Bungalow Style: Brick, Stucco, Framed Craftsmen
We can’t talk about bungalows in Gladstone Park without talking about the American Dream. It was what lit a fire in European peasants who had been excluded from bettering their lives by the economic and social class structure of the Old World, luring millions to our shores and to Chicago in particular. Immigrants came not only to seek basic human freedoms they had never had, but also for the opportunity to achieve what had previously been impossible for them to do in the lands where they had been born. In countries where only the eldest son could inherit property, America opened doors for those thrown off the land they grew up on. Besides gaining access to new jobs and educational opportunities in this country, they also sought the previously-unimaginable goal to own their own homes.
The American bungalow was the first affordable, quality house style that made the American dream possible. Particularly drawn to the home design were Polish immigrants who had long sought sanctuary in Chicago in large numbers. At first clustering in the area that came to be known as “Polish Downtown,” centered at the intersection of W. Division and N. Milwaukee some eight miles south of Gladstone Park, the Poles began spreading outward as their financial circumstances improved. In the city’s northwest where their money went farther, they found they could jumpstart making their dreams into realities with bungalows all their own.
With their influx into the neighborhood’s bungalows, Polish influence in Gladstone Park grew and continues to be strong as you will see in the Community section. Even today, Polish is the third most widely-spoken language in Chicago, after English and Spanish. The Windy City still has the largest population of Poles outside of the mother country.
As the “everyman” house, the sturdy bungalow that became popular during the first two decades of the 20th Century offered formal living and dining rooms, a full working kitchen, and two bedrooms flanking a bath. Generous-sized for its time, it was part of the modern movement toward bigger accommodations. Its main level floor plan typically ranged between 800 and 1300 square feet, fitting perfectly on the 30- to 35-foot wide lots in Chicago (and Gladstone Park) developments.
Chicago bungalow design was largely influenced the the Prairie School architecture associated with Frank Lloyd Wright who had his major studio in Oak Park, just west of the city. As such, the homes were affordable with purposeful amenities such as built-ins that distinguished them from European designs. Except for a handful of flat-roofed models, they had half-stories upstairs under hip roofs with front-facing dormer windows that made them ideal for expansion. They also had full basements and modern services such as hot water heat, city water and sewer, and electric wiring.
It so happened that when Sears Kit Homes were proliferating across America, bungalows were one of its most popular offerings. Undoubtedly there are at least a few bungalows constructed from these kits in Gladstone Park, but little has yet been done to try to determine exactly where and how many there might be. Official Sears Kit Homes researchers discuss being hamstrung by the way Cook County indexes its properties, preventing them from doing mass lookups for them like they can do in other Illinois counties.
Homeowners who wish to explore whether they might be living in a Sears Kit Home are advised to start their searches with visual inspections, comparing their houses with illustrations from the book Houses by Mail by Stevenson and Jandl. If they can be found, original building permits can authenticate the process, as they would often mark a house as a Sears product or list it under the name of a Sears Kit architect. Homeowners can also consult title transfers to see if the names of Walker O. Lewis or E Harrison Powell are associated with the property, which indicates the original owner received financing through Sears Roebuck. Additional information may be sourced from SearsHouses.com with links to various blogs.
Although Sears’ all-in-one concept was tempting for prospective homeowners eager to build modest bungalows on their own lots in Gladstone Park, most people here picked out plans supplied by house design companies recommended by their builders. The difference in approach was that while Sears shipped the components to build entire dwellings directly to a homeowner’s lot (including numbered lumber pieces, doors, windows, bathroom fixtures and kitchen counters), companies like William A. Radford provided the blueprints only. While people who chose the Sears Kit Home route paid upfront for all building and finishing materials before the company shipped everything to them on huge pallets via rail and truck, those who bought blueprints had more time to plan, budget and even make alterations as they were overseeing construction. So while people contracting for Sears Kit Homes knew exactly what they were going to end up with–no substitutions!–clients of Radford and other architectural firms had more ability to design one-of-a-kind homes with larger kitchens or wider front porches, say, as well as handpick different materials for more custom touches.
In 1925 William A. Radford began offering a 30-foot by 51-foot brick bungalow design with five rooms and bath called The Gladstone. It is unknown whether any Radford Gladstones were built in Gladstone Park…or if Radford even knew there was a Gladstone Park community in Chicago.
Stucco Bungalows were the first permutation of these modest, compact homes built in Gladstone Park (between 1900 to 1919), a few with red or green tile roofs. Some of these are built in the Detroit style with taller gable, not hip, roofs.
When the 1920s came along, the distinctly Chicago Brick Bungalow emerged. Constructed of locally-sourced materials, it had double-thick brick walls for superior insulation and fireproof abilities. The majority of models were designed with limestone accents and massive front masonry steps leading up to entry doors accessible from half or full-width columned porches. An alternate style had its entry door at ground level halfway down the side of the house with interior stairs leading up to a central hall on its main level, allowing for a massive living room spanning the full width at the front of the house with solid walls of windows facing the street.
In fact, windows everywhere were generous, often in clusters of two, three, or more to let in natural light. More expensive models were not just larger, but had more elaborate windows, sometimes with art (stained leaded) glass, built into half-hexagonal living room extensions. Art glass could sometimes also be found in narrow closet windows, even though most closet windows were formed of unopenable glass block. Bathrooms routinely had glass block windows built high up on the wall over the bathtub, sometimes with a central screened section that could be opened for ventilation.
Arched front doors, elliptical front basement windows, built-in window boxes and imposing tapered porch columns were some of the other special features of bungalows for those who could afford the bells and whistles.
In the Gladstone Park developments, like almost everywhere, there are only a dozen or so basic bungalow designs. But you’d never know it, for builders deliberately varied the façade of every single one of them so that each was distinct unto itself. No cookie cutters here! Look at the photographs to see how masons used face (fancy) brick of multiple colors and styles on their fronts, integrating patterns with decorative stone accents to create distinctively different appearances even on houses with the same exterior structural design.
At the same time the brick bungalow was multiplying in Gladstone Park, the more modestly-priced Frame Craftsman Bungalow that otherwise looked similar was being built in the community. Because they were meant to hunker down onto a landscape of cold winters with abundant snow, their basic wood-clad shapes were boxier with fewer flourishes than those of their Chicago brick cousins. In this way they were also radically different from the California craftsman style bungalows with all their exterior decorative details such as exposed rafters and pilastered front porches.
For more on how Gladstone Park’s standout stock of homes were built and serve to enhance residential life in the neighborhoods, see Early Development and Vintage Home Living.
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