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.

The "Chicago Bungalow": Although the term is exotic, originating in India, and although there may have been some influences from outside the Midwest, the basic Chicago bungalow appears to have been a local development, a transformation and substantial upgrading of the basic worker's cottage.

The Typical Chicago Bungalow

Design Features: The Chicago bungalow seems to have been a further development of the larger and more elaborate worker's cottages of the late nineteenth century. Floor plans were often identical with the public spaces- living, dining and kitchen- on one side of the building and small bedrooms on the other. In most bungalows, however, the older gable-front of the cottages was replaced with a "hipped" roof, meaning that the gable was slipped off and the front pitched down toward the street, often with a dormer. In many cases this allowed for the incorporation of a large front porch or enclosed sunroom. The bungalow was closely related to the standard two-flat (highlight and eventually link to that entry) which was really conceptually just two bungalows piled on top of each other. There were also much more elaborate bungalows with considerably more elaborated floor plans.

 

Construction: Although bungalows in the city of Chicago appear to have been built of load-bearing brick, there were also frame bungalows and frame bungalows with brick veneer. Unlike the cottages built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the bungalows were usually equipped from the start with central heating and full indoor plumbing. They were, in many ways, the first really "modern" house for the working class.

 

Location: Chicago bungalows appear in almost all locations in the metropolitan area where there was a great deal of construction on working- and middle-class neighborhoods. The greatest concentration is found in a band that runs from about four to eight miles around the Loop, including large swaths of the city of Chicago and nearby suburbs such as Cicero and Berwyn. Berwyn might be called the capital of the bungalow because virtually the entire residential area of the village is composed of bungalows and the closely related two-flats. The Villa Historic district on the northwest side of Chicago contains an excellent collection as well.

 

Sources of Information: The best sources of information on the Chicago bungalow are:

Joseph Bigott, From Cottage to Bungalow, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2001.

Dominic A. Pacyga and Charles Shanabruch, Editors, The Chicago Bungalow,
Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2001.

Anthony D. King, The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture,
1880-1930, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Katherine Cole Stevenson and H. Ward Jandl, Houses by Mail: A Guide to
Houses from Sears, Roebuck and Company, Washington, D.C.: Preservation
Press, 1986.

Christine Hunter, Ranches, Rowhouses and Railroad Flats: American Homes: How
they Shape our landscapes and neighborhoods, New York: W.W. Norton, 1999.