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SAUGANASH HISTORIC RESIDENCES PROJECT |
BACKGROUND / INFORMATION |
This is a project that the Sauganash Design Committee undertook was to seek membership for the Sauganash neighborhood in the National Register of Historic Places. The National Register of Historic Places is the nation’s official list of places recognized for their historical, architectural, or archaeological significance and considered worthy of preservation. The committee felt that Sauganash represents a unique and well-preserved Chicago residential development from the early 20th century that is worthy of recognition. A group of Loyola University graduate students conducted extensive research on the history of the neighborhood and its homes, and an application for National Historic Register membership was submitted in May 2008. Two of the Loyola students who were most involved in the project traveled to Springfield in June to present their findings to the Illinois Historic Sites Advisory Council, which voted unanimously in support of the application. The application moved on to the National Park Service, which approved the nomination on June 7, 2010 |
DETAILS Wikipedia FAQ A: There are a few reasons why the proposed historic district boundaries do not encompass the entire neighborhood that we know as Sauganash. The nomination was submitted based upon the premise that the Sauganash development represented a departure from other housing options available at the beginning of the 20th century. While most other Chicago neighborhoods were very crowded and overbuilt, and the city center was dirty and polluted, the original developers of Sauganash envisioned a neighborhood where upper middle class residents could help establish their individuality through their homes. These developers, Koester and Zander, targeted a managerial class of worker that was frustrated by the work environment at the turn of the century, when employees began to feel like ‘just another number’ as large offices established hierarchies and workers lost their individuality.
In keeping with this philosophy, no two houses built before WW II in Sauganash are wholly the same. This deviation from the ‘cookie cutter’ approach to building prior to that was radical. After the depression and WW II, when millions of GI’s returned from overseas, the primary focus of home construction became building as many affordable homes as possible to accommodate the large influx of home buyers. Most of the available lots in Sauganash at that time were outside of the proposed historic district so a greater percentage of those homes tend to be less unique. There are exceptions, of course. Of the 721 structures within the proposed historic district, 490 are considered ‘contributing’ and 230 are considered ‘non-contributing’. And certainly outside of the proposed historic district there are homes that surely would have qualified, but the ‘period of significance’ upon which the nomination was submitted ends at 1950.
Another consideration was that the chances of the nomination being approved fell as the percentage of ‘non-contributing’ homes increased, according to the Commission on Chicago Landmarks and the Illinois Historic Sites Advisory Council. Since the nomination is seeking historic register status for an area rather than individual homes, it was not possible to ‘pick and choose’ individual homes throughout the neighborhood so a contiguous area had to be selected where the greatest percentage of ‘contributing’ homes could be realized. |
Steve Besch Maureen DeroseElaine Fitzgerald Nyra Gay Jamie Goodwin Dennis Hammer Michael Kelly Alderman Margaret Laurino Kelly Leggett Danielle Lenihan (Alderman’s Office) |
This page was last updated on: 06/27/2010 |
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