November 13, 2024
GROWING COMMUNITY MEDIA
AT HOME ON THE GREATER WEST SIDE A GCM GUIDE TO HOMEOWNERSHIP
Chicago’s iconic bungalows haven’t aged perfectly These programs are helping homeowners restore them
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By DELANEY NELSON | Special Projects Reporter
n the first third of the 20th century, Chicago’s population more than doubled—and with it, the city’s architecture and housing stock transformed. Developers erected high-rise luxury apartment buildings for the city’s wealthier residents while immigrants and poorer Chicagoans were crowded into blocks of packed tenements. In the middle of the spectrum emerged the bungalow. Between 1910 and 1930, Chicago developers built tens of thousands of bungalows — one-and-a-half story buildings characterized by low-pitched overhanging roofs, a narrow rectangular shape, expansive front windows, front porches, and limestone detailing. “You had a lot of immigrants and a lot of people crammed into homes that didn’t have ample light or air circulation, bathrooms,
electricity, any of it,” said Carla Bruni, the preservation and resiliency specialist at the Chicago Bungalow Association. “Bungalows were built in a very affordable way, even though they’re really well-built by today’s standards. You would never build these anymore. They would be so cost prohibitive.” In their heyday, bungalows were known for being sturdy and efficient to build. Plus, unlike some tenements, they were outfitted with electricity and plumbing. The brick buildings popped up in neighborhoods along the western edge of the city, including parts of what are now Austin and North Lawndale, creating the “Bungalow Belt.” A Chicago bungalow typically has bedrooms on the first floor and an unfinished attic space that could be expanded down the line, once the homeowners had enough cash. Bungalows, which required a relatively small down payment and low monthly payments, helped foster homeownership
among the city’s middle and lower-middle class. While bungalows “provided Chicago homebuyers of moderate means with extraordinary levels of domestic comfort,” according to the National Register of Historic Places property documentation, Black people were mostly excluded from owning them until the 1950s. “You’d have every sort of socioeconomic background. You’d have somebody who worked in the meatpacking plants, and maybe his wife would be doing clerical work somewhere, and then they maybe had five kids. And then you’d have a doctor and his wife only living right next to them on a corner lot, because those tended to be bigger bungalows,” Bruni said. “It was really a socioeconomic mix, excluding African American families.” While the Great Depression severely curtailed bungalow
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