The Old Neighborhood Part II

This attractive bungalow is typical of the style as it evolved into a standard house type between 1905 and 1925.  Though originally the name “bungalow” came from Bangladesh via England, and the type was first used the United States for beach and other simple vacation homes, by the first decades of the 20th-century the house type was popular as a simple inexpensive structure that did not have the demeaning special connotations of “cottages.”  Though almost anyone could afford a bungalow (and they were sold in large numbers as kits through building catalogs), the idea of the bungalow connected something recreational, fresh and trendy, and even suggested a certain level of “free-thinking” by the home owner.

This house, like most bungalows of the period, is a low-slung structure on a high foundation and is only 1 1/2 stories high, with wide projecting eaves.  The simple roof seems to sweep out beyond the walls to cover the house in an almost tent-like way. Here, the street facade consists of a large enclosed front porch, which hearkens back to the verandas of the South Asian prototype.

Sources:

Jakle, John A; Bastian, Robert W.; and Meyer, Douglas K.  Common Houses in America’s Small Towns: The Atlantic Seaboard to the Mississippi Valley (Athens, Ga and London: University of Georgia Press, 1989), pp 170-171.