development and the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society,” McSwiggan told Elite Street in a statement. “The future use of the building at 5725 S. Woodlawn will likewise be used in support of the University’s educational mission.”
The mansion had a $27,753 property tax bill in the 2022 tax year. Interestingly, the Cook County Assessor assigns a value of $1.34 million to the house — less than half the amount that the university paid for it.
Scalia is far from the only U.S. Supreme Court justice over the years to have lived in the Chicago area. The late John Paul Stevens owned two houses in the South Side Beverly neighborhood before buying a house on South Garfield Avenue in Burr Ridge in 1973. He and his wife sold that house in 1976, the year after he was appointed to the Supreme Court. And current Justice Elena Kagan lived in a vintage building in Lincoln Park from 1991 until 1995, while teaching at the University of Chicago Law School.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
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