Between the 1860s and 1920s, Chicago's working-class immigrants designed the American dream of home-ownership, viewing homes as a consumer-oriented respite from work and a productive space they hoped to control. Spurred by ideas about the gendered respectability of domesticity, early city planning and land economics, Chicagoans helped create America's suburbanisation. This work shows how Chicagoans helped form America's urban sprawl and examines the roots of America's suburbanisation, synthesizing the new suburban history into the diversity of America's suburbs.