Urbandale Has Been Growing Since 1917. It Shows.

Urbandale started as a streetcar suburb — 160 acres platted around a rail stop in 1907, incorporated a decade later with under 300 people. It stayed small until after World War II, then didn't stop growing: roughly 1,800 people in 1950, over 14,000 by 1970, near 40,000 by 2010. Every one of those growth spurts left housing behind. Downtown Urbandale still has the 1920s-40s homes from before the boom. Whole neighborhoods of ranch and split-level houses date to the 1950s-60s suburban wave. Newer subdivisions keep filling in past that.

Living History Farms — the 500-acre site off the I-35/I-80 interchange, with the 1870 Flynn Mansion still standing on the property — is the landmark most people know Urbandale for. But for remodeling purposes, the more useful fact is the layered housing: almost any decade of American residential construction since the 1920s is represented somewhere in this city, sometimes block to block.

• Updates to the older homes downtown, where character and age both need respecting
• Ranch and split-level renovations from the mid-century boom — a house type that comes with its own specific quirks
• Additions and remodels in newer subdivisions on the city's edges

Whatever decade your house came from, there's a good chance we've already worked on one just like it, two streets over.