A Typology of Chicago Alleys

Primary Alley

Because of its reliance on the grid Chicago has been called one of the most right-angled cities in the world.  This may be true, but it doesn't mean that its development has been simple or monolithic.  Like any urban feature, the grid responds to the needs of those who use it.  Sometimes this is subtle, but there are some examples of grid flexibility in Rogers Park which are worth investigating.
 
The neighborhood of Rogers Park was incorporated as the Village of Rogers Park in 1878, but many of the earliest lots were subdivided in 1872 and 1873 and reflect a more suburban scale and character, with generous frontage and depth.  The area was annexed to Chicago in 1893 and the extension of city services and utilities led to steadily increasing development and density.  Many lots intended for purchase in the 1870s were subdivided to make them more attractive for the modest homes that came to the neighborhood in the 1900s and 1910s.  But the new lots still needed alley access, especially with the increasing popularity of the automobile.

Primary Alley Leading to Secondary Alley

Residential street right-of-ways are normally 66 feet wide in Chicago.  This reflected the length of the surveyor's chain, and established the modular dimensions of a typical residential block, which is 660 feet in length (10 chains) by 330 feet wide (5 chains).  Typical pavements are 32 to 34 feet from curb to curb, allowing for two lanes of parking and two lanes of traffic.  Streets with less than 30' of pavement were converted to one-way streets after 1967.  This was done following a particularly bad blizzard, which I'm grateful to have missed.

Grassy Private Alley

Typical alleys range from 16 to 20 feet.  Rear structures are set back 2 or 3 feet from the alley right-of-way, making the clearance a bit wider. Just like streets, alleys are owned and maintained by the city.

When a platted area is cut into smaller parcels a secondary alley will often become a part of that subdivision.  These are narrower, but are also public right-of-ways.  As fire-fighting equipment has become larger it's no longer acceptable to create these narrow alleys.

Private Alley Resembling Driveway

Private alleys are basically access roads carved out of the lots within the subdivision.  Several properties may own a portion of a private alley.  Because they're privately owned the city has no responsibility to maintain them.  Often these remain unpaved, or paved with gravel.  They can easily be mistaken for driveways.  Or if the owners decide they're no longer necessary they might disappear entirely, existing only on paper.

An easement might provide vehicle access like a driveway, or it might be intended to preserve access to light and air.  These are also the result of a private agreement recorded to the property.    I had no luck spotting the one easement contained in my study area.  But if anyone ever wants to be build a garage on top of it I'm sure it will again float to the surface.

The base maps for this post were developed from 80-acre maps on the City of Chicago's website and the 1937 edition of Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps accessed through the website of the Chicago Public Library.  Information about the public right-of-way reference CDOT's "Street and Site Plan Design Standards," also available on the City of Chicago's website.  All the sketches above are all taken from the study area.

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.

Clark, Greenleaf, Ravenswood and Estes- Part 2

Anybody who studies American cities knows the value of the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.  These were created by the Sanborn Map Company to help insurance adjusters evaluate risk.  Copies of all maps were deposited with the Library of Congress, and were later microfilmed for distribution to local libraries.  An agreement with ProQuest put scanned versions of the microfilmed maps (660,000 of them) online for subscription access.

The Chicago Public Library makes these maps available, so at least access is broadening.  Many of the denser areas in Rogers Park were included in several editions.  When these are compiled it provide a portrait of development through time.  These maps are crammed with information, and the problem is often choosing which type of information is most useful to highlight. 

In this case the maps are focused on heights, with the light grey, dark grey and black showing 1, 2, and 3 stories respectively. It's also possible to focus on type of construction (frame, masonry veneer, steel reinforced concrete) or type of use.  Cross reference this with extensive title research, census records, and phone directories and you can build up a fairly precise history of a block.  In theory that block would reflect the larger trends of the neighborhood.  But I still have to manage a job, a family and a life, so the next step may just be a somewhat closer look at each of these dates.


Bird's Eye Aerial from Bing. Probably 2008.



Backstage Spaces #1 (Estes, Clark, Touhy and the Metra Tracks)

There's a lot to be said for alleys and the hidden spaces behind buildings.  Many times this is where you see the true character of a street and clues about how it's changed over time.  The west side of Clark Street in Rogers Park is especially interesting, maybe because of the trapezoidal blocks created by the viaduct for the Metra tracks and the angle of Clark Street. Nothing like a good diagonal (or two) to shake up the grid.



Above is a panoramic view of the interior of the block bounded by Touhy on the north, Clark on the east, Estes on the south, and the train tracks on the west.  I first noticed this area because of the old residential frame building incorporated into the light industrial buildings behind it (center of image, with gable roof). The windows are all boarded up and it's been covered in tar paper, but there's a certain lingering aura of old Rogers Park.

Since it's difficult to place yourself in the frame for this kind of space I put together a handy "cone of vision" graphic to the left.  The gigantic eye is where the viewer is standing.  Hopefully the viewer will not actually look like a gigantic eye.

If you look carefully you can see that the paving angles up towards Clark Street.  This makes sense, since Clark is located on one of the ancient shorelines of Lake Michigan.  It's easy to overlook this just driving down Clark, but the buildings on either side gain bonus height in the rear due to the slope.

So why is this area so desolate and underutilized?  And why is it paved with gravel?  That's unusual for Rogers Park, which is fairly dense and developed. 

Luckily Rogers Park is well-represented on the old Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, which I used for the graphic above.  The subdividers created an unusually complex alley for this block, probably because the large lot at the top of the block already had a home there and wouldn't agree to allowing the alley right-of-way to cut through to Touhy.   Eventually an alternate alley was inserted on the west edge of the lot.  The home itself was replaced by a filling station some time after 1914.  Up until at least 1905 the area developed residentially.  Most of the single family homes were located away from Clark Street, with its horse-drawn streetcars and later trolleys.

Several of these early residential buildings located on the small lots off the alley but facing Clark Street (shown in red to the right).  For a while  this must have given these small homes a real feeling of spaciousness.  But as Clark developed commercially they were locked away.  As late as 2008 all four of these homes were still there.  Suddenly they're demolished (apparently without a permit), leaving the one frame building which survived only through its earlier conversion into a machine shop.

So what's the next step for this area?  Were these buildings cleared in anticipation of some new development, or is a new parking lot just cheaper than fixing up the homes?  Maybe nothing is next. It seems like this area has been in an awkward transition for about 100 years...