In the first third of the 20th century, Chicago’s population more than doubled—and with it, the city’s architecture and housing stock transformed. Developers erected high-rise luxury apartment buildings for the city’s wealthier residents while immigrants and poorer Chicagoans were crowded into blocks of packed tenements. In the middle of the spectrum emerged the bungalow.
Between 1910 and 1930, Chicago developers built tens of thousands of bungalows — one-and-a-half story buildings characterized by low-pitched overhanging roofs, a narrow rectangular shape, expansive front windows, front porches, and limestone detailing.
“You had a lot of immigrants and a lot of people crammed into homes that didn’t have ample light or air circulation, bathrooms, electricity, any of it,” said Carla Bruni, the preservation and resiliency specialist at the Chicago Bungalow Association. “Bungalows were built in a very affordable way, even though they’re really well-built by today’s standards. You would never build these anymore. They would be so cost prohibitive.”
In their heyday, bungalows were known for being sturdy and efficient to build. Plus, unlike some tenements, they were outfitted with electricity and plumbing. The brick buildings popped up in neighborhoods along the western edge of the city, including parts of what are now Austin and North Lawndale, creating the “Bungalow Belt.” A Chicago bungalow typically has bedrooms on the first floor and an unfinished attic space that could be expanded down the line, once the homeowners had enough cash.
Bungalows, which required a relatively small down payment and low monthly payments, helped foster homeownership among the city’s middle and lower-middle class. While bungalows “provided Chicago homebuyers of moderate means with extraordinary levels of domestic comfort,” according to the National Register of Historic Places property documentation, Black people were mostly excluded from owning them until the 1950s.
“You’d have every sort of socioeconomic background. You’d have somebody who worked in the meatpacking plants, and maybe his wife would be doing clerical work somewhere, and then they maybe had five kids. And then you’d have a doctor and his wife only living right next to them on a corner lot, because those tended to be bigger bungalows,” Bruni said. “It was really a socioeconomic mix, excluding African American families.”
While the Great Depression severely curtailed bungalow construction, more than 80,000 remain standing in Chicago, accounting for one-third of the city’s single-family housing stock.
The Chicago Bungalow Association was established in 2000 by Mayor Richard M. Daley to preserve the existing bungalow housing stock and prevent further demolition. The goal, Bruni said, was to save this relatively affordable housing type. Tearing down a durable structure like a bungalow is not only an affront to Chicago’s iconic architecture, but also contributes to landfill waste — and whatever a developer builds in its place would be more expensive.
The organization now serves all owners of homes older than 50 years and connects homeowners with resources to maintain their home, including webinars, a community social media forum and a database of referrals for contractors that can help with roofing, insulation, water systems, exteriors and more. About 1,000 members of the CBA live in Austin, Bruni said.
“A lot of people have fought really, really hard over decades to stay in their homes,” Bruni said. “With taxes going up, with insurance, utilities going up with repairs that get out of control, because it’s so hard to find the money to maintain your home, a lot of people are in very precarious situations. So we try to figure out ways through helping people understand how to repair things, what you might be able to do yourself.”
Owners of bungalows and other older homes often have high electric, gas and water bills — a challenge CBA is addressing through its Home Energy Savings Program. In partnership with ComEd, Nicor Gas, Peoples Gas and North Shore Gas, CBA provides free home energy services and improvements, including a free assessment to identify energy use. The goal is to help homeowners seal and weatherize their homes, which makes the structure more energy efficient and helps to lower energy bills. The organization has conducted thousands of full air sealing insulations, with a typical error reduction of 40% to 50%, meaning more of the cooled air is circulated.
Barbara Seales, who moved into her Austin/West Humboldt Park-area bungalow more than two decades ago, participated in the energy savings program. Contractors installed insulation under her porch and in her walls and attic, and installed an eco-friendly thermostat. Seales said she was pleased with the insulation process and has seen cost savings.
“Once I heard about this opportunity from a friend to get the insulation done, I followed up on it right away. Over time the house gets kind of airy—you get cracks and it settles and everything. So it was kind of airy, and I wanted it to be warmer. I’m one of the fortunate ones. My enclosed back porch is heated, but it was still very airy in the winter time,” Seales said. “I love my enclosed back porch now, because I can go out there and enjoy it in the winter. It’s not just a seasonal part of the house.”
While energy efficiency upgrades can be helpful to owners of old homes, these improvements are not accessible if a home needs structural repairs like fixing a leaky roof. CBA has teamed up with social justice artist Tonika Lewis Johnson on unBlocked Englewood, an arts-driven community redevelopment project providing Englewood residents with funds to repair and beautify their homes.
One of the goals, Johnson said, is to use investment to address and counteract the historic disinvestment in Black neighborhoods that has made it difficult for residents to afford repairs for their homes. Of the 24 homes on the block that the project is targeting, half have successfully undergone repairs, including addressing roofing, plumbing, and electrical problems.
unBlocked Englewood isn’t just about repairing homes, Johnson said. It also encourages community engagement. She added that she hopes the project inspires city planners, policymakers and local government officials to address historic harms more directly and creatively.
“If it were not for those homeowners, our neighborhood would be suffering even more. It is because of those owner occupied homeowners [that] we actually have a foundation to even consider building from,” Johnson said. “We have to address helping existing homeowners in Black neighborhoods because we want them to remain homeowners and pay property taxes and help support the public amenities in the neighborhood, and that can only happen if people can afford to live in the homes that they have, and they can do so safely.”
