What we've learned about Norwalk
The interesting thing about a city built this fast is how little the houses fight you. A crew working Studebaker or Imperial Village will find the same broad ranch layout again and again: front door into a living room, a hall to the right, three bedrooms off it and a bathroom at the end. Wide frontage, generous side yards and a garage set back along a long driveway.
Where it gets interesting is what happened to those garages. A great many were closed in during the 1970s and 1980s and became a bedroom, a workshop or a second living room, and the room counts on paper stopped matching the room counts in the house. Tell us what is actually there. Down in the One-Ways, where the original homes were built for servicemen and run 550 to 750 square feet, the opposite problem applies and a standard visit goes quickly.
Norwalk homes, structurally
Expect 1,100 to 1,500 square feet, three bedrooms, one or two baths, all on one level with a slab floor. Carpet runs from the hallway back through the bedrooms in most of them, with vinyl or tile in the kitchen and bath. Ceilings are eight feet, so light fittings and vents are reachable without a ladder. The distinctive local feature is lot depth: rear yards are long, patio slabs are big, and sliding doors onto them track in a lot of dirt.