Remodeling contractor in Norwood Park, Chicago

Norwood Park was its own village from 1874 until voters approved annexation to Chicago in 1893. Today the City of Chicago Department of Buildings issues the permit, and the city requires a general contractor licence for most construction and alteration work. We pull the permit and handle the inspections.

Two Norwood Park houses are designated Chicago Landmarks. The Noble Seymour Crippen House at 5624 N. Newark Avenue dates to 1833, and its small south wing is believed to be the city's oldest surviving building. The John Wingert House at 6231 N. Canfield Avenue was built in 1854 as a farmhouse, with an Italianate two story section added by 1875.

The Wingert House shows how landmark status works in practice. After a fire in 2021 it was rehabbed with an entirely new open plan interior, but all exterior details were restored or replicated, as its landmark status required. If you own a designated landmark, plan any exterior change with that review in mind from the first sketch.

The Norwood Park Historic District went on the National Register on November 21, 2002. It covers a subdivision platted in 1868 and 1869 by the Norwood Land and Building Association, with large lots on curving streets around open green space. The listing names late 1800s Victorians, Foursquares, Tudors, Colonial Revivals, Chicago bungalows, Cape Cods, post war ranches and Sears catalog houses.

National Register listing is honorary. It puts no construction restrictions on your house, though certified restorations can earn financial incentives. Most of the housing is post war: CMAP's 2026 snapshot puts 62.7 percent of homes in the 1940 to 1969 range, with a median year built of 1954, and 71.5 percent are detached single family houses.

This is what sets Norwood Park apart. In 1994 the city approved two special character overlay districts around Norwood Park Circle, the first of their kind in Chicago. They sit on top of the normal zoning.

In overlay district 1, each lot needs at least 7,500 square feet per dwelling unit and at least 50 feet of street frontage. The front setback is 30 feet or the block's usual depth, whichever is greater, plus one foot for every two feet the building rises above 25 feet. That last rule matters for a second storey or a tall dormer. In overlay district 2, floor area is capped at 0.50 of the lot, below the 0.65 and 0.90 caps in the city's RS2 and RS3 districts. We confirm which rules apply to your lot before any design work starts.

A post war ranch is one storey over a basement, so moving a bathroom or sink usually means work in the basement ceiling below it. In the older Victorians and Foursquares, expect plaster, older wiring and floors that are not level.

The city has been replacing old sewers here. In 2015 it replaced the 75 year old sewer under Talcott Avenue, swapping 12 inch mains for much larger pipes to keep nearby homes from flooding, and started on pipes from 1922 along Raven Street and Nettleton Avenue. A new main does not fix a cracked line from your house to the street, so we have the building sewer televised before a basement is finished.