Greystone and Two-Flat

Chicago greystones are two- and three-story apartment buildings, usually two or three flats (one apartment per floor) and occasionally up to six. The front is faced in Indiana limestone and the rest is brick. They were built on the city's standard 25 by 125 foot lots, with flat roofs and projecting bays. Early examples have Romanesque Revival fronts of rough-cut stone, round arches and squat columns. Later ones use smooth limestone, Palladian windows (a round-arched center opening between two narrower ones) and classical columns.

The Logan Square Boulevards Historic District in Chicago lists greystone two- and three-flats among its building types. The K-Town Historic District in North Lawndale, with buildings dating from 1901 to 1931, is noted for its greystones. North Lawndale has the city's largest concentration, and a 2005 survey counted 1,714 there. New York brownstones are faced in brown sandstone and date from about 1840-1900, while greystones are faced in gray Indiana limestone and date from about 1890-1930.

Greystones are a Chicago building tradition rather than the work of one designer, and no single building launched them. Chicago rebuilt and grew in economic power after the Great Fire of 1871, and greystones appeared in the 1890s, first in neighborhoods such as Woodlawn, North Lawndale and Lake View. Their fronts used Bedford limestone from south-central Indiana. From 1890 to about 1905 the fronts were mostly Romanesque Revival, in rusticated (deeply grooved, rough-cut) limestone with arches and heavy cornices.

Later fronts were Neoclassical, with smooth limestone blocks, bay and Palladian windows and columns. Construction continued through the 1930s, and the Logan Square boulevards were largely built up by then. About 30,000 greystones remain in Chicago, and North Lawndale has the largest concentration, with 1,714 counted in a 2005 survey. The city's Historic Chicago Greystone Initiative promotes their preservation.