Retired Chicago Cubs pitcher Kerry Wood and his wife, Sarah, on Wednesday sold their six-bedroom, 11,250-square-foot Georgian Revival-style mansion in Winnetka for its $8.5 million asking price — making it that suburb’s highest-priced sale of the year.
A hard-throwing right-handed pitcher, Wood, 47, famously struck out a record 20 players in a shutout game as a rookie in 1998. Twice an All-Star and the 1998 National League Rookie of the Year, he pitched for the Cubs until 2008 and again in 2011 and 2012.
Since retiring from baseball, Wood has remained in the Chicago area, and has been a visible presence, serving currently as a Cubs Ambassador and also co-founding the Pitch-In after-school mentoring program with his wife. His Wood Family Foundation helped make the Chicago Park District’s public high school baseball stadium near Lane Tech High School — now known as Kerry Wood Cubs Field — a reality.
Wood also is set to be inducted into the Cubs Hall of Fame on Sept. 8, along with former teammate Aramis Ramirez.
The Woods bought the three-story mansion in an off-market deal in 2019 and then significantly overhauled the mansion and its 0.71-acre property, including adding a swimming pool and a new pool house with a bathroom, a washer/dryer, a charging room, storage and a garden shed. They also added a new outdoor kitchen, a new pergola, a fire pit and working organic gardens.
Designed by architect William Otis and built in 1902 for a railroad executive, the mansion has 5½ bathrooms, five fireplaces, a grand staircase with extra-wide steps, wide-band hand rails and hand-carved balusters, along with millwork, wide cased openings, restored windows and a living room with a fireplace and arched bookshelves. The home also has a walnut-paneled dining room, a sunroom and a kitchen with white marble countertops, top-of-the-line appliances and a Farrow & Ball blue island. Other features include an eating area with curved bay picture windows, a second staircase, a mud room, a family room with original bookcases and a restored fireplace, and a screened porch.
On the second floor, the mansion has a primary bedroom suite with a fireplace and two new walk-in closets, along with three more bedrooms. The third floor has two additional bedrooms, an office and a game room, while the mansion’s basement, which was all refinished by the Woods, has an arts and crafts studio, a gym with a sauna, a wine room and a recreation room with a bar.
The Woods previously owned two other mansions in Winnetka, including one that they lived in from 2015 until 2020.
“Living in Winnetka, it’s easy to fall in love with historic homes, and this home was one that we’d admired for a very long time, and we jumped at the chance to make it ours,” Sarah Wood told Elite Street in an exclusive interview. “We felt that restoring and maintaining a historic home was a love letter to Winnetka. This is such a beautiful town with historic homes that tell the history.”
With the couple’s oldest son now having graduated from high school, Sarah Wood said the family made the decision to move down south.
“With Kerry being from Texas, it was kind of a natural progression that we would head south at some point,” she said. “But we are not leaving — far from it. I’m a Chicago girl, Kerry’s history is with the Cubs, and this definitely is not a goodbye. Wrigley Field and the city of Chicago will always be home.”
The couple first listed the mansion in January for $8.499 million, and they found a buyer the following month. Public records do not yet identify the buyers.
Listing agent Jena Radnay of @properties Christie’s International Real Estate told Elite Street that “what makes this house so special is that it’s really in a league of its own.”
“There are very few larger homes that are completely renovated like (this one). Renovations are so much more expensive than building new as you have limitations and need to follow the integrity of the existing beautiful architecture,” she said. “If this house could talk, the words would be, ‘I am one of the lucky ones.’ I really think there is a pool of buyers who pay up to have flawless execution from inside to outside, and this sale proves that. Sarah and Kerry elevated this home to ultra-luxury status.”
The mansion had a $78,916 property tax bill in the 2022 tax year.
The $8.5 million amount is one of the highest sale prices of any kind of home in the Chicago area this entire year. The other highest-price sales: A Lincoln Park mansion sold for $15.25 million earlier in August, and a Gold Coast condo sold for $9.3 million in January.
The sale price also is the highest one this year in Winnetka, easily surpassing the $5.75 million sale in March of a six-bedroom, 13,425-square-foot mansion on Sunset Road. Winnetka also is the home of two of the Chicago area’s highest-priced listings, retired investment banker Muneer Satter’s 20,000-square-foot lakefront mansion that is listed for $35 million, and a 15,784-square-foot lakefront mansion that has an $18 million asking price. In between them is a five-bedroom, 9,990-square-foot mansion on almost 32 lakefront acres in Lake Bluff, which is for sale for $19.9 million.
The deal also was Winnetka’s highest sale price since a pair of lakefront mansions sold last year for $12.5 million and $12.25 million.
Bob Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
