The former head of a paper firm whose brands included Quilted Northern toilet paper and Brawny paper towels put his Lake Forest home, a modern take on a Mediterranean villa, on the market.
Miles Marsh and his wife, Lorna, are asking $6.8 million for the five-bedroom, 5,900-square-foot house on Lake Road. It’s represented by Houda Chedid of Coldwell Banker Realty. The Marshes could not be reached for comment. The phone numbers listed for them either do not answer or have been disconnected.
The mansion’s main-floor interior is a modern mix of crisp plaster walls, black-framed windows and minimal ornamental details. A standout is the hanging wooden staircase with a stainless pipe handrail.
Completed in 2016, the house has a Greek Revival facade with stucco that includes a layer of marble dust, Chedid said. “It’s a European technique used in villas in Italy and Greece and the Mediterranean region to make the stucco last,” Chedid said.
In the rear, a sculpture standing on a pedestal in the swimming pool’s shallow end and a pergola on the stone terrace contribute to the “feeling you’re on the Mediterranean,” Chedid said.
Designed by architect Steve Rugo of the Chicago firm Rugo/Raff, the house is on a little under 1.2 acres on the inland side of Lake Road, about a block from the sidewalk down to Lake Forest’s municipal beach.
In the 1980s, Miles Marsh had executive roles at Chicago-area firms Kraft and Whitman before moving to St. Louis to head the Whitman spinoff Pet, which made evaporated milk and Progresso Soup, among other things. After Pet was acquired by a British conglomerate, Marsh became CEO of Green Bay, Wis.-based paper firm James River. In 1997, Marsh merged the company with another Green Bay paper firm, Fort Howard, and became CEO of the successor firm, Fort James.
In 2000, Georgia-Pacific acquired Fort James, and Marsh left the company. In subsequent years he was listed on several corporate boards, including Morgan Stanley and Whirlpool.
If it sells at or near its asking price, the Marshes’ home will be the first in Lake Forest to go for more than $6 million since Marshall Field V sold his 15-acre estate for $6.2 million in June 2021.
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