Some commercial and institutional builders occasionally dabble in residential work. But Bulley & Andrews is different. Best known for large-scale, non-residential projects, the 121-year-old Chicago builder is just as serious about its custom homes. Since 2004, the company has had a dedicated high-end residential division with its own staff and a history of constructing beautiful, architect-designed dwellings.
It all started during the 1980s, when Bulley & Andrews built a residential project for an existing client. Throughout the 1990s, the company continued to take on select residential work as it came in. Then an employee named Rick Juneau found himself acting as a project manager on a custom home for the first time in his career—and enjoying it immensely. “I felt a passion for it,” he says. “I’m a problem solver. Something clicked on in me.” Following this project, Bulley & Andrews started its Residential & Restoration division, with Juneau at the helm.
Today, the division garners enthusiastic recommendations from both modern and traditional architects, as well as clients. It builds single-family custom houses and architectural interiors, with a 50/50 mix of remodeling and new construction. Unusual restoration projects, such as the conversion of a historic Chicago mansion into the Richard H. Driehaus Museum, also fall under the residential division’s wing. It recently finished renovating Ragdale, once the summer home of acclaimed architect Howard Van Doren Shaw and currently a community for visiting artists and writers.
The LEED-accredited Juneau says the two most common green features requested by his clients are geothermal systems and rainwater collection. And having done non-residential work before discovering his love of residential, he observes that homes have a greater tendency than other buildings to evolve over the design and construction process. “It takes a lot of team effort to figure out the end product on residential,” he says. “Most of the things that go into a custom home are completely custom. We figured out how to put a rotating floor in a Chicago apartment—things like that, where I can honestly say we haven’t built something similar.”
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Bulley & Andrews / Chicago / www.bulley.com / Years in business (Residential & Restoration division only): 8 / Employees (Residential & Restoration division): 15 / 2011 volume (Residential & Restoration division): $25 million / 2011 starts (Residential & Restoration division): 14, including smaller renovations
