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Style and the City
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Furniture from Gail's former home,
some of it 30 years old, looks fresh
in her living room with updated fabrics
in vibrant hues and patterns. Antique
inkwells sparkle on a glass coffee table.
Style and the City
(ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: MARCH/APRIL 2007)
GAIL RIGGS MOVED INTO the heart of Chicago to feel its racing, urban pulse. And every morning, her wake-up call reminds her just how alive the city really is. "Around 6 a.m., I hear this megaphone voice outside my bedroom window," she says. "He's yelling 'OK, let's pick up the pace. Faster!' And it's a rowing crew zipping by on the river. It's a weird thing, but a fantastic way to get the day going."
Her town home in Chicago's Kinzie Park fronts the Chicago River, which teems with traffic around the clock. Powerboats, kayaks and barges travel the river all hours of the day, Gail says.
Eight years ago, Gail was one of the first tenants in her gated community of red-brick, four-story townhomes amid abandoned railyards and empty warehouses. "My two daughters thought my husband, Bill, and I were nuts," Gail says. "But Bill&knew the warehouses would become lofts someday, and this would be a great place to live."
After Bill died three years ago, Gail's home became more of a haven for entertaining her closest friends, eager to see this evolving side of the city-and to venture in from the suburbs to savor her hospitality.
The layer-cake layout of her home, four floors connected by a spiraling staircase, creates a salon atmosphere for entertaining. Guests mingle over drinks in the first-floor entry/sitting room and stroll out French doors to a patio overlooking the riverwalk.
Gail eventually tempts guests up to the second-floor kitchen/living/dining rooms with tantalizing aromas and the promise of her signature, fresh-lemon ice cream.
After dinner, guests often climb, dessert plates in hand, to the fourth floor and sit out on the roof deck to drink in the evening shadows creeping over the city and watch skyscrapers' lights start to twinkle.
"It's really a great place for entertaining, because there's motion," Gail says. "People naturally drift from floor to floor."
