California Bungalow

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A side-gabled bungalow in Virginia

California Bungalows, commonly called simply bungalows in America, are a form of residential structure that were widely popular across America and, to some extent, the world around the years 1910 to 1925.

1 Exterior Features
2 Interior Features
3 History
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Exterior Features

Bungalows are 1 or 1½ storey houses, with sloping roofs and eaves with unenclosed rafters, and typically feature a gable (or an attic vent designed to look like one) over main portion of the house. Ideally, bungalows were horizontal in massing, and are integrated with the earth by use of local materials and transitional plantings. This helps create the signature look most people associate with the California Bungalow.

Bungalows commonly have wood shingle, horizontal siding or stucco exteriors, as well as brick or stone exterior chimneys and a partial-width front porch. Larger bungalows might have asymmetrical "L" shaped porches. The porches were often enclosed at a later date, in response to increased street noise. A "California" bungalow (no matter where built) is not made of brick, but in other bungalows, most notably in the Chicago area, this is commonplace.

A variation called the "Airplane" bungalow has a much smaller area on its second floor, centered on the structure, and is thought to look like the cockpit of an early plane.

[edit] Interior Features

Unlike earlier private homes, true bungalows do not include quarters for servants, and have a simple living room, entered directly from the front door, in place of parlors and sitting rooms as well as a smaller kitchen. The focal point of the living room is the fireplace, and the living room often has a broad opening into the dining room.

All common areas are on the first floor. Though the ceilings are lower than in homes of Victorian architecture, they are usually higher than in ranch and other homes built later. Attics are located under the sloping roof.

[edit] History

A typical side-gabled bungalow in Louisville's Deer Park Neighborhood

The bungalow actually traces its origins to the Indian province of Bengal. The native thatched roof huts were adapted by the British, who built bungalows as houses for administrators and as summer retreats. Refined and popularized in California, the first California house dubbed a bungalow was designed by the San Francisco architect A. Page Brown in the early 1890s.

The bungalow became popular because it met the needs of changing times in which the lower middle class were moving from apartments to private houses in great numbers. Bungalows were modest, inexpensive and low-profile. Before World War I, a bungalow could be built for as little as $900, the price rose to around $3,500 after the war. Bungalow designs were spread by the practice of using mail-order plans available from illustrated catalogs, sometimes a few alterations were made based on local practice or conditions. A variety of firms offered precut homes, which were shipped by rail or ship and assembled on site. These were most common in locations without a strong existing construction industry, or for company towns, to be built in a short time. The majority of bungalows did include some elements of mass production; typically doors, windows, and built-in furnishings such as bookcases, desks, or folding beds were sourced from lumber yards or from catalogs.

A typical front-gabled California Bungalow along Utah Street in San Diego's North Park Neighborhood

Bungalows can be found in the older neighborhoods of most American cities. In fact, they were so popular for a time that many cities have what is called a "Bungalow Belt" of homes built in the 1920s. These neighborhoods were often clustered along streetcar lines as they extended into the suburbs. Bungalows were built in smaller groups than is typical today, often one to three at a time. Examples of neighborhoods with a high concentration of bungalows include Bungalow Heaven in Pasadena, California, North Park (site of the proposed "Dryden District") in San Diego, California, Houston Heights, Houston, Texas, and Park Hill and Washington Park in Denver.

There is a revitalized interest in the American Arts & Crafts movement, and with the emergence of special-interest publications such as American Bungalow Magazine. Rising house prices in general, and bungalow-heavy neighborhoods being typically centrally located in large cities, have fueled demand for these homes, many of these older bungalows have dramatically increased in price in recent years. For example, some 3-bedroom bungalows in San Diego, California can sell for $650,000 to $700,000 or more. However this is largely a function of the local housing market, many bungalows in the city of Detroit, Michigan for example are abandoned and are slowly being razed.