When Beth Malloy learned her son and daughter-in-law were preparing to have a child and move from their one-bedroom apartment on Chicago’s Near North Side to a home on the city’s edge, she realized she had to make a bold move to remain close to her son’s family and preserve the lifestyle she cherished.

So, in December 2020, when Chicago city council passed an additional dwelling unit (ADU) ordinance to allow for new construction of detached houses on parcels with existing residences, Beth, a Microsoft sales lead in her 60s, proposed pooling resources with her son to buy a property they could share, occupying separate buildings.

“I felt he and his wife would have a really hard time finding something they could afford that they’d be able to stay in,” Beth says. “I was looking for ways to help with the down payment. I knew what their limitation was, or what they could spend. And I knew they were going to have a child.”

Today, the family lives in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood on a 25-by-125-foot parcel with a handsomely landscaped garden patio. Beth, who grew up in a rural Ohio town and raised her son, Zach, as a single mother, wakes up each morning in an accoya-clad coach house whose tech-infused, 525-square-foot living space sits almost entirely above a garage. Zach, a public sector consultant in his 30s, and his wife, Beth Anderson, a social worker in hospice care, live in a stately $1 million brick row house on a tree-lined street, a home double the cost of what they could have afforded on their own.

Created by Via Chicago Architects × Diseñadores and interior designer Anne Rezac, the coach house is one of the first to be built under Chicago’s ADU ordinance, which officials say intends to expand housing access by increasing the stock of ADUs and opening a path to legalization for live-in attics and basements built without zoning approval and building permits.

Only a few years ago, the home would have been illegal to build, says Marty Sandberg, who co-owns the firm with fellow architect Cristina Gallo. Chicago banned the construction of coach houses in 1957 and, like many U.S. cities embracing automobile friendly streetscapes and lower density living under the edifying midcentury banner of urban renewal, added a mandatory parking requirement for newly built residences.

That legacy requirement, along with banks’ reluctance to finance detached homes, strict design and zoning guidelines, geographically constrained eligibility requirements, and the high cost of connecting coach homes to utility services, have kept the program from being adopted as widely as many affordable housing advocates—including Sandberg and Gallo, whose firm won the AIA’s 2016 Tiny Homes Competition for a proposal for an adapted modular townhouse to accommodate homeless Chicago youth—would like to see.

Steven Vance, founder and CEO of Chicago Cityscape, an organization that tracks property development, says 207 permits, representing 242 units, have been issued in the pilot areas, with building application permits sagging since their peak in late 2022. Design guidelines that largely limit coach houses to one-bedroom, second-floor units may be partly to blame.

“In Chicago, you have to build a two-car garage, basically, to start. That’s an extra 500 square feet of building area that you’re required to construct, even if you don’t plan on using it,” Sandberg said. “You're putting $100,000 into that garage just to begin.”

And yet, for Beth Malloy, Sandberg, and Gallo were able to leverage the strict design constraints imposed by the ordinance to optimize the spatial and energy efficiency of the $600,000 coach house.

A six-foot-wide foyer cleverly concealing the garage and alley behind it opens to the garden patio via bifold glass doors and leads to a staircase ascending to the second floor of the fully electric home. Ten-foot-tall, melamine cabinets along the eastern wall disguise a pull-out desk and provide room for vinyl records (from opera to Bruce Springsteen), a Miele wall oven and plumbed coffee maker, a refrigerator, and a modest wardrobe. French oak floors remain warm underfoot with radiant heating, and a zero-clearance induction cooktop in the central island can be covered with a tray for added counter space.

While modern, the interior is hardly sterile. A full-height floral photo mural by Rezac and photographer Yeva Dashevsky conceals the Murphy bed when retracted and wraps around the bathroom. To allow for a window on the western wall, which otherwise would have been prohibited due to fire code restrictions implied by the home’s siting along the property line, the architects cut away a section of the 22-by-22-foot envelope and added a planter box. Light pours into the second floor through multiple skylights.

After selling her condo along the Chicago River in April 2021, Beth committed a $200,000 downpayment on the row house, which gave her son’s family the capital infusion they needed to afford a three-bedroom home in a desirable area. The family evenly splits the cost of the mortgage, along with property taxes and insurance costs. In effect, this lowers Beth’s monthly outlay from $4,000 to $3,000, a reduction she says will ease her financial burden and accelerate her path to retirement.

Most of all, the arrangement means Beth can remain closer to her son and his family. In late May, days after she moved into the coach house, her granddaughter, Rosie, was born. She relishes the chance to watch her grow up, and when the family’s nanny is off on Wednesdays and Fridays, or Zach and the younger Beth get tied up at the office or simply need a break, she’s there to help.

Top photo by Konrad Wazny

Related Reading:

Everything You Need to Know About Building an ADU in Chicago

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Via Chicago Architects × Diseñadores / @viachicagoarchitects

Interior Designer: Anne Rezac / @annerezotch

Builder/General Contractor: Enclosure / @enclosurellc