The Victorian worker's cottage, the basic building block of Chicago's blue-collar neighborhoods before the turn of the century, now is prized for its simple, yet classic architecture, experts say.
"Today, Victorian worker's cottages can be found in good numbers in the city's older neighborhoods, from Old Town and Lincoln Park to Wicker Park, Ukrainian Village and Bucktown," noted Charles Huzenis, president of Jameson Realty Group.
"The architecture of the classic worker's cottage is simple," Huzenis said. "Usually, the building is a 2-story frame with a peaked roof and sometimes adorned with an attic."
Architectural embellishments on the roofline can include brackets and dentil-style trim, arched windows crowned with "eye-brows" or cornice-style molding, architects say.
After 1850, the worker's cottage provided affordable housing for German immigrants who began to settle in southwest Lincoln Park, Huzenis said. The Sheffield Historic District, placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, has a rare collection of vintage frame worker's cottages.
"Many workers lived in the frame cottages and labored in furniture factories and breweries that lined the Chicago River," Huzenis said.
After the turn-of-the century new waves of European immigrants—including Italians, Poles, Slovaks, Serbians, Romanians and Hungarians—came to the city to work in industrial plants and brickyards springing up along the river.
They, too, resided in the worker's cottages in West Town—today's River West, Bucktown, Wicker Park and Ukrainian Village neighborhoods.
"Following the Chicago Fire, the frame worker's cottages began to disappear," Huzenis said. "Typically, the cottages erected in the 1870s and 1890s were built of brick."
Some of the most unique stone-faced worker's cottages were built in Bucktown between 1870 and 1919. Dubbed "Shepherd's Cottages," the squat but charming 1-story homes featured covered entries festooned with decorative Victorian fretwork and gingerbread.
By the 1920s many of the old original frame cottages were razed to make way for brick 2-flats and 3-flats, historians say.
Today's remaining worker's cottages sometimes stand on 25-foot-wide lots that appear to be sinking below street level.
"After the Chicago Fire, many of the city's older streets were raised for the installation of modern sewers, and sidewalks were vaulted creating sunken front yards," Huzenis noted. |
