Beechmont Neighborhood Association

Beechmont Bungalows

What is a Bungalow

The Bungalow

You see them in the older parts of nearly every American city or town, those areas that were developed after the turn of the 20th century on up to the post WWII era. Rather non-descript, 1&1/2 story houses with wide front porches and front doors with side=lights, marching down a street with little variation, in many instances, and strange and unexplained ones in others. The only style more common is the post-war ranch , which was built en-masse up to the 70’s and 80’s. Strangely enough, they both have the same roots, almost.

The bungalow comes from a province in India, where a squat, sprawling house of one story with a hip or low gabled roof, with a vent in the gables or in a dormer-like pergola, is found….The roof extends out over a veranda that completely surrounds the house, keeping the rain out during tropical downpours and the rays of the tropical sun out the rest of the time. The English took the style home, intending to adapt it for inexpensive housing for workers. The style never really became popular in England but somehow it migrated across the Atlantic and was adopted by some of the most ingenious builders of the time, the Green brothers in California.

Around the same time, Frank Lloyd Wright was building his reputation as an architect. His Prairie Style house has it’s roots in the Indian bungalow, ----- low profile, wide overhangs, set in a wind blown prairie, subject to heavy and severe storms and an unforgiving sun. Of course, nothing stayed simple but with Wright’s genius and the Green’s interpretation, coupled with the philosophy of the time to return to the simpler life, a unique, completely American, architecture was born. It in turn was adopted by the everyday builder, and prefaber, who simplified or refined it or homogenized it and turned it into what we commonly refer to as the mid-western bungalow.

Until recently, bungalows were not commonly found in historic preservation circles. We don’t seem to relish something that is in ample supply. When Beechmont finally got it’s historic district, there were remarks by so called professionals to the effect that the district was un- important.



“ I just thought of them as house” An interior designer who grew up on Kathleen and moved to Anchorage.



When asked what style she would say one of the bungalows in the district is, the reply was, “ Did you ever hear of just a house? That’s all that is. This idea that there are bungalows in this country indicates that those who say that, know nothing about what a bungalow is. Besides. There is no such thing as a brick bungalow.” Architectural Historian on faculty New York City University..

These people are having to eat their words and as time goes on, we will discuss the design elements that make the American bungalow so special.

When the English took the style home with them and sought to convert it to inexpensive housing for workers, it didn’t prove as ammeniable to the English climate and pocket book as they had hoped and it never quite caught on there (although those that were built are now considered little treasures) . It was on this side of the Atlantic that the boom began. The Green brothers in California, and Frank Lloyd Wright in the mid=west, took the style to heart ; the Greens creating their palatial bungalows and Wright, with his prototype for the ranch and his magnificent Prairie Style., using some of the design elements of the modest bungalow to produce an architectural style that was truly American.



Big deal, you say! Can’t blame you ! A lot of professionals have said the same, completely dismissing the common American bungalow from the realm of historic architecture, until now. Now, eyes are opening, records are being searched , the writings of the principals of the time are being examined, and the time in which this type of house was built in quantity is being studied in a way it has not been looked at since the period itself..



When I was young, looking at the bungalows around us , including my Grandparent’s, many with pebble foundations and rubble columns, their wide overhangs and ornate brackets, their California porches in a non-California climate, open to sun and rain ( lots of rain );their shingle or clapboard , sometimes brick, sometimes stucco, siding, sitting just a passageway apart and wonder what these Alpine cottages ( I didn’t know about the Japanese influence then.) were doing in this low - lying , heavily- populated, river city. I thought it was kind of silly to make a house look like it belonged out in the woods or perched on a mountain - side. Then when we started our sojourns through West Virginia and Pennsylvania and I saw the typical mid-western bungalow ( story and a half, gabled front dormer, wide front porch, extending across the front of the house) marching up the mountains, side=by -side, street after street.----------- looking completely out of place; but then, they couldn’t be, because it was obvious they had been there for years. How did these houses, built like this, come to be?



Stay with me and in time we will learn the answer to that question.



Elizabeth Rieber at emrieber@Hotmail.com or 502 363-3286





If you are rewiring or just replacing a light fixture you will find this company a rich source of authentic reproductions. The catalog can be ordered from 1800 401 1900 or log-in and read the web-page at
www.rejuvenation.com. The catalog is a jewel, containing mini-histories of the periods from the beginning to the end of the 20th century and the designs that developed during them. You will recognize your grandmother's house.
Old houses have a penchant for attracting critters
inside, especially when the weather turns cool. Up to
now, our main choices were to trap, poison, set up weird
sound and light shows to frighten them off or just
endure their presence. We now have another choice.
There is a new electronic device on the market that
doesn't just send out a high pitched noise that we can't
hear and that doesn't penetrate the walls. It sets up
an eltromagnetic field along the wiring, in a four foot
radius around the wiring, that disturbs the critter's
nervous system so drastically that it vacates the
premise. There are a number of these products on the
market but the one I have is made by Lentek. It works.
Sears also is offering the devices but if you want to
check them out, Lentek's web site is www.lentek.com.
I'll let them tell you what they can do.

Additional Links:

www.doitnow.com

http://www.victorianstation.com/

http://www.paintedladies.com/

www.cmhp.org Great pictures and stories of street cars/trolleys in use in
historic Charlotte. Descriptions of Craftsman Bungalows, Greek Revival,
Colonial Revival which elements you can find in Beechmont.

http://www.eastrow.org (Historic district in Newport contains examples of the styles that can be found in Beechmont Craftsman's Bungalow, Victorian and Colonial Revival.

Books and other resources

Paul Duchscherer & Douglas Keister have written a series of books specifically on the American bungalow. They are available at the library and local book stores. One of my favorites is Outside the Bungalow, which gives you wonderful advice and full color illustrations on the Bungalow garden and its' plantings. Fits right in with
Beechmont's festival of Flowers and the return of the herbs since the Bungalow has been imprinted with Medieval influences and the herb garde has its' origin in the Middle Ages