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Sally Ryan for The New York Times

"These are beautiful buildings, and we're going to keep them up," said Will Taylor, 80, who bought his South Side bungalow in 1964 for $19,000.

April 30, 2005
CHICAGO JOURNAL
A City's Once-Lowly Bungalows Rise to Beloved Status
By MONICA DAVEY

CHICAGO, April 29 - This city's brand of bungalow, common and sturdy and squat, long seemed to reflect its typical owners - practical and down-to-earth, never showy in the least. After all, Chicago's so-called bungalow belt was the broad crescent of affordable neighborhoods along the city's outer edges, political code for a swath once depended on at election time for its bloc of mostly working-class families.

But almost a century after the bungalow began popping up on block after block, eventually accounting for 80,000 of this city's homes, this simple stock of small, brick, one-and-a-half story homes with modestly pitched roofs is suddenly receiving revered treatment usually reserved for Chicago's fancier, grander architectural styles, its best-known architects, its beloved skyline.

"Bungalows are as hot as can be now," said Bob Shaeffer, a 47-year-old florist who bought his own four years ago. "The bungalow is almost becoming a collectible around here."

Homeowners may now send photographs of their bungalows, front and back, to an organization called the Historic Chicago Bungalow Association, which may choose to certify them officially as Historic Chicago Bungalows. Tourists will find architectural bus tours that just wander the city's endless rows of bungalows. And this Saturday, thousands of people here are expected to attend the "Bungalow Expo," a place where owners may listen in on workshops addressing nearly every inch of their homes, with titles like "The Vintage Bungalow Interior," "Renovating the Bungalow Garden" and "Your Bungalow Bricks."

It is an enormous shift for the modest bungalow, and one that John Brinkmann, an expert on the style, says he has seen echoed in smaller ways across the country.

Fifteen years ago, when Mr. Brinkmann founded his magazine, American Bungalow, he was met with a blunt reaction, he said. "People asked me, 'Why would you want a magazine on these horrid things?' " he said. "But once they began to see bungalows done properly, there was an amazing awareness that spread and spread."

Even Mr. Brinkmann said he does not know exactly how many bungalows exist across the country. The truth is, he said, that bungalows vary in appearance from city to city and even defining them is no simple task.

"I think a bungalow is more of a frame of mind," he said. "Basically, if you give a kid a crayon and a piece of paper, he will draw a sun and a mommy and a daddy and something closely resembling a bungalow. That simple image, that appeal, stays with us through our lives."

Chicago's brick bungalows were built from 1910 to 1940, the city's first truly modern homes with plumbing, electric and heat, then costing from $6,000 to $15,000, said Charles Shanabruch, the executive director of the bungalow association here.

Five years ago, with help from City Hall and Mayor Richard M. Daley, who himself grew up in a bungalow in the Bridgeport neighborhood, the bungalow association formed, Mr. Shanabruch said, because bungalows were being unfairly besmirched.

"The old image was that bungalows had nothing special to offer and were for working people," he said. "Bungalows were being taken for granted. They were underappreciated. They had made significant contributions to the city but were the least valued."

Since then, the association has certified about 6,500 bungalows. The association turns down 5 percent or 10 percent of those who apply - people who sometimes try to pass off a stucco or frame or raised ranch-style home as a bungalow.

The designation makes owners who are rehabilitating their bungalows eligible for financial grants for energy conservation efforts. So far, three neighborhoods of bungalows have received National Register of Historic Places designations, entitling their residents to receive tax breaks if they make significant improvements to their homes.

Officials here are still trying to determine how much the value of the bungalow has increased in Chicago. Mr. Shanabruch said that estimates put the average cost now around $235,000, and that ownership now includes a wide range of races, ethnicities and levels of income. But some bungalow owners point to far higher prices in some neighborhoods, and wonder whether the day may come when a bungalow costs too much for the kinds of families who once owned them.

"The irony here is that the bungalow, in some cases, may now be getting out of reach for some people," said Ann Durkin Keating, a professor of history at North Central College and the co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Chicago. "That's kind of the antithesis of what the bungalow was supposed to be."

For now, though, bungalow owners are uniting in pride here. "Everyone on my block is registering theirs," said Will Taylor, 80, who bought his South Side bungalow in 1964 for $19,000. "These are beautiful buildings, and we're going to keep them up."

But with so much attention now lavished on the bungalow, what of the other architectural styles here that once may have carried a bit more cachet? What of the Georgian, the Cape Cod, the cottage, the Queen Anne?

John G. Markowski, commissioner of the city's Department of Housing, acknowledged on Friday that he may have heard a few hints of envy about the sudden love of the bungalow from some owners of the city's 220,000 other single-family homes.

"But no other building style is as emblematic as the bungalow for the city of Chicago," Mr. Markowski said. "The city's future is completely tied up with the bungalow."

That said, another group of homeowners formed not long ago. They are in the planning stages, Mr. Markowski said, hoping for their own initiative, their own renaissance. They are the owners of Chicago's graystones.

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