The Craftsman bungalow had reached its typical form by the 1920: An exterior clad in shingle or rustic siding; a chimney of river rock or clinker brick; and a wealth of spiky wooden detailing on the bargeboards and rafter tails. The style’s hallmark was its front porch, which was almost invariably sported a pair of tapered columns supporting a small gable roof echoing the main one.
The floor plan was a simple rectangle containing six rooms, often with no interior hall at all. Built-in furniture such as sideboards and bookcases were meant to help clear out the Victorian clutter of furniture in favor of pristine, sun-filled spaces.
Builders turned out Craftsman bungalows by the tens of thousands. However, the mid-twenties saw the Craftsman exterior finish gradually phased out in favor of stucco, a cheaper material that nevertheless gave these insubstantial little houses a massive appearance that their Craftsman predecessors lacked. The stucco finish also earned these houses a new name: California Bungalow.
However, the decade of the 20s saw the beginning of a dramatic change in architectural tastes. Tiring of the increasingly predictable Bungalow, Americans began to pine for the sort of escapist architecture they were seeing in the equally escapist films of the era: Romantic Spanish haciendas, half-timbered manor houses, turreted French farmhouses. These exotic styles were reproduced—albeit at a diminutive scale—by the obliging builders of the time, and collectively known as the Romance Revival, they remain among the most charming and colorful homes America has produced.
Then, in the early 1930s, change arrived from the other end of the architectural spectrum. The divergent brands of Modernism espoused by Wright’s domestic work and Europe’s Bauhaus finally made some inroads into residential architecture. Known today by names such as Prairie School, Art Deco, and Streamline Moderne, nontraditional designs using smooth surfaces, sleek curves, and flat roofs made a small but important showing in American architecture through the eve of World War II.
For the most part, the unfamiliar vocabulary of Modernism limited its application to custom homes, and to commercial work such as retail stores and theaters. Nor did Modernist architects do much to further the efficient production of housing, despite their love of machines and technology—in fact, just the opposite: Through their precoccupation with flawless finishes, they frequently made their designs even more costly and difficult to build than traditional ones.
Ironically enough, it was schlockmeister developers who created some real technical progress in postwar home designs. World War II had ended the Depression, but it also interrupted housing construction, creating a huge demand for homes by war’s end. Hence, economy and efficiency became the twin objectives of postwar builders, who introduced such cost- and labor-saving measures as slab floors, drywall, and hollow-core doors. Although these materials have become virtual emblems of slapdash construction, they also represent one of the few instances of real progress in building methods during this century.
In the process of addressing the housing shortage, developers also learned how to mass produce houses and how to market them. By asking as little as $100 down at tracts such as Long Island’s Levittown, developers made it absurdly easy for American families to achieve the dream of home ownership--and never mind that the neighbor’s house looked remarkably like yours.
Next time: The Rancher Rides In.
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