River Forest mansion once owned by reputed Chicago Outfit boss Anthony Accardo listed for $5M

The eight-bedroom, 21,211-square-foot River Forest mansion famously once owned by the late, reputed Chicago Outfit boss Anthony “Big Tuna” Accardo has been listed for $5 million — easily the highest asking price for a home in that near west suburb.

Once legendary mobster Al Capone’s bodyguard, Accardo, who died in 1992, and his wife, Clarice, lived in the Tudor-style mansion from 1951 until 1963. It was built in 1930 by William Grunow, a millionaire radio pioneer who raised chickens, at a reported cost of $750,000 to $1 million. Accardo and his wife bought it in 1951 for the reported bargain price of $125,000.

The 1950s and early 1960s were something of a heyday for the Chicago Outfit, whose figures were covered heavily by the Chicago news media and viewed as quasi-celebrities — even as authorities continued to seek to nail them for crimes. From 1954 until 1956, the Accardos hosted elaborate Independence Day parties at the mansion, which many underworld figures and their wives attended.

Accardo reportedly retired from active management of the Outfit in 1957, and in late 1963, the couple sold the mansion reportedly for about $200,000 to Fred Brunner, board chairman of Franklin Park toolmaker Brunner & Lay. Accardo later owned other homes in River Forest.

In 2000, Jose Jimenez, the cofounder of the Carnicerias Jimenez grocery chain, and his wife paid $1.9 million for the mansion. The mansion has a custom tiled indoor pool, a two-lane bowling alley, Mexican onyx baths, a billiard room, an open-air garden on the roof and an English pub. The 0.68-acre property also has a gatehouse.

Listing agent Maria Cullerton of Compass told Elite Street that the mansion “almost feels like the level of stateliness of a gubernatorial mansion or a museum.”

“There’s such a level of glamor and craftsmanship — and there’s so much onyx in the home,” Cullerton said. “It has that gravitas and glamor. Every bathroom has in a sense its own lobby, and every room has a receiving room lobby. It’s really one of a kind in the Chicagoland area. The indoor pool has custom decking, and then there’s the two-lane bowling alley, the English pub and the gatehouse. They’ve added to it, too — there are commercial-grade rooms to entertain and cook.”

The mansion currently is listed in a private, agents-only listing network, although Cullerton also has the mansion shown as “coming soon” on her realty firm’s website.

The property had a $47,917 property tax bill in the 2023 tax year.

If the mansion sells for anywhere near its asking price, it would be a record for River Forest. River Forest’s highest-priced recent sale was the $2.85 million in sale in June of a six-bedroom home on Lathrop Avenue. And River Forest’s next-highest-priced current asking price for a residential property is for a five-bedroom, 5,630-square-foot home, also located on Lathrop.

The former Accardo mansion isn’t the only mob-linked property that has been in play of late in the near west suburbs. In January, the five-bedroom, 3,283-square-foot Oak Park bungalow that onetime Outfit chief Sam Giancana had owned from 1945 until his still-unsolved slaying in the home’s basement in 1975 sold for $900,000. That home had been on the market since November 2022, when it had been listed for $1.1 million.

Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.