The Field Guide to Chicago Buildings was developed as a collaborative effort between the City Design Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Chicago Teachers' Center of Northeastern Illinios University with funding from the National Endowment of the Humanities and the United States Department of Education.

 








 

Architectural Style
Dating Buildings by stylistic analysis

 

Although individual buildings in any given period may vary enormously, they almost always share certain design elements that can be recognized. One of the most important pieces of information that can be gleaned from this kind of analysis is the approximate date of construction and sequence of subsequent building alterations. Most people do a little of this as a matter of course. They can see at a glance that some neighborhoods were primarily built in the late 19th century, for example, and others in the mid 20th. A systematic study of stylistic traits can allow an observer to date buildings within a much more narrow time frame. One place to start is with the “style guides” that have been published over the years. Below is a short list of some of these books:

    
 • Marcus Whiffen, American Architecture since 1780: A Guide to the Styles  
  • John Poppeliers et all, S. Allen Chambers, Nancy Schwartz, What Style is It? A Guide to American Architecture, Washington D. C.: Preservation Press, c. 1983  
  • Carol Rifkind, A Field Guide to American Architecture, New York: New American Library, 1980  
For houses you might consult:
  • Lester Walker, American Shelter: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of the American Home, Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1981  
  • Mary Mix Foley, The American House, New York: Harper and Row, 1980
 
  • Virginia and Lee McAlester, Field Guide to American Houses, New York: Knopf, 1984  

Unfortunately, these style guides are mostly more useful for large-scale monumental buildings than they are for most of the small residential buildings that make up the bulk of buildings in any city. Also the date ranges may not always work for Chicago since they are often given for buildings on the East Coast where the style may have originated. These styles often did not reach Chicago until considerably later. A guidebook to the architectural chronology of Chicago and for specific neighborhoods within the city is badly needed. This will involve an enormous amount of research and effort. We have tried to make a start at this below, using some houses in the Near West side as an example. In the meantime the City of Chicago Landmarks Commission has put up some useful information:

http://www.cityofchicago.org/Landmarks/Index.html

SOME HOUSES ON THE NEAR WEST SIDE

We have arranged below a series of photos below to show something of the style changes that are visible in a single building type, the two or three story urban house on a small, usually 25 foot lot, in a single neighborhood, the area now called "University Village" on the Near West Side of Chicago in the period 1870-1910. This was the period of greatest growth of this neighborhood, so the majority of buildings still standing were originally constructed at this time. Obviously these houses are much simpler than the buildings usually pictured in the "style guides" because they were modest speculative houses of the era. Still, in all but a few cases they still share with their more expensive neighbors characteristic proportions and details that suggest the date of their construction. The examples below appear to be relatively unchanged since the time of their construction. In other cases later alterations will often make it much more difficult, if not impossible, to guess the date of original construction. Obviously if any further accuracy is desired, it is important to try to confirm the estimate by doing some research with building permits, fire insurance atlases or other sources of information.

 

 

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1256 Lexington, 1873

A two-story-with-raised-basement rowhouse with a "graystone" (a generic term used in the Chicago area for limestone buildings, in this case yellow Joliet limestone) front. The prominent brackets relate this building to the Italianate styles of the 1860s, but the shallow incised ornament is related to Eastlake detailing of the 1870s and 1880s. It is probably typical of many buildings that had been built before the Great Fire of 1873 in Chicago.

 
923 Bishop, 1886

A two-story-with-raised-basement three-bay detached house similar to the previous two examples but with rectilinear openings. The kind of slightly incised ornament on the lower edge of the lintels was often used in the 1870s or 1880s.

 

 
1418 Polk, 1889

In this two-story-with-raised-basement house the designer has turned a standard three-bay design into two bays by creating a single large opening with multiple windows in each on the right side of the building. The heavy rusticated (as opposed to "ashlar" or smooth) limestone arches above the windows are related to the Richardsonian Romanesque that flourished in Chicago in the 1880s and 1890s

1246 Lexington, 1891

This two-story-with-raised basement three-bay house has a classic Italianate door canopy and window hoods making it a very late example of this kind of house. It probably looked somewhat old-fashioned at the time of its erection if the 1891 date is correct.
809 Bishop, 1892

In this two story-with-raised-basement building the designer has turned the normal three-bay formula used in this area of Chicago into a facade with a flat entry bay on one side and a large three-part bay window on the other side. Although the "graystone" facade is still rusticated in the manner of the Richardsonian Romanesque, the detailing has become simpler and more classical, signaling the influence of the classical revival which become important at the turn of the century.

 

909 Bishop, 1897

By the early years of the twentieth century the classical revival was in full swing. In this two-story-on-raised- basement house the designer has balanced a three-part bay window on the left with the entry bay on the right. Faced with smooth and rusticated limestone, the facade now has specific classical details, for example the frieze that runs across the top of the building over the second story windows. This would be the style of most of the buildings constructed in the neighborhood in the early twentieth century.