Polish flat

The new Polish immigrants, as soon as they could afford to do so, would purchase a small one-story or story-and-a-half cottage, or sometimes build one on a vacant lot with minimum cost, with a modest Victorian Gothic or Queen Anne façade.

This arrangement enabled a family of limited means to end up with both a home and a modestly priced rental apartment unit.

[1] Since Polish American immigrants prized land ownership in their own culture, this solution which was prominent in the areas they settled in came to be associated with them.

[2] Similar housing was common in many Detroit neighborhoods built before World War II.

Polish flats were "specifically designed both to accommodate and to accelerate the economic improvement of the family... Polish flats were human values reflected in architecture and testified to the hard work, practicality, and optimism of their inhabitants," wrote former Milwaukee mayor John Norquist in his book, The Wealth of Cities.