Dover Street District

“(1898), once the home of Illinois Governor John P. Altgeld. Although the building appears to be a large single-family residence, it was originally constructed as a two-flat. Other handsome examples of these small flat buildings include the brick three-flat at 4700 N. Dover St., with its Gothic Revival-style detailing, and the brick two-flat at 4707 N. Dover with Prairie-style ornament and decorative windows.”

“Development of Dover Street may be broadly considered in two phases. In the first phase, occurring approximately from the construction of the first house in 1893 to about 1901, the District developed as an outlying neighborhood consisting of large, high-quality single-family houses.”

“Perhaps the most visually unusual is the Indian Boundary Park Fieldhouse (1929; a designated Chicago Landmark) in the West Ridge community area, designed with Native American-inspired ornament. John A. Nyden, the architect of 4637 N. Dover St., was born in 1878 in Sweden.”

“Taken together, the ensemble of Rogers' houses in the District represent a significant and early ensemble of this important architect's body of work. In his Dover Street house designs, Rogers' placed his own stamp on the Tudor Revival style, especially in the half timbering with its unusually wide boards and simplified geometry.”

“Prominent Chicagoan and president of the Graceland Cemetery, Bryan Lathrop (upper left) helped finance the residential development of Dover Street. As the landscape architect for Graceland Cemetery, Ossian Cole Simonds (upper right) helped establish the Prairie school of landscape design.”

“Two years after the establishment of the Sheridan Park Station, the first house appeared on Dover Street. During the remaining years of the 1890s, seventeen more houses were constructed in the District.”

“The Dover Street District, with its handsome grouping of historic flats and larger apartment buildings built principally between circa 1900 and 1927, contains distinctive examples of this significant aspect of Chicago neighborhood architectural development.”

“The Dover Street District has remained a handsome and largely intact set of residential streetscapes in the years since 1927, when the last building was built during the District's significant period of development.”

“The building at 4601-17 N. Dover St., built in 1914, exemplifies the courtyard apartment building type. ARCHITECTURAL STYLES The Dover Street District's single-family houses, flats, and apartment buildings exhibit a mix of stylistic influences and display fine craftsmanship in their ornamentation and use of traditional building materials such as wood, brick and stone.”

“Compared with the typical flat buildings found in Chicago, the flats on Dover Street are unusual in their expression of popular architectural styles of the period, perhaps best exemplified by the Prairie-style two-flat building at 4707 N. Dover (left), and the Gothic Revival-style two flat at 4629 N. Dover (lower left).”