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During the first three decades of the 20th Century, developers were busy supplying the thirst for affordable homes in Gladstone Park with the ever-popular bungalow. The going rate for a basic bungalow of about 24 x 50 feet in an improved area “with hot water heat” in Northwest Chicago then cost approximately $6,500, according to The Chicago Bungalow (Chicago Architecture Foundation).

Some potential homeowners in Gladstone Park in the 1910s to 1940s bucked this trend and it is their houses that are represented by the two older American styles here. They are the ones who bought vacant 30 x 125 foot lots in the area for $150 to $450. Then they contracted with independent builders to erect something different and a little more grand: an American Foursquare or a larger Federal-style colonial. Why? Those electing to build American Foursquares and Federal Colonials were clearly in the market for larger homes of some 2,000 or more square feet versus about 1,200 for the typical bungalow. Because their pocketbooks had to be fuller, these styles are found in lesser numbers in the community.

These larger American-styled homes built in Gladstone Park rejected late 1800s Victorian architecture that preceded it. Symmetry was a hallmark of the American Foursquare with the front door positioned in the center flanked by equal numbers of windows on both sides and above on the second level. Its exterior design featured full-width front porches, cutting out ornateness for “honest’ Prairie School styling. Rather than warrens of rooms inside, it typically had four large squarish rooms in the corners of each of two levels, as befits its foursquare name. (The style was also called the “American Box” or the “Midwest Cube.”) A dormered third floor was available for more space.

Interestingly, even though Sears Home Kit Catalogs were dominated by bungalows in the 1910s, the company debuted an American Foursquare house in 1916 called The Gladstone, which it sold to enterprising homeowners and builders for $884.00. After the company shipped the components to build this entire house, including numbered lumber pieces, roofs, windows, and doors, it became one of its most popular models. It is unknown whether any of the foursquare homes in Gladstone Park were built from Sears Gladstone model house kits.

Federal Colonials became another choice for those in Gladstone Park who sought to build a larger home that was a bit more elaborate than a Foursquare. Federal Colonials, built in the Greco-Roman style like those that sprang up in the Mid-Atlantic region during the early days of the republic are two-and-a-half story brick dwellings distinguished by porches held up by massive white front columns. Also symmetrical in outward appearance, several were scattered in the community from the 1920s to the 1970s, never entirely going out of style. (Some aspects of them show up in the One-of-a-Kind section as modern constructs of hybridized designs.)

Meanwhile, in the late 1940s through the 1990s, newer American-styled homes became more common: Cape Cods and Raised Ranches. These are the dwellings built just as potential homeowners and builders were scooping up the last remaining vacant lots in Gladstone Park.

Found here and there in the community, the Cape Cod had originally been adapted for cold, snowy New England winters…a great fit for Chicago. Its heyday was from the 1930s to the 1950s although the style remains popular enough that some of its features also show up in new houses being built today. While the exterior of the Cape Cod might not appear significantly different from that of the bungalow — both were 1-1/2 stories with dormers for second floor expansion — their interior floor plans were completely different. As another form of colonial, the Cape Cod differed by maintaining symmetry. Its front door was in the middle of its façade and entered onto a centralized staircase with rooms on both sides. Since the Cape Cod was generally wider rather than deep, be sure to look for examples in Gladstone Park that, like the Dutch Colonials before them, were rotated 90 degrees on their lots so that their sides face the streets.

The ranch developed out of the sprawling, low-slung dwellings found on the open ranges of the American West. As such, this style of house, built primarily between the 1940s and 1970s, had to be adapted to the constraints of Gladstone Park city lots as well as to Chicago’s environment. Most of Gladstone Park’s ranches are raised with five to six steps up to their main levels to combat the area’s swampy clay soils that were always threatening to leak into houses. Without any sort of second story, these more compact ranches were designed strictly for main level living even though virtually all have functional windowed basements for extra living space. Larger ranches in Gladstone Park tend to be found on non-standard (wider and shallower) lots inadvertently created on corners by the community’s oddly-angled street intersections.

For more on how Gladstone Park’s standout stock of homes were built and serve to enhance residential life in the neighborhood, see Development and Vintage Home Living.

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