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A commuter suburb of the 1870s that the city grew around: Victorians and farmhouses on wide lots in Old Irving, a landmark district of Craftsman houses on parkway streets, and two rail lines that still do exactly what they were built to do.
Irving Park began as a railroad suburb in 1869, when a group of investors bought a farm and platted house lots around the new station, and the oldest streets still read that way: Italianates and Queen Annes on lots wider than the city norm, set back behind real front yards. The city annexed it in 1889 and filled the edges with bungalows and two-flats, so the neighborhood today is rings of eras around a Victorian core.
Old Irving Park, roughly Montrose to Addison around the Kennedy, is where the showpieces are; Independence Park’s blocks carry the same DNA a few streets south.
The Villa, a pocket between Addison, Avondale, Pulaski and Hamlin, is a City of Chicago landmark district of Craftsman and Prairie style houses built mostly in the 1910s, laid out on streets with planted parkway medians. It is small, about 126 homes, walkable in twenty minutes, and one of the best places in Chicago to see what the bungalow era could do when it stretched out.
The Blue Line runs the Kennedy’s median through the neighborhood with three stops, and the Metra UP-Northwest shares the Irving Park stop, so the Loop is reachable two ways and O’Hare is a one-seat ride the other direction. The Kennedy itself has ramps at Irving Park and Addison for driving days.
Independence Park hosts a farmers market in season and gives its name to the surrounding blocks. Horner Park, along the river on the neighborhood’s east edge, brings ball fields, a dog park, and access to the riverbank trail. The building everyone photographs is Carl Schurz High School at Milwaukee and Addison, Dwight H. Perkins’s 1910 Prairie School landmark, all brown brick planes and deep eaves.
The range here is wider than almost anywhere on the Northwest Side: 1870s frame houses and Victorians in Old Irving, landmark Craftsmans in the Villa, brick bungalows and Georgians on the outer blocks, and two-flats near the rail lines. Older frame houses ask different questions than brick, so bring our older-homes guide and the spotter’s guide to a showing, and if a Victorian has caught your eye, read up on foundations before you fall in love.
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From Villa Craftsmans to Old Irving Victorians, we can tell you what each block trades at and why. Tell us what you are after and we will set up the search.
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