New book features Northwest suburban tract homes

A research professor at Bryn Mawr College, Barbara Miller Lane, turned to the Northwest suburbs for material in her latest book, "Houses for a New World."

Lane spent more than a decade doing research, including working with Jane Rozek, local history librarian for the Schaumburg Township Public Library.

The book, published last year by Princeton University Press, is believed to be one of the first to study examples of the post-World War II housing styles that shaped an era.

Lane focuses on several developers: the Stoltzner Builders in Arlington Heights, Kimball Hill in Rolling Meadows, Centex in Elk Grove Village, and the Campanelli brothers with their Weathersfield subdivision in Schaumburg.

"My emphasis is on the architecture," Lane says. "I argue that the ranch houses and the split levels of the '50s and early '60s were revolutionary new forms in the history of American domestic architecture."

She calls their builders "the unsung heroes of this architecture."

Lane has taught at Bryn Mawr, located outside of Philadelphia, since 1962. Since earning her doctorate in history at Harvard, she has pursued an interest in history and architecture. At Bryn Mawr, Lane designed an interdisciplinary major, the Growth and Structure of Cities.

"I've been an architectural historian all my life, but I've always insisted on seeing architecture in its social context," Lane says, "and tract houses have quite a big social context."

In the book, she writes that more than 13 million of these predominantly ranch and split-level houses were constructed after the war on large tracts or subdivisions outside major cities. By 1970, she adds, more than 20 percent of the country's population lived in tract houses.

"In thousands of new suburban communities, a builder erected a few model houses, usually split-levels or ranches, and a family selected the one that suited its members," Lane wrote in the first chapter. "The new suburbs of these years were formed by the multiplication of these actions or choices."

That story played out exactly for Mary Ann McArthur Russell and her first husband, Dick. In 1963, they selected their first home, a ranch in the Weathersfield development in Schaumburg.

"Our daughter was born in 1962 and we were living in a one-bedroom apartment in Chicago," Russell says. "We definitely needed more room."

In choosing to move to Schaumburg and a home built by the Campanelli Brothers, they followed the lead set by Dick's parents, Ray and Carmella McArthur, who were the first to buy a home in Weathersfield.

"With the help of the G.I. Bill, the houses were ones we could afford," Russell says. "It had an attached garage, with a big kitchen and shiny new appliances, and a huge backyard."

Nearly all of the families that moved in around them, Russell adds, had small children. The stay-at-home moms gathered nearly every other day for coffee while the children played.

"It was a community," she adds. "We helped one another. It was great to watch our kids grow up together."

Russell says she stayed in that Weathersfield home for 17 years - during which Schaumburg's population exploded from 900 to more than 50,000 - before remarrying and moving after her husband passed away.

"When I moved to Denver," Russell says, "I realized that what we had in Schaumburg was something special."

In a press kit, Lane's editors include accolades from professors at both the University of Michigan and the University of California for the book's depth of research and social commentary about postwar urbanism.

"The result is a fascinating history of houses and developments," the news release says, "that continue to shape how 10s of millions of Americans live."

The book is $49.95 online at http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10547.html.