Between the 1910s and the 1930s, as second-generation Americans began to leave Chicago’s crowded older neighborhoods and settle in newly annexed empty portions of the city, the bungalow became the perfect solution to their housing needs. Chicago’s post–Great Fire building codes demanded brick, and the city was a brick-making capital, so there was both the motivation and the means for laying down multitudes of these affordable boxy structures. “The housing boom of the 1920s altered construction practices throughout the United States by creating a tremendous demand for common houses with modern conveniences,” according to The Chicago Bungalow, a book by the Chicago Architecture Foundation.
The bungalow became Chicago’s quintessential middle-class dwelling: solid, compact, built to squeeze onto a narrow lot. There are more than 80,000 here — making up a third of single-family homes — many of them in a crescent from the Northwest Side to the Southwest Side known as the Bungalow Belt.
The bungalow fell out of fashion after World War II, replaced by the ranch and the split-level, but the city’s stock of sturdy bungalows has stood the test of a century. Today they’re still a popular choice for immigrants, children of immigrants, and young families.
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