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)

Charlie Daily's Home, 2206 W. Lunt

When the photo archives of the old Chicago Daily News went online it was pretty exciting, even though the photos were small and didn't have much background information.  During a trial search I came across a model home built in Rogers Park in 1924.  Below are photos from construction of the foundation to near-completion.  It was solidly built of tile blocks and finished with stucco. But where was it, exactly?  And is it still there?

Click to see slightly larger version

According to the photo descriptions, it was built near the intersection of Lunt and Pingree.  But for some reason there is no Pingree Street any more. It took a quick internet search to find out that Pingree became Bell.  And sure enough, the house is still there.

2206 W. Lunt-   Photo taken a few days after our big blizzard.


So this was a good discovery, if you're into that sort of thing.  But there was something about this building that looked familiar.  It took a while for me to realize that I had seen this design before.  And I didn't have look further than my bookcase:

Sure, the windows above the entrance were different, the roof was asphalt shingles instead of Italian tile, and the porch was around back.  Other than that, it was pretty darn close.   The image on the left is from a Dover reprint, "Authentic Small Houses of the Twenties," originally published in 1929  as "Small Homes of Architectural Distinction:  A Book of Suggested Plans Designed by the Architects' Small House Service Bureau, Inc."

All told, the Chicago Daily News built three model homes--  one in West Rogers Park, one in Jackson Park Highlands (6847 S. Cregier), and one in River Forest, IL (250 Lathrop).  I couldn't find the one in River Forest, but the one on Cregier is still there, and looking good.  Apparently their readers were updated on the progress of the work in the Saturday edition of the newspaper.  It took a quick microfilm search at the Harold Washington Library to confirm that the Rogers Park house was taken directly from plans from the Architect's Small House Service Bureau.  As modest as they seem now, these must have been very famous homes in their time.

One of the strangest things about these projects was that the newspaper concocted fictional backgrounds for all three homes.  For instance, the home in River Forest was identified as "The Home of Tom News."  The one in Jackson Park, "The Home of John Daily News, Jr."  And in Rogers Park, "The Home of Charlie News."  And of course their fictional wives and children were identified as well.  

I'm fascinated by these old pattern books.  They catered to middle-class buyers looking for traditional, single-family homes.  The most famous were from Sears-Roebuck, where you could not only pick a house but have all of the materials delivered to your site.  But there were also homes available from Aladdin, Gordon Van Tine, Lewis, Sterling, and many other, lesser-known companies.  These were advertised as a good option for people who couldn't afford architects but still wanted the benefit of an efficiently designed and attractive house.  If you look carefully you can still find them in outlying areas and suburbs. 

These books mostly disappeared after the 1940s.  During the post-war boom home construction took off in ways that left the small neighborhood builder far behind.  New development took advantage of economies of scale, new materials, and a greater level of standardization.  As alleys disappeared garages migrated to the front of the homes and the character and scale of neighborhoods changed.  Only recently have architects and developers realized that there's still a market for the traditional, pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods memorialized in the pattern books of the early 20th century.  Here in Chicago we're lucky to still have the real thing.