09/03/2026
There are around 80,000 Chicago bungalows still standing, and they make up roughly a third of the city's single-family housing stock.
They went up mostly between 1910 and 1940, filling in the bungalow belt, a ring of neighborhoods a few miles out from downtown that got built as the streetcar and el lines pushed outward. Portage Park, Jefferson Park, Beverly, Chatham, Auburn Gresham, Norwood Park, Garfield Ridge and dozens more.
The type is specific enough to be recognized instantly. One and a half stories in brick, almost always brick, with a low-pitched hipped roof, wide overhanging eaves, and the long dimension running front to back on a narrow city lot. The front has a projecting bay with a bank of windows. There is a full basement and an unfinished attic under that roof, waiting to be turned into bedrooms as the family grew.
The details are what people love. Art glass windows with geometric leading. Oak trim, built-in cabinets and a fireplace inlaid with tile. Wood floors. Solid plaster walls.
The economics were the point. A Chicago bungalow was affordable for a working family in the 1920s, built by the thousands by developers using standardized plans, sold to Polish, Irish, Italian, Czech, Swedish and later Black families as they moved out of crowded older neighborhoods.
That is why the building type carries so much weight here. It represents the moment a working family in this city could own something.
The Historic Chicago Bungalow Association runs programs for owners doing rehab work, and the type has been recognized as a distinctive American housing form.
The neighborhoods have changed. The houses mostly have not.
Drive any bungalow belt street and they run block after block, nearly identical, each one slightly different.
