The StrawStickStone Field Guide to Chicago Apartments series started a few weeks ago with a guide to identifying, tracking and handling garden apartments when encountered on your apartment hunt. Today we're focusing on the coach house, another excellent and unique choice if approached with due caution.

Like many members of the animal kingdom, the Chicago coach house is a master of camouflage. This unique specimen of rental hides in back yards behind larger buildings, invisible from the street. Unique to Chicago and desperately endangered due to shrinking habitat and restrictive zoning regulations, the elusive and wily coach house has a storied history, a valuable place in the Chicago landscape, and a high value to privacy-seekers, mothers-in-law and garage bands citywide. (more…)