Craftsman Bungalows
It is said that the name “bungalow” comes from India (though it is called Bangla in Hindu) and the style is similar to the rest houses that were built there by the English government for foreign travelers.
A craftsman Bungalow in the Noe Valley neighborhood.
The houses were built low with porches, but Europe’s take on the style was folded into the Arts and Crafts movement that was started in the late 1800s.
The Arts and Crafts movement and Bungalow style for the United States got its start in the early 1900s due to a couple of factors. Gustav Stickley is up first, as he was very important for the American Craftsman style. He, like our friend Charles Locke Eastlake (important during the Victorian period- you can read all about the period on my blog if you’d like, as it's a favorite of the time periods for me), was a furniture designer whose work expanded from popular furniture to eventually offering different styles of housing, one being a bungalow.
Later, in Pasadena, California brother architects, Charles and Henry Greene popularized this style at their practice in that area. This style is also known as the “California Style”.
As the Victorian Period came to an end and people grew tired of the retina-burning aesthetic and colors that the time brought with it (I’m not hatin’, I’m just sayin’), the people were very happy to adopt a much simpler style of housing and this was a perfect fit.
As with the Victorian Period, advances in technology and the ability to communicate made this style spread like wildfire thanks to plan books that were produced and widely circulated around the states. In New Orleans during the 1920s and ’30s, they started to see a rise in popularity of these Arts and Craft homes in the newer neighborhoods being built like Lakeview and Gentilly. So much so, that these areas were known as “Little California” (an original take on “LA, not L.A.”, perhaps?) The city had just drained the swamp in those areas and the folks who moved into those new neighborhoods wanted a different style of living from traditional New Orleans.
Some characteristics to help you identify a craftsman:
built from 1900-1940s, most popular in the 1920s and 30s
Brick/concrete bottomed pillars that support squared columns to support the front porch sometimes features a screened-in front porch (because this is how they were in the early days- still makes sense to me to keep pests out!)
exposed rafter tails (this means, under the roofline where it meets the house, you can see the wood beams sticking out from underneath)
sometimes the windows will feature more panes in the top half than the bottom- signature mark of the craftsman!
interiors will feature lots of built-ins
the use of natural or rustic materials such as wood shingles and siding, and sometimes feature masonry work at the base of the façade
the presence of deep porches with robust columns
heavy horizontal massing
oversized windows
