Wowed by front walls of stone, back walls of glass and a rambling, landscape-hugging layout, Kevin Roy and John Park made an offer on their Riverwoods ranch the day after they first saw it.
Avi and Jennifer Ron liked the modern flair of a Keck + Keck ranch they spotted in Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood so much they wooed the former owner with “If you ever want to sell” notes years before buying the home.
And Nick and Cindy Maragos selected their Cinderella-story ranch over dozens of new homes they could have chosen in the Racine, Wis., area, because they saw potential in its subdued style and well-sited, one-story informality.
“The ranch is a home you can really live in,” Nick Maragos says. “It’s casual, easy to maintain and relaxed–which sums up how we like to live and entertain.”
Bypassing showier styles, these and other Midwest homeowners are rediscovering what made ranch homes so popular 50 years ago. The affordable darling of post-World War II America, the ranch was the most common style of house built in the 1950s and 1960s. Family-focused and functional, informal and open, the typically one-story ranch home could be kept compact or allowed to ramble, making it adaptable to many sites. Inside, island kitchens moved with modern moms to the center of the house, and dining areas often were combined with the kitchen or family dens, anchored by large fireplaces. Garages sat streetside, and back yards were the family focal point, with walls of windows at the house’s rear to look out at them.
But with so many thousands built, the ranch became common, a brand of architecture some labeled as cookie-cutter and devoid of style. Not so, say neo-ranch enthusiasts. They point out the ranch has many versions–ranging from rambling, rustic homes like that of Roy and Park to more modernist glass-and-steel versions, such as the Rons’ Keck + Keck. As a result, a new generation of homeowners are renovating, rather than razing, ranch houses.
“We’re behind California and Florida on this, but Chicagoans are showing a renewed interest in midcentury modern design and architecture, including ranch homes,” says Joan Gand, co-founder of Chicago Bauhaus and Beyond, the Chicago area’s first 20th-Century-modern preservationist group, launched in 2004.
Avi and Jennifer Ron are certainly two of them. Avi, a real estate developer, says the house, built by famed Chicago ranch-architect brothers George Fred Keck and William Keck, appealed to his modern design sensibilities, shaped during his childhood in Israel.
“And I love the open-mindedness of the architecture and all the fun furniture and collectibles from the ’50s and ’60s that go with it,” says Jennifer, an emergency room physician. She also says the lack of fussiness or formality works well for raising their toddler son, Gil.
For self-described “Wright-ophile” Roy and midcentury-modern enthusiast Park, “big eaves, lots of wood and stone and a horizontal emphasis” instantly enamored them to their ranch house, Roy says. Because the same features often occur in Frank Lloyd Wright’s homes, it was “a very easy transition to gain an appreciation for ranch homes,” adds Roy, an anchorman and reporter for a local news station who spent time as a volunteer docent at Wright’s Oak Park home and studio.
Also a plus: “There was very little structurally that had to be done when we bought our home early this year,” says Park, a health-care benefits professional. Rustic in feel, with two fireplaces and a living-room wall of craggy lannonstone, the ranch, designed by local architect Burton Frank, used post-and-beam construction to allow for an open interior and back wall of floor-to-ceiling windows.
Such structural integrity isn’t limited to architect-built ranches, says Springfield-based Anthony Rubano, of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency.
“Even tract ranches were often extremely well built with hardwood floors, two-coat plaster on walls instead of drywall, and balloon frames sheathed in plywood, which made for a very strong structure.”
Easy renovating
In addition, the ranch’s one-story, often asymmetrical design makes remodeling and adding on a breeze, so tinkering with floor plans is often easier than with other styles of houses. The homeowners in this story say they had no problem making already-open layouts seem even more spacious by removing walls or adding more windows. Also, the Maragoses and the Rons took advantage of their ranches’ easy-to-add-onto “L” or rectangular shapes by adding rooms to the ends or backs of homes, while a master bedroom and family room were previously added to the ranch owned by Park and Roy.
At the Rons’ home, new features include a commercial kitchen, refinished bathrooms, terrazzo floors in public spaces and walnut floors in private areas. The couple created even more openness in the living and dining area by removing walls and relocating built-ins. They also added a solarium-style studio off the dining room. To add interest from the street, “we just put a commercial glass-and-aluminum door on the garage,” Jennifer Ron says.
Park and Roy made similar changes, putting in a new kitchen and taking out a wall that separated the family room from the kitchen. They also redid bathrooms and painted.
The most comprehensive renovation was at the Maragoses and was done by architect Ken Dahlin. It involved gutting and refinishing the interior and finishing the basement to include two new bedrooms, baths, a sitting room and walkout patio.
Situated on nine acres of wooded land, the small ranch with its low-pitched roof “seemed to just grow out of the site,” says Nick Maragos.
Yet, although it was well sited, with a strong foundation, the interior layout didn’t optimize the views. “We also wanted to make the space as efficient and easy to maintain as possible for lots of entertaining,” Nick says.
Dahlin removed walls from the living and dining area to create one, big casual living space. That, and a new wall of windows wrapping around two sides of the room, opened views to the outdoors. To ease maintenance, most free-standing furniture was replaced with cherry-wood built-ins. The fireplace was refaced with cultured stone to update the room. Also, walls and closets were removed to open up the kitchen and dining area. Next to the kitchen area, a pagoda-like porch was built on, again connecting the indoor living area to the outdoors.
Dahlin says his biggest challenge was to give the newly designed living area “a feeling of spaciousness without altering the pitch of the roof.” The new wall of windows in the living room, a skylight over the dining area and a wall of windows and doors that open to the porch make this happen, he says.
To increase their home’s efficiency, owners repaired or replaced windows with better-insulating double-pane glass. The Rons’ and Maragoes’ houses also included radiant floor heating, which they repaired.
While planning their renovations, Park and Roy say they “kept wishing we could just ask the architect what he would have done,” Park says.
A check of the home’s original blueprints brought an unexpected surprise: the architect’s name. “We were able to track the architect down,” Park says.
Now 90, architect Frank says he’s pleased to see the house coming full circle to his original plans. Seventies-era updates such as flowered wallpaper, velvet drapes and brassy light fixtures came out. Park and Roy reinstalled original can lights they found in storage at the house, added some midcentury modern sconces and artwork and used Frank’s original color palette throughout.
“Brown and muted earth tones work very well in the space,” Frank says.
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Interested in learning more?
As part of a brown-bag lunch series by the Landmark Preservation Council of Illinois, Anthony Rubano of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency will give a lecture called “Through the Picture Window: Postwar Suburban Housing.”
What: A lecture examining American suburban housing after World War II, from the federal legislation that sparked the post-war housing boom to the building technology that fueled its development
When: 12:15 to 1 p.m. July 20
Where: Chicago Cultural Center, 77 E. Randolph Ave.
Cost: Free
Information: www.landmarks.org
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The who’s who of Chicago ranch design
California style-makers Cliff May and Joseph Eichler popularized the ranch home on the West Coast, but Chicago was home to architects whose work was instrumental in shaping the “form-follows-function” credo of the ranch. Among the most prominent were Frank Llold Wright and Mies van der Rohe.
The post-World War II years saw the same phenomenon of suburban sprawl in Chicago that typified the ’50s and ’60s in the rest of the nation. But some suburbs, such as Olympia Fields, Barrington, Riverwoods, Homewood, Flossmoor and areas of Wheaton, Glencoe, Glenview and Highland Park, were known for their lavish architect-designed ranch homes.
“There were many, many architects in the area who built fabulous ranch and midcentury modern homes,” says Joe Kunkel, co-founder of Chicago Bauhaus and Beyond. “Some only worked in custom homes at the very high end of the market and may have only built a few homes, but others, such as Keck + Keck and Edward Humrich, were more prolific and accessible.”
