Falconer Bungalow Historic District, Chicago

The Falconer Bungalow Historic District is a residential historic district in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. The district comprises 348 Chicago bungalows built from 1915 to 1931. As homeownership became more affordable in early twentieth century Chicago, the bungalow became popular as an affordable and easily replicable home style, and tens of thousands of the homes were built throughout the city. While more industrial than average, the Belmont Cragin area was otherwise typical of the new bungalow neighborhoods, as it was an underdeveloped area on the outskirts of the city. Laughlin Falconer, for whom the district is named, owned and farmed on the land before dividing it and selling it to developers in 1913. Architects Ernest Braucher and Johan F. Knudson designed most of the bungalows in the district; both architects frequently gave their houses full-length, open-air front porches, and the district has one of the city's most significant collections of open front porch bungalows as a result. ()