West Ridge Architecture #5, Split-Level Homes

When looking at common homes it's sometimes tricky to separate the form and the style.  The buildings I've focused on in my previous West Ridge posts could probably be described as cubical 2-story single family homes with colonial-revival detailing.   A split-level homes is a major shift in the structure of the home, even thought it may incorporate traditional or modern stylistic details.  The other houses were drawn in elevation, but these homes have to be shown in perspective to convey their more complex massing.


Split-level homes typically have three levels-- a finished basement for recreation and relaxation, a first floor for family activities (meals), and a second floor for bedrooms.  The privacy levels of the home are directly related to the height above grade.

The second floor is a half-story above the main living area.  By shifting this floor towards the street the architect could achieve a grander look.  Shifting it to the rear screens the space, resulting in a more modest appearance.

There's an interesting group of these split-level homes on Morse, just west of California.  The entire block was subdivided in 1953, and the generous 42' frontages lend themselves to the wider housing type.

Some of these have gently sloping hipped roofs with deep eaves for a more traditional appearance.  A few have modern looking combinations of shed and flat roofs and large areas of glass.

The entire block has alley access, but several of the homes have attached front garages accessed by a sloping driveway.  Because these are single-car garages they don't completely dominate the front of the home, but their prime location makes a strong statement about the importance of the car to the household.

Locating the garage in the front yard also prioritizes the private space of the backyard, which can only be accessed through the home.  But the alleys remain as a constant reminder of the older urban pattern surrounding the new type of home.

Oak Park House

Here's a donated drawing I completed for another silent auction.  Angela volunteered me for this one, but I think it turned out fine. I believe this is on S. Humphrey Avenue in Oak Park.  Reference photos were taken by the owner.  If something is close to home I like to see it in person, but it's not a deal-breaker.

House Walk! 2013!

Pratt East of Ridge Looking West

Since the Spring of 2012 I've been a board member of my local historical society.  Which has mainly shown me I don't have as much time as I thought I did.  A few months ago the members in charge of the annual house walk (a major fundraiser for the society), announced the homes they wished to feature.  It included many nondescript frame houses, which is totally up my alley.  The idea was to contrast the modest homes of early Rogers Park residents with the homes of some established greenhouse farmers in West Ridge. So I volunteered to provide some research and illustrations.

1830 W. Pratt

I've always been interested in the possibilities of neighborhood tours, even though I haven't organized many.  I'm especially interested in tours which can tell a story not immediately apparent from a casual walk through the area.  For me this often means focusing on the non-beautiful, overlooked buildings more important for their type and context than their style.

But when you're part of a local organization that has to pay the

6836 N. Ridge

bills while recruiting new members it's easy for a house walk to try to expand its appeal.  After all, there's a good chance the owners of the homes featured in the program may become active members of the society.  And there's nothing wrong with that.

 

6815 N. Wolcott

My own participation in the project was scattershot.  I started to get interested in mapping the changes in the area, and then I was distracted by the right-of-way
abandonments that occurred as a nearby industrial area expanded.  I did put together some illustrations of the participating homes, and I did a bit of research on the original subdivision of the area and the dates of construction.  But when people are paying $20 for a house tour it's not enough to stand outside and talk about a dozen homes.  They want to explore, compare, look at the yard, and ask questions.  Getting people to open up their home to a troop of strangers is not my forte.  This  was done the old fashioned way, with the organizers walking door-to-door.  I'm assuming with clipboards and name tags.

1901 W. Farwell

Owners aren't always excited to have dozens of people swarm through their house.  I wouldn't necessarily want a bunch of strangers in my condo wondering why there are so many toys scattered about or why we haven't repainted.  So, unsurprisingly, several of the homes initially identified were dropped from the schedule and replaced with others.   Which changes the story of the tour.  And incidentally, made several of my illustrations unusable.


Still, it was a learning experience.  Generally, if you want to appeal to a broad group you need to broaden the tour.  And my idea for a tour focusing on Rogers Park infrastructure?  That may need to be done with a select group of attendees.

Click for a larger version.

Frame Houses on Estes, 1907

So I'm continuing to document some of the more common frame homes in an area of Rogers Park bounded by Touhy, Clark, Pratt and Ridge.  One of the best ways to do this is to spot a rows of homes clearly related in their massing, materials, characteristics, and then go draw them.

Gable front cottages are the classic workers' housing in Chicago.  You may have seen the gold-plated versions of these from the 1870s and 1880s in Old Town and Lincoln Park, where they've often been elaborately restored with eave brackets and complex window and door moldings. What you see above are simplified versions, with minimal ornamentation and generous front porches.  All four were permitted in 1907 for owner John M. Carlson.  The first two cost $2,500 each, but the next two cost only $2,000 each.  This is the advantage of building identical homes- each time you find ways to estimate the building materials more accurately and make the process more efficient.  And of course this translates into a greater profit.

Less than a block to the east there's another cluster of homes.  These were developed by Jacob Meirel, and four of the six were permitted in October of 1907.  Two alternating models were built.  The gable design provides for greater attic volume, while the hipped roof includes a front-facing dormer to introduce more light.  Both designs have partial-length front porches and projecting bays on the first floor.  These were built for $4,000 each, a substantial step-up from the basic cottages down the street, but still affordable to a middle-class household.

So there's nothing revolutionary going on here.  Developers are moving into a neighborhood and cautiously building a few homes.  If they sell and a profit is made they build a few more.  Variations in size and price occur to tailor the homes to different budgets, often on the same block.  This is the heyday for this type of frame construction in Rogers Park.  Lots which don't develop in this period will be developed later at a greater density due to the increases in the cost of land, labor, and materials. But for now let's enjoy Rogers Park in its suburban phase...

You can see previous postings about other frame houses in this area here and here.

Combining Styles, #2 - 6741 N. Clark and 2125 W. Devon

Last year I wrote about some buildings which expanded their first floors into adjacent lots, resulting in a facade reflecting two different eras of development and design.  You can read that post here.    But what kind of expansion happens when a developed street changes from residential to commercial?  Every now and again it results in a front yard addition, creating an odd hybrid building.

6741-6743 N. Clark

This one is near the intersection of Clark and Pratt in Rogers Park.  Behind it you can see the c.1905 frame house. Before 1927 this home had a generous, green front yard (I'm assuming it was green).  Clark Street was changing, and the area was no longer as idyllic as it had been 20 years previous.  But there was still value in the home as well as potential to take advantage of the commercial character of the street.   So the owners extended it forward into a simple 1-story brick and stone commercial structure.  The storefronts have been infilled with vertical siding and the windows reduced to be practically non-existent, but there it remains. 

2125 W. Devon

In West Ridge there's a more jolting combination on Devon near Hamilton.  The assessor dates the rear structure  as 1896, which seems correct to me.  At that time it would have been surrounded by greenhouses to the south, east and west.  It's unusual to see a flat-roofed frame building with classical ornament.  In fact, it's the only one that I know of in the area.  It's been covered with brick-patterned asphalt siding, which makes me wonder if there's more detail hidden beneath it.

The commercial extension is concrete block, which I date to the 1980s.  The preservationist  in me recognizes this as an era when extreme disinterest in the public realm combined with a desire to make money quickly, leaving Chicago with many similar "improvements".   But the other part of me takes a deep breath and recognizes that both buildings provide useful information about the changing character of the area and the shifting values of the residents.

Frame Houses at 1926-1938 W. Touhy, 1907

A few months ago I wrote about some nearly identical frame homes on Chase.  In that entry I remarked that once you noticed these "runs" of homes you would start to see them everywhere.  At the time I didn't know how true that was.  Within a week, I'd spotted five groupings within three blocks of each other.

These small-scale developments represent a point in Rogers Park history after the 1893 annexation to Chicago but prior to the multifamily development of the 1920s.  This was a period when architects often took a back seat to local builders when it came to developing affordable single family homes.  Since architects were more focused on commercial projects and more prestigious commissions, an entire industry developed that offered pre-designed homes with no architect required.  Some, like Sears, sold kits including all wood, hardware, and fixtures.  Others sold permit-ready architectural plans, like this Radford American Homes catalog from 1903.

These five frame homes were permitted in 1907. They all have double-pitched hipped roofs, two-story projecting bays, and (originally) a full-width front porch on the first floor  Over the years they've been modified in all the ways you might expect- artificial siding, rear additions, and porch alterations.  I chose the middle image at 1938 W. Touhy as the most unaltered example.  These five homes were each built on 30' x 160' lots, which are somewhat larger than a standard 25'x 100' Chicago lot.  At the time Rogers Park had more of a suburban character.  But in 1907 "suburban character" still meant narrow side yards and a detached garage with alley access.

According to a rule of thumb proposed by Stewart Brand in "How Buildings Learn" you can expect homes to go through major renovations about every 20 years and to update their interiors and mechanical systems every 7 to 15 years.  If the construction of the home makes it difficult to update these mechanical systems, it's likely that the home will be demolished.  By 1907 the struggle between gas and electricity in Chicago was largely over.  Electricity had become the standard for lighting and appliances while gas remained in place for cooking and heating.  So these five frame homes already had an advantage over others that were constructed just a few years earlier.  I would estimate that 80 percent of the remaining single family homes in this area (between Touhy, Clark, Pratt and Ridge) were constructed between 1900 and 1910.

To be continued with some nearby homes on Estes...

Frame homes at Chase and Wolcott, 1905

Home with a sick 2-year old today, so maybe I can finally finish this entry while he naps.

There are thirteen frame houses on the south side of Chase, west of Wolcott in Rogers Park.  They're not remarkable but they're obviously related, with identical setbacks, massing and materials.  Some of them have been altered over time but you can't hide the family resemblance.

Early neighborhood developers often added value to their offering by modifying a basic design.   This would give the impression of variety while still taking advantage of the economy of scale.  They would vary the materials, the window styles or the roof shapes.  In this case the builder was working with three models, each with an identical layout but a different roof configuration.  These include a hipped roof modified with a deck (A), a standard hipped roof (B), and a hipped roof with the ridge extended forward to create a gable (C).  I wouldn't be surprised to find that the floor area of each house is essentially identical.

Developing the block with these homes is like putting together a kit. In this case the pattern is A-B-A-B, then switching to C-A-B-C-A-B.  Once sensitized to these types of development patterns you begin to notice them everywhere. 

The building at the corner of Wolcott and Chase was the first, and received a permit in the spring of 1905.  Perhaps this functioned as the model home for the development.  The remaining homes were permitted a couple of months later.

 And 108 years later here's the result.  One  of these homes was demolished for an apartment building in the 1920s,  but those that remain maintain the feel of a solid neighborhood block.

Developers are sometimes criticized for being motivated by profit and for not taking into account the impact of their projects on the surrounding area.  It's easy to forget that most of Chicago was built by developers.  They certainly made a profit, but they're also responsible for the look and feel of basically every neighborhood in the city.

Building permits for these homes were found in the Ancient Building Permit files of Chicago.  And no, it wasn't easy.  I hate microfilm.  The block plan was developed from the 1937 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps and online aerial photos from Google.  The streetscape image is developed from reference photos, drawn with Micron pens, and shaded with cool grey Prismacolor markers.  OK, too much information.

Carl and Pearl Peterson at 1905 W. Chase, c.1905. 
Carl not looking too excited about their new house. Is that his mother?
From the RPWRHS Collection (P001-30299)

Townhouses at Greenleaf and Oakley, 1968

Not long ago I came across a 1968 Chicago Tribune article about a West Ridge development coming on the market.  It included double houses, courtyard buildings, and townhouses on the north and south sides of Greenleaf, between Oakley and Western.  All of them duplexed, with small private rear yards in addition to communal front yards or interior courts.  All have accomodations for parking, ranging from garages with direct street access to parking spaces along the alleys.   Their design and detailing is consistent, but they have a variety of form you don't often see in multi-building developments.

I  think of 1968 as a turning point in Chicago history.  In one year you have the race riots following the assassination of Martin Luthur King, Jr. and the disastrous Democratic National Convention.    This signaled a period of public and private disinvestment in the city which continued for decades.  It was also the year my parents, lifelong Chicagoans, left for Columbus, Ohio.   So clearly things were pretty bad.  So what kind of housing might still attract city residents in 1968?

Looking southwest from the corner of Greenleaf and Oakley.

 A weird version of French Provincial!   With mansard roofs and arched dormers!  The buildings are an odd blend of traditional and modernistic elements.  According to the article there are three and four bedroom units in two-story or tri-level designs.  The model unit had a family room with a 16 foot high ceiling merging with the breakfast room.  They featured central air, wall-to-wall carpeting, and plastic laminated counter tops.  I wonder if they've changed much in the past 45 years.

So to summarize, large informal living space, tiny private outdoor areas, accomodation for parking, and weird semi-traditional architectural styling. Not sure this really tells me much about 1968.  In other parts of the city they were building walls topped with broken glass, so maybe West Ridge wasn't doing too badly.

Howard and Washtenaw, c.1958

I've driven by these buildings on Howard for years, and they always catch my attention.  At this point Howard Street is the dividing line between Chicago and Evanston, and represents the north boundary of the West Ridge neighborhood.  In the 1940s this area was sparsely developed.  In 1958 the former site of the Chicago Fresh Air Hospital at Howard and Western was developed as a shopping center, and a large residential development was built to the east.  It wasn't long before nearby portions of Howard began to develop, and the buildings reflect this time period.

On the corner is a 2-story building clad with a stacked-bond turquoise brick veneer.  A two-story glass atrium encloses a staircase and adds a certain drama to the building.  The ground floor glass block windows were probably later installations for  privacy and security.  The projecting eave of the building contains down-lighting for nighttime illumination. Next door is a taller two-story  office building.  It's framed by stacked-bond piers, and capped by concrete sun-screens, which are kind of a nod to a Corbusian brise-soleil. Next to that is a 1-story storefront also framed by stacked-bond brick piers connected with a sign panel.  A soffit below angles down to the aluminum storefronts.  All in all, an almost perfect  composition of a style I think of as mid-century developer vernacular. 

While the high-style modernists whittled their conception of architecture down to the most honest expression of materials and form (arguably), the neighborhood buildings that were going up took their cues from the graphic design and popular art of the time.  The buiding on the left looks like two separate geometries fighting it out in a kind of Mondrianesque battle.  The center building is mostly flat and featureless, but the vertical piers and mullions and the curved  concrete canopy impose order and scale.  The small storefront to the right is modest, but also makes use of the stacked masonry frame to focus attention on the large plate-glass windows.  It's most distinctive feature is the angled soffit, which doubles to provide exterior lighting.  I'm a fan of the stacked-bond brick work.  It's non-structual and decorative, kind of like a durable wallpaper.  All three of these buidings are concrete block construction with face brick veneers.

In 1956 there was an account in the Chicago Tribune of a successful attempt to derail a rezoning proposal changing the block from a residential to a retail district.  The neighbors were concerned that taverns would instantly locate on the block.  At this time Evanston was dry, so it wasn't totally unreasonable.  But the victory must have been short-lived, since these buildings were built soon after. 

There's no need to include this drawing, but I was so thrilled to have a completely rectilinear building that I tried to sketch it out in Inkscape.  Doesn't really add anything new, but I can show the stacked bricks a whole lot faster.