I was introduced to the O’Donnell family by a contractor I’d worked with previously named Joe Allen. The O’Donnell’s owned a classic Chicago style brick bungalow in the Sauganash neighborhood on Chicago’s far North-West side.

The O’Donnell’s wanted to put a rooftop addition on their house but were concerned about losing the Chicago brick bungalow aesthetic that attracted them to the house when they made their home purchase years before. In particular, the O’Donnell’s had seen a lot of Chicago bungalows around their neighborhood that looked like a “box” had been dropped on top of the existing roof and house, a look and perception they wanted to avoid.

I asked the O’Donnell’s to drive around their neighborhood and adjacent neighborhoods to photograph rooftop additions that they did like and rooftop additions that they didn’t like. Normally, I wouldn’t ask a client to drive around taking photographs, but Jim O’Donnell was a photographer, so he liked the idea of driving around taking photographs.

Photographs of rooftop additions that the O’Donnell’s liked and didn’t like were our starting point for how we would approach the addition.

The perceived scale and volume of the rooftop addition was broken up or reduced by undulating the plan and elevations on each of the addition’s four sides. The street side of the addition’s roof was curved to mimic the curve of the brick façade below.

Divided lights on the new addition’s windows mimicked the divided lights of the windows below, and window and trim colors were coordinated top to bottom including painted red trim details on the addition visually connecting the red brick of the bungalow’s brick base or first floor and the newly added addition above.

Each of the three new bedrooms was given a unique plan configuration as a result of the undulating exterior profile and elevations. Each of the three bedrooms took advantage of the shallow sloping roofs above to create spatial volumes very different than the flat ceilinged rooms of the first floor and basement.

Not only were the O’Donnell’s happy with their addition, so to was the alderwoman at the time who referenced our project as the proper way to add on to a classic Chicago/Sauganash brick bungalow.