The Avalon Park Bungalow Historic District is located on the southeast side of Chicago, approximately ten miles from the Loop. The district is roughly bounded by E. 79th Street to the north; S. Harper Avenue to the east, E. 83rd Street to the south; and S. Woodlawn Avenue to the west.

The Gage Park Bungalow Historic District is located in Community Area 63 on the southwest side of Chicago, approximately seven miles from the Chicago Loop. The district is roughly bounded by W. 55th Street to the north, S. Washtenaw Avenue to the east, W. 59th Street to the south, and S. Sacramento Avenue to the west.

The Hermosa Bungalow Historic District is located in Community Area 20 on the northwest side of Chicago, approximately 6 miles from the city’s commercial center. The district is roughly bounded by W. Belmont Avenue to the north, N. Lowell Avenue to the east, W. Diversey Avenue to the south, and N. Kolmar Avenue to the west.

Brainerd experienced white flight in the1960s, and 2/3rds of white residents left Washington Heights. African Americans had previously been forced to live in certain cramped pockets of the city and finally were able to spread out into other areas of the city to look for better homes and jobs. 

By the 1920s, with expanded transportation lines and construction of Portage Park and Portage Park Elementary School, residential, industrial, and commercial construction in the area quickly increased, particularly in the vicinity of the park, where the Portage Park Bungalow Historic District is located.

While many parts of the city responded either with luxury high-rise apartments or blocks of tenement housing, these new districts of single-family homes provided an alternative, accessible form of living for the existing middle classes and new populations of immigrants seeking the American dream. 

Originally an uninhabited swampy area of South Chicago, West Chatham began to flourish as a bungalow neighborhood in the 1920’s. During the first three decades of the 20th century Chicago’s South Side experienced a rapid growth of working class residents with it’s proximity to Jackson Park. 

 Built between 1919 and 1930 by dozens of different architects and builders, the Talman West Ridge Historic District reflects the coming of age of the Chicago bungalow, when local architects and builders began experimenting with form and stylistic detailing to create bungalows that were unique to Chicago. 

Located approximately one mile west of Lake Michigan and one mile south of Jackson Park, site of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, the South Shore community developed significantly earlier than most areas within Chicago’s bungalow belt. Around half of the homes within the district were constructed before 1920. 

What distinguishes the bungalows that sprang up between the two northwest extensions of the Chicago, Minneapolis and St. Paul during the 1910s and 1920s is the fact that they were not segregated from the industrial and manufacturing districts where many of their residents worked.

Despite their restrained style, the early bungalows in North Mayfair were well built and well-designed homes. Architects like Benedict Bruns and Ernest Braucher were just beginning to make names for themselves within the emerging bungalow belt. These early bungalows, though simple, reflected a thorough understanding of the form.

Between 1915 to 1930 willing developers and builders in combination with various architects and contractors, built homes in the subdivision one at a time or in small groups of no more than five, which gave Rogers Park Manor a sense of diversity in its housing stock that more rigidly planned bungalow neighborhoods lacked.

The Wrightwood district reflects both large-scale speculative building and individual residential development. Stoltzner Construction Company and architect Joseph Klafter designed and built all thirty-two bungalows on the 4600 block of W. Wrightwood Avenue in 1923-1924. 

The South Park Manor District reflects the rise and popularity of the Chicago bungalow and the promotion of single-family homeownership between 1910 and 1930. The district is unique among Chicago bungalow neighborhoods, however, because of its spacious landscape.

The area that would become Schorsch Irving Park Gardens lay largely undeveloped until the turn of the century—the opening of the Milwaukee Avenue streetcar line through Portage Park in 1894 and the extension of another line along Irving Park Road in 1896 raised new interest in the area’s development.