Arts & Crafts - Table of Contents .............. Bungalows - LINKS

Bungalows - Exterior Features
1905 -1930

Bungalows may be viewed in a larger context as one type of Arts and Crafts ("Craftsman") style architecture.

Arts and Crafts architecture would never have succeeded as a design concept if it had not also met the changing needs of society. American families in the twentieth century were different from nineteenth century families and they needed a different kind of home. Daily living had evolved to a routine where men left the home to work each day, and women stayed home to care for the children. Servants, once plentiful and cheap, became too expensive for the middle class and women assumed the role of sole homemaker..

TEXT CONTINUED BELOW ILLUSTRATIONS

Housing design had to adapt to this simplified lifestyle. There was no longer any requirement for large houses with formal entertaining areas, family areas, and servant areas. Music rooms, reception rooms, conservatories, parlors, and butler pantries were dropped in favor of "living rooms" and smaller kitchens. Because of increased street noise, Victorian front porches were no longer desirable and they were replaced with sun rooms, sleeping porches, and back screened porches.

At the time the lifestyles of Americans were changing, magazines like House Beautiful and Ladies' Home Journal were promoting Arts and Crafts home architectural styles to their female readers. The Prairie style and the bungalow not only appealed aesthetically to these women as the latest trend in home design, but they fit the requirement for simpler, smaller homes that could easily maintained without servants.

The bungalow became the most popular Arts and Crafts home design. Modeled after traditional homes in India and popularized in California, the bungalow was a low, functional, spreading house. It emphasized horizontal lines, overhanging roofs, simple porches, and bands of windows that brought the outside in. The bungalow was usually one or one and one-half stories tall, and was often marketed to beginning homeowners. Particularly small versions of the bungalow were called "bachelor's bungalows" or "workman's bungalows," and were only 600-800 square feet in size. Nearly everyone could afford such a simple house, and the style fit with America's democratic ideals. What these smaller versions lacked in space, they made up for in charm.

Gustav Stickley promoted a version of the bungalow in his magazine The Craftsman. The Craftsman bungalow tended to be larger, often two stories tall. Stickley retained the sloping roof line, oversized eaves, and window bands of the traditional bungalow, but relied more heavily on natural building materials like cedar shingles, stone fireplaces, and slate or tile roofs for a rustic look. He often incorporated a pergola on the side as a way to unite the outside and the inside. His interior designs were functional, without ornamentation, and often included built-ins like inglenooks around the fireplace. Stickley published many designs for such homes in his magazine, and in 1909 and 1912 published whole catalogs of Craftsman houses. In 1916 alone, he claimed that over $20 million in Craftsman-inspired homes were built.

The expanding prewar economy led to an expanding middle class in the period between 1900 and 1917. Many persons who lived in apartments were able to buy homes for the first time. They selected sites in new housing plats in cities and suburbs (which were now accessible, thanks to interurban transit). To meet the market demand of this new population of homeowners, companies began to advertise in home decorator magazines to sell house blueprints or even "redi-cut" home kits. Kits were popular because they allowed new homeowners to buy their home in stages, a necessity since long-term mortgages were not available at this time. Catalogs of blueprints and kits could be mailed cheaply to potential buyers and kits could be shipped easily via railroad cars. Homes sold as kits represented the highest-priced single item ever sold by catalog retailers. Most catalog home companies were headquartered in the Midwest because of the plentiful supply of lumber.

The catalog house was so popular that major mail-order companies that traditionally sold items like shoes, clothing, and underwear began selling homes around 1900. Sears and Roebuck of Chicago began selling building supplies in 1895 and complete house kits in 1908. They continued to sell homes until 1940, when they stopped because of financial difficulties experienced from a home mortgage venture begun just before the Depression hit. Montgomery Ward, another large catalog retailer, began selling house plans in 1910 and kits in 1918.

- Source: The Arts and Crafts Movement in the American Midwest

Other Sources:

• "A Field Guide to American Houses," by Virginia & Lee McAlester. New York: Knopf, 2000
  
  
• "The Visual Dictionary of American Domestic Architecture," by Rachel Carley. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1994
  
  
• "A Visual Dictionary of Architecture," by Francis D. K. Ching. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997
  
  
• " Identifying American Architecture: A Pictorial Guide to Styles and Terms 1600-1945," John J.-G Blumenson. NY: Norton, 1981Sources:
  
  
• "A Visual Dictionary of Architecture," by Francis D. K. Ching. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997
  
  
• "Common Houses in America's Small towns," by John A. Jakle, et al. Athens, GA: U. of Georgia Press, 1989.

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See also: Highlights of Buffalo's History, 1905 -1930

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Photos and their arrangement © 2002 Chuck LaChiusa
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