West Chatham Bungalow Historic District

West Chatham Bungalow Historic District is a quiet, tree-lined residential area on Chicago's South Side, about ten miles south of the Loop. It holds 347 buildings, most of them brick Chicago bungalows built between 1914 and 1930, along with two-flats, a school and a 1950s church. Much of the area was swampy and sparsely built until the 1920s, and about a third of the bungalows went up in 1925 alone. Ernest Braucher designed more than 80 of them, many in partnership with developer Joseph B. Serrin, while F. A. Fielder gave Yale Avenue its Art Deco facades. The houses share low hipped roofs, overhanging eaves, decorative brickwork and limestone trim, and they sit at consistent setbacks on narrow lots. Of the total, 289 buildings retain enough original character to contribute. The district is significant as an example of the affordable single-family housing that served Chicago's growing middle class and immigrant families during the early twentieth century.