John Robert Wiltgen was a high-profile interior designer in Chicago whose firm worked with both individual clients and developers.
“He could envision a design onsite, translate it to his team to draw up, guide the contractors to execute the details in his imagination and stand by to call out the smallest details in execution,” said Daniela Guini, an interior designer who worked for Wiltgen for eight years.
Wiltgen, 65, died of complications from COVID-19 and renal failure Oct. 5 at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, said his husband, Steven Oster. A longtime diabetic, Wiltgen had lived in the Near North Side Streeterville neighborhood for many years.
Born in Chicago, Wiltgen grew up in Arlington Heights and as a teenager worked at the Arlington Park Theatre, where he had the chance to meet a variety of Hollywood legends, including Zsa Zsa Gabor, Sid Caesar and Don Knotts. He graduated from Arlington Heights High School in 1976 in just three years, then managed a paint store for a time and began attending night school two nights a week at the now-shuttered Ray-Vogue College of Design in Chicago for about four months.
With a partner, Wiltgen cofounded a design firm, Byron, Wiltgen and Associates in 1978. He left 18 months later, taking a job at a competitor, Francis Barbaria Interiors. In 1981, he started John Robert Wiltgen Design.
Wiltgen did not consider himself either a formally trained interior designer, but referred to himself as a space planner for lack of a more formal description of his work.
“Every square foot (of space) has to do something: It must provide either storage or living space,” he told the Tribune in 1992.
In 1982, Wiltgen was hired to design all the interiors of the apartment building at 1212 S. Michigan Avenue on the Near South Side, including two model apartments, a rental office, corridors, the lobby, party room, health club and laundry room. A 1997 commission involved a gut rehab project redesigning the vintage, 12,000-square-foot Hartwood estate in Barrington Hills.
Wiltgen’s work in the city included designing the interiors for one of the model units in the Chicago Place high-rise on North Michigan Avenue, designing the model at the Haberdasher loft building at 728 W. Jackson Blvd. and designing the sales center and two furnished model condominium units for Gotham Lofts Chicago in the West Loop.
Wiltgen’s firm frequently served as a general contractor for clients. He also dabbled in designing furniture. In 1986, he persuaded a homebuilder to turn a spec home in Barrington Hills into a designer showcase home to benefit the American Diabetes Association. A 1986 Tribune article pictured Wiltgen seated at a dining room table that he custom designed inside the home.
In 1991, Wiltgen was the recipient of the Merchandise Mart and Chicago Design Sources’ “Outstanding Achievement in the Design Profession” award.
In 1999, Wiltgen was tapped to decorate the interiors of a 5,400-square-foot model home in the Town of Fort Sheridan development on the North Shore. Several years later, he was hired to be the interior designer and space planner for the 60-story, Art Deco-style Residences at Millennium Centre building, 33 W. Ontario St.
“Models are more important than ever in these challenging economic times,” Wiltgen told the Tribune in 2010. “Models must be packaged to make them memorable.”
Wiltgen’s work extended beyond the Chicago area, with projects undertaken in Rancho Santa Fe, California, and in Mexico, Canada and Africa.
Well-known clients included actor John Cusack, who hired Wiltgen in 2008 to reimagine his duplex condominium unit on the 45th floor of a River North tower, and comedian and game-show host Steve Harvey in 2012, who tapped Wiltgen to design his unit on the 88th floor of the Trump International Hotel and Tower, which Harvey rented for many years.
“John was so proud of living and fulfilling the term we coined, ‘May your world be beautiful,’” Guini recalled. “It was truly words to live by and he embodied that.”
Guini said Wiltgen took clients and vendors on European excursions to learn about architecture and design history “so they could envision enhancing their lifestyle and to gain a better understanding of his vision.”
Wiltgen was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 8. Doctors told Wiltgen’s parents that he would not live to be 40. Wiltgen’s diabetes-related health problems over the years were considerable, including partial loss of vision in one eye, a kidney transplant in 1987, advanced heart disease and the amputation of his left leg in 2012.
After a bout of pneumonia in 2017 that left him in the intensive care unit for 18 days, Wiltgen retired from and wound down his design firm.
“John … always looked forward, choosing to be happy and fully engaged regardless of his health issues,” Oster said. “He was a very special and talented person.”
In 2018, Wiltgen began writing his memoir, “The Candy in My Pocket: The Wild and Crazy Life of a Type 1 Diabetic.” He self-published the 396-page memoir in 2022, and afterward held book signings and interviews, including on Rick Kogan’s “After Hours” show on WGN-AM.
“I’ve tried to make the most of every day of my life,” Wiltgen told Kogan. “I’ve tried not to focus on the hazards that I’ve encountered as a result of being a Type 1 diabetic and instead make plans for having even more fun.”
Wiltgen was known for throwing elaborate parties. One of his highest-profile shindigs was a 2001 Christmas party he threw that exhibited 85 pieces of artwork by actress Jane Seymour, who was a trained painter. The artwork was sold as a benefit for the Ronald McDonald House, then located in Lincoln Park.
Publicist Aimee DeBat, who handled publicity for Wiltgen’s memoir, called him “a force whether he worked on designing homes or writing his memoir.”
Most of all, I will miss his positive lust for life and his sense of humor,” DeBat said.
Wiltgen and Oster had been together for 15 years and married in 2018. He also is survived by two sisters, Cynthia Wilkin and Regina Rospenda; a brother, Raymond; his mother, Jean Lillian Wiltgen Kaprelian; his stepfather, Martin Kaprelian; a stepdaughter, Jenna Oster-Kreis; a stepson; and one step-grandson.
A private memorial service is planned for Nov. 17.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
