Between1910 and 1930, Chicago was one of the fastest-growing cities in America. In those 20 years, it added more thana million residents. As second generation immigrants moved up the economic ladder, they typically sought to move outside the denser, older neighborhoods where they had grown up. Investors bought up and subdivided the open prairie on the city’s edges to maximize profits. The American Dream of a house with a yard was as strong a lure then as it is now, and the lots sold quickly to families and developers.
Around 1910, an enterprising architect adapted the traditional square wooden bungalow to accommodate Chicago’s standard 125-by-25 lot and its challenging weather. That started a trend that would dominate the next three decades of home building in the city. By the time the Great Depression hit, some 80,000 Chicago Bungalows stood in a great arc surrounding the city, linking such diverse and distant communities as Lincoln Square, Belmont Cragin, Berwyn, Marquette Park, Chatham and South Chicago.
