Henry W. Austin founded the temperance suburb of Austinville on 470 acres in 1865, and annexation followed on 25 October 1899 after a contentious campaign. The nineteenth-century village core holds Neoclassical and Queen Anne houses, including Frederick R. Schock landmark houses from 1886 to 1892, and large frame homes later replaced by denser housing. North Austin holds brick two-flats, small frame houses, and brick bungalows. South Austin holds row houses, corner apartments, and numerous brick three-flats and courtyard apartments. Galewood, in the northwest corner, filled in during the 1920s on a former golf course, with the Golf Links Subdivision of 1920 and Galewood Estates of 1927, holding bungalows and Romantic Revival houses in Colonial, Norman, Spanish, and Tudor styles with occasional Art Deco, on deep lots with attached one-car garages and colourful masonry. Pitched and flat systems divide by sub-area, so homes of this era typically follow the sub-area pattern: Galewood pitched eaves with attached-garage junctions, South Austin flat parapet and scupper drainage, North Austin mixed, and Schock Queen Anne and Shingle houses with complex pitched, valley-heavy roofs, and gutter repair is planned sub-area by sub-area.
Columbus Park, 135 acres designed by Jensen and a National Historic Landmark, and industrial areas to the east, north, and south sit outside the residential scope, and the 2015 Chicago Community Trust summary described hundreds of blocks of intact housing. The Island, the fourth sub-area, is named here as distinct, and each sub-area is read on its own housing rather than averaged. Downspout discharge and grading follow the sub-area: deep Galewood lots give room, while South Austin's flat roofs need parapet and leader planning.
The Austin Historic District was listed on the National Register on 8 August 1985, covering about 336 contributing buildings near Ohio, Waller, Parkside, West End, Mayfield, and Corcoran, with Schock houses and a Drummond church. Four Houses by Frederick Schock form a Chicago Landmark district from 1999, at 5749 and 5804 W Race and 5804 and 5810 W Midway Park, Queen Anne and Shingle houses from 1886 to 1892, with addresses and boundaries verified through City Landmarks. A wider Midway Park district beyond the four-house district is not verified and is not claimed. Check the designation details for the specific address before work.
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