Asking price for Lake Geneva’s Aloha Lodge mansion lowered

An eight-bedroom mansion on 12 acres on the south shoreline of Geneva Lake in Lake Geneva, Wis. recently underwent a $5 million price cut.

On Sept. 14, the owners of the Southern Colonial-style mansion, which is known as Aloha Lodge, cut the mansion’s asking price from $35 million to $30 million, which still gives it the highest asking price in the area by a considerable amount. The mansion’s current owner is the estate of Harold Byron Smith, the former Illinois Tool Works vice chairman who died in October 2022. Smith’s great-grandfather, Byron L. Smith, founded two stalwart Chicago-area firms: Illinois Tool Works and the Northern Trust Company.

Smith had owned the mansion since 1998. Built in 1901 and designed by architect Howard Van Dorn Shaw, the mansion was built by Tracy Drake, who is one of two brothers who went on to found the Blackstone and Drake hotels in Chicago.

Smith expanded and renovated the mansion during his ownership of it.

The estate also has a pool, a three-bedroom guest house, another 1,800-square-foot building that contains a model railroad, a greenhouse, five boats and 368 linear feet of lake frontage. In all, the mansion and other buildings have a total of 11 bedrooms, 13-1/2 bathrooms and 20,000 square feet of space.

“This home…is an iconic estate on the south shore of Lake Geneva that has been painstakingly renovated from top to bottom,” listing agent Brandie Malay Siavelis of @properties told Elite Street. “We chose to do a price improvement as we have had significant interest and (are) hoping this move will encourage buyers to come off the sidelines and get in the game as this property is an incredible value with over 20,000 square feet of total living space and has the ability to comfortably host multi-generational family members and friends.”

The mansion first was listed for sale in May for $35 million. Lake Geneva has been a hotbed of high-priced sales in recent months. Elite Street broke the news last year that Chicago-area billionaire J. Christopher Reyes and his wife, Anne, were the buyers who paid $36 million in January 2022 for the late Richard Driehaus’ mansion on 40 acres in Lake Geneva. Also last year, gaming cabinet and console magnate James Conlon paid $17 million for the vintage Villa Hortensia mansion on 20.5 acres on Lake Geneva, which, as Elite Street reported in March, Conlon then wound up demolishing.

This year, the high-priced Lake Geneva-area sales have continued, with a six-bedroom, 4,698-square-foot mansion on the south shore of the lake selling to an undisclosed buyer in June for $9.30 million, a six-bedroom, 8,756-square-foot mansion on the lake’s southern shore selling in June to an undisclosed buyer for $13.5 million and a five-bedroom, 10,410-square-foot mansion on the northern shore of the lake selling on Sept. 6 to an undisclosed buyer for $16.47 million.

Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.

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