Chicago's Bungalows Making a Comeback

"A lot of our job now is undoing what the previous owner did to make it more 'modern,' " said Jim O'Reilly, 35, a technology consultant for the Chicago public schools who bought a bungalow in the Northwest Side's Albany Park neighborhood in 2001.

The previous owner of the house "did things that he thought made it contemporary," O'Reilly said. "We're restoring it to the way it originally was. He had plastered over the stained-glass windows. There was this awful wood paneling in the kitchen -- my wife just took a crowbar and started tearing it off."

O'Reilly noted that their home isn't far from the bungalow where his Irish immigrant grandfather lived decades ago. His goal is to get his bungalow looking as much as possible as it would have in those days.

"I feel really good about having a part in restoring these old buildings," he said, touching a distinctive arched doorway molding that he had uncovered and polished. "It's neat to have this connection to the past."

Along with the wave of new owners, there are still many families who have lived in their bungalows for decades. Georgia and Thomas Ozanik raised 11 children during 41 years in their Northwest Side bungalow and never considered leaving.

"It's the type of home everyone should own," said Georgia Ozanik, 72. "It's sturdy, you can expand it, we have everything we need here."

While the original residents were mainly European immigrants, over the past 20 years or so bungalows have become housing of choice for some Latino immigrant families. O'Reilly notes that his neighbors are from Guatemala and Mexico. On the Southwest Side, expansive bungalow-filled neighborhoods are dotted with taquerias and Mexican grocery stores. Betty Gutierrez, a 23-year bungalow owner and deputy director of housing services at a Southwest Side economic development corporation, said her neighborhood includes many Latino families as well as descendants of the original European residents.

"It's a very diverse and stable population," she said. "Some of our neighbors have been here over 40 years."

Shanabruch said, "If you were to go around the bungalow belt, you'd find neighborhoods that are predominantly African American, that are predominantly Hispanic and that are mixed Caucasian, African American and Hispanic. It's the whole range, in terms of ethnicity, age and income. In that way, it really represents the city of Chicago."