While less common than it once was due to zoning and other regulations, the combination storefront/living space is still found thriving in cities everywhere-including Chicago. This was normal life for tens of millions of people in the world.” Live-Work Buildings: Storefront Living Today “It was very easy to move back and forth between different activities. “There was a pretty seamless relationship between work and “living,” says Davis.

In Portland, Davis says, many mixed-use properties remain from before zoning took hold in 1924. Davis cites the early 20th-century apartment houses in Paris and New York to Otto Wagner-designed Vienna houses as early examples of how these developments shaped cities. It was only relatively recently that zoning prescribed more rigid lines around what was allowed to happen within a single parcel, something that began and accelerated during the industrial revolution. Owning one building from which to work out of that also served as a home reduced commute time to zero, allowing for child-rearing and home maintenance to happen between business patrons. THE HISTORY OF THE STOREFRONT: AN ECONOMIC NECESSITYįollowing function to form, storefront living was an economic necessity for most of the history of the city itself. The book explores the contextualization of the storefront apartment within the urban fabric. “Buildings that combine different uses like living and working are taking maximum advantage of the fact that urban space is three-dimensional,” says Howard Davis, architecture professor, and author, at the University of Oregon, whose fascination with the typology spurred his book project- Living Over the Store: Architecture and Local Urban Life. Many two- or three-story buildings are in areas where residential and retail, commercial, or hospitality uses can occur, and each one is an opportunity to get redeveloped into quality housing paired with amenities that improve a neighborhood and keep dollars in the local economy.

Zoning laws that discourage mixed-use functions for mid-rise and high-rise buildings aren’t helping matters. According to a study from Up for Growth, the US has fallen 3.8 million homes short of meeting housing needs, both for renters and prospective buyers. A SOLUTION TO THE MODERN HOUSING CRISISĪ lack of available housing is a serious issue facing Americans. The neighborhood deli directly across the street from the family-owned tailor shop is now a multi-unit apartment. Similarly, Laura’s family shares a parallel narrative, as they, too, had an amalgamation of an optometrist’s shop and an apartment above the shop in their history.Ībove – the gangs all here friends gather outside the family-owned tailor shop on Laflin St in ChicagoĬurrent day – similar to numerous other mixed-use buildings, the family’s tailor shop underwent a transformation, evolving into a three-flat residential building In this setup, Matt’s grandparents occupied one of the apartments while his uncle and his family lived in the other. Matt’s grandparent’s first living arrangement in Chicago was a three-flat building that housed both their residence and a tailoring shop on the ground floor-a business they personally owned and managed. Matt and Laura have a longstanding familial connection to storefront living that can be traced back through several generations. After the moss HQ moved into a remodeled storefront in Logan Square, living quarters followed above the commercial tenant space, repackaging the live/work space into a live-work-commercial neighborhood asset. At moss, the live-work journey began in earnest with the first moss HQ in Ravenswood, which was both a living quarters and an office within a vintage defunct firehouse.

Although the term “live-work” is relatively new, the concept of a flexible property that combines housing and thriving businesses has been in existence for centuries. The live-work building, designed to provide a space that can accommodate both residential and commercial activities, offers a seamless solution that meets the diverse needs of its occupants. Live-Work Buildings: Key to a Vibrant, Hyperlocal Lifestyle Live-work buildings, t he combination storefront/apartment building, is a global phenomenon, anchoring the vibrancy of a local community while building diversity into the economy. Finer Things Club Wine + Mixology Center.

Live work store house