West Ridge Architecture #3 - Gabled Colonials

In this series you're going to see more examples of buildings types than you might expect. Or want. My intent is the same as a natural history museum seeking to show the variations present in a population, including the typical and the atypical. If that means I have to draw nearly identical buildings, so be it.

These homes are very similar to the Georgian-revivals detailed in the previous post, but some minor changes make them appear distinctive.  The architect has pulled a portion of the front facade slightly forward and extended the wall upwards to create a gable.  This has the effect of breaking up the massing of the facade and creating a more vertical orientation.  But the total square footage of the homes are probably identical.

Again, there is an offset front entrance balanced by a decorative bay window. These are primarily brick with stone details, although there are a few unusual examples on Fitch which are entirely clad in stone. More typically, stone is used as an ornamental accent for the front door and as cladding below the sill of the projecting bay. 

A number of these homes have front facing single-car attached garages. This is odd to me, since the blocks in West Ridge also have alleys.  Private driveways are a common suburban feature, but are somewhat luxurious in dense Chicago neighborhoods.  I'm guessing that parcels with a little extra width were provided with attached garages as selling points, but also as a way to evoke the type of suburban construction which was  attracting new homeowners in the 1950s.  The addition of driveways to the streetscape break up the front yards, but the lack of fences in these areas help to maintain a feeling of space.

West Ridge Architecture #2 - Asymmetrical Georgians

These boxy Georgian-styled homes are found in West Ridge, but also throughout the city and  The ones from the 1940s are solid brick, while later versions are concrete block with a face brick veneer. Most have stone trim or details.  Unlike the original Georgians, they are asymmetrical, with the front entrance to one side and the projecting bay with standing seam metal roof on the other. You can sometimes find identical versions on the same block with left- or right-handed orientations.
suburbs. 

Typically they have a raised entrance with an ornamental surround, a decorative bay on the first floor, colonial windows with shutters, and a hipped or pyramidal roof with minimal eaves.  The examples to the right are not drawn from an exhaustive survey of the type, but represent many of the typical characteristics. They're collected here to show some of the variations found throughout the neighborhood. 

The Georgian Revival style, which can be categorized as a subset of the Colonial Revival, had long been advertised in home catalogs and pattern books as the perfect combination of hominess and sophistication.  It could also be simplified easily while maintaining its basic characteristics. It lent itself to a variety of materials and expressions, from wood to stone and brick.  And it clearly appealed to the families who began to move to West Ridge following WWII.

Versions sometimes appear which bend the mold, like the example at 6813 N. Ridge.  The main entrance is at-grade, and casement windows replace the typical double-hung colonial windows. A portion of the building has been extruded forward, resulting in a more vertical orientation and a more complex roof configuration.

It's common to find these homes with entrances canopies resembling the roof over the projecting bay.  The more efficient version of these extends the roof bay over the entrance, hitting two birds with one stone.  This is especially common on the examples built later in the 1950s, when they begin to take on a more modern cast.

I can't emphasize enough how important the shutters are for this style. In some cases my illustrations restore those which have been removed.  Sure, they're non-functional and kind of silly, but the homes just don't look right without them.

When I started to look at these I was hoping there would be a clear progression from more historically-styled versions of the 1940s to modern types with minimal ornamentation from the 1950s.  Some of that can be seen, but not as much as I expected.  But as I pile up some more examples from the neighborhood perhaps some  new models for facade evolution will be suggested.

What I did begin to notice was how much the multifamily buildings from the 1950s and 60s borrowed from the architectural expressions of these single family homes.  But that will wait for a future post.