In the age of McMansions, the bungalow is a stubborn throwback.
Ground-hugging and compact, with nary a square inch of wasted space, these humble dwellings in older neighborhoods were never showoffs. For years, bungalow owners tended to be almost apologetic about their homes, as if waiting for a time when the family could graduate to something grander in the suburbs.
Few people are looking down their noses at bungalows anymore. Newly prized for their warmth, craftsmanship and manageable scale, bungalows are being snapped up and renovated by a younger generation of urbanites more interested in cocooning with their families than impressing the neighbors.
"It's an issue of quality over quantity," says Louis Wasserman, a Milwaukee architect who, with his wife and design partner, landscape architect M. Caren Connolly, has written the just-published Bungalows: Design Ideas for Renovating, Remodeling and Building New (Taunton Press, $29.95).
With inviting photos by Rob Karosis and illustrations by Wasserman, the book showcases ways to adapt or enlarge a bungalow without destroying its character.
But this is neither a standard how-to primer or a just-for-display coffee-table volume.
"We really want people to get up off their couches and do something with their bungalows," says Connolly. "And we want them to value the environments they live in, to appreciate the resources and craft bound up in these houses and the melting-pot neighborhoods where they're located."
Typically, these are areas with a strong commercial spine, with schools and amenities nearby -- exactly the kind of old-fashioned, pedestrian-friendly communities that New Urbanist planners encourage as an antidote to auto-dependent sprawl.
Wasserman and Connolly, both 52, walk the walk. They live in a charming bungalow that they enlarged to accommodate their needs. The couple have three children, ages 15 to 21.
Working out of a loft in an old book bindery, the two had always wanted to do a book together. Their first thought was a volume on ranch homes, another underappreciated building type that Wasserman had a lot of experience in renovating and that his architect-father had specialized in designing.
Taunton, which publishes Fine Homebuilding magazine, as well as hands-on books about home design and remodeling, was interested. But the publisher first wanted a volume on bungalows. Taunton's The Not So Big House (1998), Sarah Susanka's paean to the coziness and craftsmanship that bungalows represent, was a huge hit.
Wasserman and Connolly took up the challenge in 2000, helped by an appeal in Fine Homebuilding inviting bungalow owners to share their experiences.
Readers responded in droves. The Harvard-educated authors were delighted with what they found in their scouting trips, from a stylish remodeling in Milwaukee to the makeover of a Sears, Roebuck & Co. mail-order bungalow in Virginia to a 1924 model in Maryland.
"If you tried to put woodwork and finishes like this in houses today, you couldn't afford it," Connolly says. "Bungalows were built like rocks, with quality construction and charm and personality, as opposed to gross square footage."
Says Wasserman: "They were the most democratic of building types in America, allowing first-time home buyers to have a house with an authentic style."
Allyson Nemec and Todd Badovski could serve as ambassadors for the kind of sensitive remodeling the authors hope to encourage. The couple's restored and expanded bungalow in Milwaukee is featured prominently in the book.
Nemec, an architect, and Badovski, part-owner of a construction company, bought their 1922 home as newlyweds in 1994.
Except for the aluminum siding that sheathed its clapboard frame, the house retained most of it original character, from a generous front porch to honey-colored oak woodwork and leaded-glass windows and cabinet fronts with jade green insets.
But the couple, both 37 with two boys ages 2 1/2 and 5, needed more space. How to get that without destroying the coziness they loved? And how also could they preserve the scale and rhythm of their bungalow-lined street?
Their solution: Discreetly raise the roof with a shed-style dormer addition. This allowed them to convert a small attic bedroom into a spacious master bedroom with its own bath; create a home office that could double as a fourth bedroom; add a downstairs family room; and transform the kitchen into an airy, two-story space with skylight and upstairs balcony.
From the street, the house looks much as it always did. But the interior work, most of it done by Nemec, Badovski and carpenter friends, is a modern twist on bungalow detailing. In the kitchen, tall cherry cabinets have recessed panels, some with leaded glass fronts. New baseboards are slightly lower than the 10-inch-high originals but retain their profile, and railings evoke Arts and Crafts geometry. A new roof and restored clapboard siding were the icing on the cake.
Nemec and Badovski are thrilled with the results, which are translatable, they believe, to other bungalows.
"When these houses were built, people really thought things through," Badovski says. "There was a definite sense of order. The only problem was that everything was so compartmentalized."
But, as Nemec notes, that doesn't have to be fatal. "To create more workable space, in most cases you just need to do some relatively easy tweaks."
A small history of a small house
What exactly is a bungalow?
Most are 1- or 1 1/2 -story dwellings. The style is characterized by its broad horizontals and low overhanging roof, typically supported by chunky columns. A porch may sweep across the entire width of the facade. The interior usually has oak woodwork, hardwood floors, leaded glass and lots of built-ins, including inglenooks, bookshelves and buffets.
The bungalow has its roots in the 18th-century thatch-roof huts in the Indian province of Bengal. British colonialists adapted these low-slung bangalas, as they were known, for their summer retreats and rural compounds.
Bungalow design also was influenced by army tents, English cottages and the British Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th century, which emphasized simple hand-made furniture, crafts and home design in reaction to the impersonality of the Machine Age.
According to American Bungalow, a quarterly magazine about the style, the first bungalow in this country was built in 1879 on Cape Cod, Mass. A decade later, bungalows sprouted in California, where land was cheap and affordable housing was in demand. Before World War I, a good bungalow could be had for as little as $900.
The earliest examples, descended from the workers' cottage, were clapboard with extended rafter tails and open porches. By the '20s, bungalows had begun to incorporate details from the period architecture popular back then, including Colonial, Tudor and Mediterranean Revival styles. Brick and stucco became common building materials.
They lost some of their popularity in the '30s when people began deciding bungalows weren't classy enough. Their resurgence today is tied to the trend toward simpler lifestyles and the desire for affordable housing.