The Bungalow Is Back

If you live in an old Pasadena community filled with Craftsman bungalows, don’t be alarmed if you see someone walking up and down your street taking notes. It’s probably a home builder or the builder’s architect trying to identify that magical something about your neighborhood that’s become so attractive to new home buyers.

Craving homes that are both cozier and more individualized, these new buyers are looking backward to a tradition that embodies both these elements: the bungalow.

Increasingly the home style of choice for singles and empty-nest couples moving up from a condo or moving down from a now-too-large family home, bungalows are making a comeback.

But the new bungalow has a twist, reflecting the split personalities of the people who would live in them.

These buyers, the ones who watch Nick at Nite reruns on high-definition TV, want all the bells and whistles of a new house, but packaged in the style of home they grew up in--or, perhaps, wished they’d grown up in--a home evoking a sweeter, more peaceful era.

“A bungalow is a very humble house type with a real sensitivity to scale,” said Bob White, principal and director of design at Scheurer Architects in Newport Beach.

“What’s driving its popularity is consumers’ new view of what a neighborhood is. People want the more warm and fuzzy character of houses of the ‘20s.”

The bungalow’s revival is part of a larger movement called traditional neighborhood development, or TND.

“TND is the hot buzz word,” said Bill Watt, president of Baywood Development Group in Newport Beach.

“The car changed the way neighborhoods were designed, and we lost something very important, a comfortable pedestrian environment on the street,” Watt said. “Then we lost a sense of community. You don’t talk to neighbors when you’re driving by in a car.”

So, he said, planners are going back to the old ways of building a neighborhood. With TND, they’re returning residential streets to the residents with a variety of amenities our parents once took for granted:

* Garages in the rear of the lot instead of dominating the front.

* Sidewalks buffered from a narrower street by wide greenbelts with shade trees.

* Smaller but more numerous parks.

* An emphasis on traditional American housing design, including the bungalow.

“People are looking for something more comfortable, more inviting,” said West Los Angeles psychologist John Curtis. “We want to bond with our neighbors instead of wall ourselves away in a big fortress. It’s an anti-bunker mentality.

“People are tired of isolation, of pretentious exteriors.”

However, just exactly what a bungalow is in today’s terms seems to be up for debate. Most people in Southern California think of the Greene and Greene Arts & Crafts houses in Pasadena as the definitive bungalow.

But, in fact, bungalows can take on a number of styles ranging from that familiar Craftsman look to Spanish, Italianate or even Cape Cod.

Architectural historian and Pasadena resident Robert Winter, author of “The California Bungalow” and “American Bungalow Style,” listed criteria that he said define the traditional bungalow.

“Bungalows are one or 1 1/2-story houses, no more than 2,000 square feet in size,” he said. “If it’s a full two-story home, then it’s not a bungalow.

“The front porch is an almost absolutely necessary function of the bungalow. It talks about a life where you look out onto the street instead of the backyard.

“Most every bungalow has a fireplace, hardwood floors and conventionally sized windows. Bungalows tend to be dark inside, especially the earlier ones built with a lot of wood.”

In Los Angeles, Winter said, most bungalows were an amalgam of Swiss and Japanese design. The gables, window boxes across the front of the house and shingled exterior reflect Swiss influence. The pitched roofs with upturned eaves and rafters poking out from underneath are reminiscent of Japanese design.

Today’s bungalow, however, is not an exact duplication of the classic examples we still see in old Southland neighborhoods. The materials and workmanship would cost too much today, and builders have found that traits common to old bungalows, like dark interiors or a single story, no longer appeal to contemporary homeowners.

For this reason, the word bungalow may refer more to what Winter calls “bungalow style,” and not the real thing.

Designers of today’s bungalows borrow from traditional elements and add some of their own.

“People live differently now,” said architect Eric Zuziak, principal at JBZ Architecture + Planning in Newport Beach, who is designing a 100-home project for Baywood in Mission Viejo. Houses would range from 1,500 to 1,900 square feet and are targeted to cost in the mid-$200,000 range.

“You have to make sure you get enough natural light into homes. You didn’t have separate family rooms or breakfast nooks or tech centers [in the original bungalows]. We’re putting those into the majority of homes. Historically, rooms didn’t flow; they do much more now.”

Extra Story Added

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And, because land simply costs more now than when bungalows were first built back in the 1920s, builders need to have more house on less land. That means adding the extra full story that was not a feature of traditional bungalows.

“We’ve typically had to go two stories to achieve densities to hit the price levels we wanted to hit,” said Watt, describing a recent project in downtown Brea called Ash Street Cottages.

The project is a 96-unit neighborhood of cottage-like homes with Victorian and Craftsman styling. Ranging in size from 1,300 to 1,700 square feet, the average price was $230,000.

But Watt and other builders are interested in creating homes with an authenticity and visual diversity that they believe has been largely missing in residential development.

Home buyers in the ‘90s want individuality, intimacy and authenticity. At least that’s what the builders’ consultants say.

“We’re seeing an emergence of the ‘cultural creatives,’ ” said Clare Sebenius, owner of Scenius, a West Los Angeles conceptual development firm.

One of her clients is TMC Communities in Newport Beach, which is developing Liberty, an 8,000-home project in Lake Elsinore scheduled to break ground early this year.

“Cultural creatives range from older Gen-Xers to baby boomers. They want the real thing,” said Sebenius. “Authenticity is key. They’ll reject curb appeal and the yuppie castle for authentic styling. They want a home that’s part of the community.

“It’s a backlash against the promise of excess, which didn’t deliver. It’s an embrace of the economy of scale. The appeal of a bungalow is greater than a five-bedroom house with no character.”

Lorry Lynn, senior managing director of the Meyers Group in Irvine, which consults with new-home builders, agrees. “There’s a shift away from the little mansion to the cottage or bungalow look,” she said.

“We’ve definitely seen a trend where homes are a lot less vast and voluminous. There aren’t the big columns out front anymore, but instead porches with rocking chairs.”

Tom Wiegel, executive vice president of TMC Communities, said that the bungalow will be a predominant style in Liberty, but with a twist.

Houses will range from 1,700 to 2,200 square feet, and be one and two stories. However, he defended his use of the term “bungalow” for the larger homes.

“The predominant elevation on the street is one story,” Wiegel said. “The back may be two story, but the front is predominantly one story and ranges from Arts & Crafts to Spanish style to a European cottage.”

In developing Liberty, TMC planners researched “historic towns that are successful and known as beloved communities,” Wiegel said. “We studied Coronado Island, Balboa Island, Corona del Mar, Long Beach and Pasadena.

“We used that process to determine the character, the style, what creates the charm of these communities.”

Their intent is to build homes and develop neighborhoods that will allow residents to more easily relate to one another, to form, in essence, a community.

More than 80% of the lots will have garages at the rear, sidewalks will be closer to the houses, and pedestrians will be protected from the street by parkways.

Front porches will become the outdoor room of choice, Wiegel said. Parks will be scaled to a more intimate size.

Builders at Liberty, as well as other projects throughout Southern California, like Ladera in Mission Viejo or College Park in Buena Park, have their work cut out for them when it comes to melding the tradition of the bungalow style with the contemporary demands of new-home buyers.

“What’s interesting is that when you look at new Craftsman design, you don’t want to give up modern interiors,” said Steve Olson, chairman of the Olson Co. in Seal Beach.

“People still want higher ceiling elevations, open doorways and more light than the old designs. The trick is not to lose the past and lose the essence, but bring modern design elements into the home.”

Design Options

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Olson is able to incorporate a range of design options for home buyers, avoiding the cookie-cutter trends of the past. And the company, while including traditional exterior elements like wood siding, overhangs, porches, railings and unique front doors, also uses higher ceiling elevations and less room partitioning to bring in a greater sense of space and light.

Like Watt and Wiegel, Olson hides that second story from the street or reduces it to create the traditional 1 1/2-story feel.

“You can never have a total re-creation of the period,” said Olson, “but you want to capture the flavor and essence of the original designs.”

Tom Redwitz, whose Laguna Hills-based company, Taylor Woodrow Homes, built Mahogany in Irvine, one of the first TNDs in Southern California, noted that as popular as the bungalow has become in recent years, the “overriding desire on the part of our consumers is to have diversity throughout the neighborhood.

“So we would not do our projects with 100% bungalows. It’s the diversity that people are attracted to. Each house then stands out. . . .”

Olson compares this craving for the new-old bungalow to Ford coming out with a new Thunderbird, or to Volkwagen’s new Beetle. “It’s the ability to have the best of something vintage without its attendant problems,” Olson said.

“It appeals to baby boomers who want to go back in time. They think, ‘If I could only own one of those homes without having the huge restoration costs, if I could buy in new.’ Some people want to enjoy the finer things of the past.”

And it’s good for the community as a whole, Olson said. “Craftsman design brings a higher consciousness of preservation of the best and highest elements of the community,” he said. “When you culturally retain your past, you’re often enhancing the best part of your community.”

Caron Golden is a San Diego freelance writer.