Renovating a Platt Park home usually means working with an early-1900s bungalow on a smaller lot — compact, characterful, and a little short on square footage by modern standards. The work tends to focus on opening up a tight main floor, finishing a basement, or adding up or out without losing the cottage scale that makes the block feel like Platt Park. Done well, you keep the front-porch charm and gain the space and storage these houses were never built to have.
What are Platt Park homes like?
Most of them are early-1900s bungalows and cottages on tidy, smaller lots. You'll find low-pitched roofs, deep front porches, original wood trim, and the kind of built-ins they don't make anymore. Lately you'll also see pop-tops and infill builds mixed in among the originals — Platt Park has changed, but the core of it is still that small-town-in-the-city feel a few blocks off Old South Pearl Street, close to the light rail and the Sunday farmers market.
- Compact footprints, often one story with a basement
- Original character details worth keeping: trim, doors, hardwood
- Smaller lots, so additions go up or toward the rear
- A walkable location people renovate around, not away from
What's the challenge with these smaller bungalows?
The honest answer is square footage. These houses were built for a different era of living, so the friction is almost always space: a galley kitchen you can't both stand in, a single bathroom shared by the whole house, bedrooms that fit a bed and not much else, and storage that amounts to one hall closet. Nothing's wrong with the house — it's just being asked to do more than it was drawn for.
A Platt Park bungalow doesn't need to be bigger everywhere. It needs the right rooms to be bigger, and the rest to work harder.
What renovations make the biggest difference in Platt Park?
Opening up the main floor is almost always the highest-impact move. Taking down a wall between a closed-off kitchen and living room makes a small bungalow live twice its size, and it's the change people feel the day they move back in. After that, the big levers are vertical and below-grade.
- Finishing the basement for a guest room, office, or family space — square footage you already own
- A pop-top to add a second story, often a primary suite the original house never had
- A rear addition to grow the kitchen or living space without crowding the front porch and streetscape
Which one's right depends on your lot, your budget, and what the block can support — but those three solve most of the space problems we see here.
How do you keep the cottage charm while modernizing?
You start by deciding what's worth saving and building around it. Original trim, a stair rail, leaded glass, a brick chimney — those are the things that tell you the house is from Platt Park and not a subdivision. We keep and restore what we can, then match new work to it: trim profiles that echo the originals, scale that respects the porch, materials that feel of-the-period without pretending it's a museum. The goal is a kitchen and bath that work like it's today, in a house that still reads like it's been on the street for a hundred years.
Quick answers
Are Platt Park homes mostly old?
Yes — the neighborhood is largely early-1900s bungalows and cottages, with newer pop-tops and infill mixed in.
Can you add a second story to a Platt Park bungalow?
Often, yes. A pop-top is a common way to add a primary suite or bedrooms, subject to your lot and what's allowed for the block.
What's the best first renovation for a small bungalow?
Usually opening up the main floor. Removing a wall between the kitchen and living area makes the whole house feel bigger before you add a square foot.
At The Curated Room, we design and build Platt Park remodels that gain real space and keep what makes the house worth living in. If you've got a bungalow a few blocks off Old South Pearl and a list of things that don't quite work, that's exactly the conversation we like to have.
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