Introduction -- Shortages : The Postwar Housing Crisis and Architectural Competitions -- To the Rescue : The Chicago Tribune's Chicagoland Prize Homes Competition -- Spreading the News : Putting the Competition before the Public -- A More Permanent Legacy : Publishing the Prize Homes Book -- House Design and Domestic Life : Analyzing the Houses -- Modernism Skepticism : Contemporaneous Views of the Modern Aesthetic -- Competing Visions : Other Architectural Competitions -- Breaking Ground : The Building Project -- Houses in Flux : Prize Homes Houses Evolve -- Conclusion: A Competition Like No Other -- Appendix I: Known Entries to the Prize Homes Competition -- Appendix II: Prize Homes Competition Winners and the Designs Known to Be Built

"Sponsored by the Chicago Tribune, the 1945 Chicagoland Prize Homes competition solicited designs by mostly unknown architects. The goal: to provide beautiful yet practical houses for returning WWII veterans and middle-class residents of the city and suburbs. In-depth and extensively illustrated, Chicagoland Dream Houses revisits this overlooked chapter in Chicago and architectural history. Organizers conceived the competition to help remedy the postwar housing crisis and it received front-page news coverage and an exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago. It also had the rare distinction of taking designs from paper to reality, an accomplishment that brought out two hundred thousand people to tour finished homes. Yet the contest ultimately failed in its aim to inspire new home construction that would solve Chicago's housing shortage. Siobhan Moroney situates the competition in its time both socially and architecturally, analyzing floor plans and other materials to reveal how the designs reflected the expectations of middle-class families and the social norms that dictated their everyday lives and aspirations"--