Louis C. Sudler Jr. was an executive and property manager for the real estate firm Sudler & Co. who also was a life trustee of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and sang for 57 years with the Great Lakes Dredge and Philharmonic Society.
Sudler spent decades working for the firm that his father, Louis C. Sudler Sr., and his uncle founded in 1927. He also had a long career in the Navy and the Naval Reserve, retiring as a captain when he was 60 years old.
Sudler, 94, died of complications from Parkinson’s disease April 6 at his Lincoln Park home, said his stepdaughter, Jennifer Ames Lazarre.
Born in Chicago, Louis Courtenay Sudler Jr. grew up on the Gold Coast and in Streeterville, as well as his family’s summer home in Harbor Springs, Michigan. He attended the Latin School of Chicago and then went to the Putney School in Vermont for high school before receiving a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Yale University, where he sang in the glee club.
After college, Sudler joined the Navy, which commissioned him as an ensign in 1954 and sent him first to Puerto Rico and then to Bremerhaven, Germany, according to his family. Sudler exited active duty in 1958 as a lieutenant but remained in the Navy’s reserve unit until 1991, serving in the Pentagon for a time in its strategic plans and policies department.
Sudler worked in new product development for Motorola for a time before joining the family firm as a partner and executive vice president.
Sudler helped manage buildings the firm developed such as the 23-story Gordon Terrace apartment building in Uptown, which was completed in 1966, and buildings 100 E. Walton St. and 1310 N. Ritchie Court. The company expanded the portfolio of buildings it managed as high-rise apartments and condominium units sprang up on the Near North Side, including handling the initial lease-up of Lake Point Tower and the John Hancock Center and converting numerous buildings to condominiums.
In 1985, Sudler & Co. merged with Marling Group Inc., and Sudler became the firm’s chairman. He retired from Sudler Marling in 1990, remaining as a consultant to the firm, and he also was an investor in a private mailing firm, Pak Mail Centers of America Inc.
Sudler had a keen appreciation for the fine arts as reflected in his long tenure with Great Lakes Dredge and Philharmonic Society. He served for decades on the board of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, whose board his father once had chaired.
“Louis especially was a music lover,” said former Argonne National Laboratory CEO Alan Schriesheim, a longtime friend. “He was so knowledgeable, smart, decent and gentlemanly. He was a pleasure to be with.”
Ames Lazarre recalled Sudler’s involvement in the 1997 renovation of the CSO’s Orchestra Hall, with a new Symphony Center taking shape around Orchestra Hall.
“He was really involved in the process of the design and the redesign and the acoustics,” Ames Lazarre said.
Architect Dirk Lohan, another longtime friend, recalled taking Sudler and Sudler’s wife, Laura, on a yacht that Lohan sailed from Ireland south along Europe’s coast.
“I really admired him very much because he was a cultivated and considerate man who always wanted to do good and do the right thing,” Lohan said.
After retiring, Sudler and his wife spent more than 25 years organizing and leading tours around the world for small groups of their friends.
“Despite his numerous … accomplishments in many, many different fields, he was just welcoming to everybody,” said retired attorney Marc Whitehead, who with his wife, Tracy, frequently took part in those trips. “Whoever you were, he had kind words for you, but he also was interested in you. And he was intelligent — I don’t think I ever ran across a subject that Louie wasn’t knowledgeable about. We had so many wonderful conversations about things like culture but also heavy (subjects) like science and genealogy.”
Whitehead and Ames Lazarre noted Sudler’s ability to learn languages.
“Louie could pick up anything,” Whitehead said. “It was amazing that he could pick up these languages, and it was illustrative about his empathy, because he was showing respect, caring and understanding of people in different countries, with different cultures and histories. It was a great way to demonstrate bonding, that he could foster these connections between people.”
In 1952, he told the Tribune’s pseudonymous society columnist Judith Cass, a column that actually was team-authored by a group of writers, that he had been learning the fine art of Spanish repartee at the Berlitz Language School, and that while at Yale, he also had been studying Italian as well as six hours a week of Russian.
“The Russians are great ones for accenting just one syllable and sliding over the rest,” he observed.
A first marriage to Jane Irish Sudler ended in divorce. Sudler’s second wife of 51 years, Laura, died in 2021. In addition to his stepdaughter, Sudler is survived by three sons, David, John and Zack; two other stepdaughters, Mary Ames Kivell and Nathalie Ames; 10 grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.
Services were held.
