Wicker Park Cottage

The Wicker Park Cottage is a substantially renovated 19th century worker’s cottage and coach house that is now a single-family home in the heart of Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood. It’s age and location dictated special consideration of its historic street presence and its particular masonry and timber structure resulted in a unique design solution that weaves together its compact and subdivided floor plates, providing open and interconnected living spaces with ample natural light and exterior connection. New exterior “rooms” are composed between the reworked massings on the site, making the most out of the compact, urban lot.

This project was an exercise in bringing a historic, yet ad-hoc property of undermaintained masonry structures into a cohesive, modern house connected through view and light. The generative spark for the project’s organization was the 19th century coach house that – through extensive historic and archival research – we had determined was moved and elevated from its original location. The property was designated a historically significant structure by the City, but the lower cladding and post and beam stilts were clearly later modifications. We chose to embrace and enhance this curious arrangement by replacing the old timber stilts with new steel, digging out the half basement below, and replacing the pressed siding with a ribbon of windows, all while keeping the masonry structure above in place. We therefore created a whole new usable, light filled space for the client while preserving precious outdoor space on the urban site. This ethos of preserve, yet enhance, extended to the rest of the site. The guiding principles were to unite space, improve visual connection within and to the exterior, and maximize natural light and ventilation, all while embracing the quirks of the urban lot and creating delight through a variety of spaces. What once was a tightly packed, dark set of small rooms is now a site that flows from front to back, lower levels to upper levels, and from interior to exterior, all while continuing to present a sedate, historical facade to its surrounding neighborhood.