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One of the city’s great bungalow reservoirs: block after block of brick between Fullerton and Belmont, a 57-acre park with a sledding hill in the middle, and a shopping crossroads at Belmont and Central that never went quiet.
Belmont Cragin filled in the 1920s as factories along the belt railways handed out paychecks and the bungalow builders kept pace, and it has stayed one of Chicago’s most complete brick neighborhoods. The Belmont-Central crossing grew into a shopping district that still ranks among the busiest outside downtown, and Fullerton and Grand carry their own long retail runs. Montclare, the small square west of it against the Elmwood Park line, keeps quieter streets of bungalows and Georgians around Rutherford Sayre Park.
Jacob A. Riis Park is the neighborhood’s backyard: 57 acres with a fieldhouse, pool, gymnastics center, ball fields, and the toboggan hill generations have grown up on. The park hosts festivals through the summer and its walking loop works all year.
Brick bungalows in every variation, Georgians and Cape Cods from the next wave, two-flats along the busier streets, and frame cottages on the oldest blocks near the rail lines. It is exactly the housing our brick guide and home styles field guide were written for, and the two-flats make strong owner-occupant math; our investment guide shows how to run it.
This is a bus-and-car neighborhood: no L stop inside it, but Belmont, Fullerton, Grand and Central buses cover the grid, the Metra Milwaukee District West stops at Hanson Park on the southern edge, and the Kennedy is minutes up Central or Cicero. Midway and O’Hare split the difference from here.
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