Be Like the Bungalow

Rediscovering delight in the small and intimate.

Dec 18, 2024

In the autobiography of Andre Leon Talley, the legendary Vogue Creative Director, there is a poignant passage describing his humble upbringing and the influence of his beloved grandmother upon his career in fashion. He recounts her ritual of washing the white bed linens, pressing them to a point of crispness on the weekends when she wasn’t working as a housekeeper. Her pride in taking care of her abode, and making the most of something modest — like a clean, tidy bed — left an imprint on him. I read this as a metaphor for how to live luxuriously on modest means.

I see the California bungalow through the same lens of modesty and integrity as a tenderly-made bed. I’ve come to harbor an irrational affection for the California bungalow in the last few years. This wasn’t always the case. In my twenties, I had an outdoorsy boyfriend in Berkeley, CA and spent many weekends walking the neighborhoods there which are graced with low-slung bungalows and craftsmen homes. A hardcore San Francisco urbanite at the time, I found these bungalows squat and suburban. I much preferred my beat-up Edwardian San Francisco apartment with high ceilings and crown moldings above the head shop. What I didn’t realize at the time, was that the exterior of a bungalow is not nearly as compelling as living inside it. The interior of a bungalow is where is where it’s magic lies. It changes how you live. A bungalow bespeaks a certain California life: pared down, informal, sensual, efficient, yet luxurious due to its relationship to the climate and the materials of its construction.

I moved into a bungalow four years ago and it has been an education. I can eavesdrop on my children’s chatter in their rooms that radiate just feet off of the main living room. Cooking is done adjacent to the dining room table, conversations erupt like they do when you are proximate to your loved ones, and music wafts easily from room to room. My bungalow has taught me to edit my possessions down to my favorite objects and tools, to head outside on foot when I feel hemmed in, and to seek comfort in what is simple, beautiful and unfussy (lemons from our little side yard in a bowl on the table.) Embedded in the construction of a bungalow is a certain care and concise economy of space that recalls the layout of a ship: built-in shelves, intentionally multi-purpose spaces, and a careful use of materials (wood, tile, shingles.) And in the way that a boat makes sense in the sea, a bungalow’s raison d’etre is it’s compact shape and exuberant outward (nature-facing) ethos. It is as if the bungalow’s design implicates domestic rest, only to seduce you out of doors soon after with all it’s windows and porches. Traditional bungalows are small by American standards (less than 1500 sf.) They are primarily one-story, with it’s most conspicuous feature being it’s low-pitched, wide roof that offered a “snug appearance that symbolized shelter and safety.” (1) In comparison to the early Victorian homes of the preceding era which accentuated formality, the bungalow feels particularly grounded, casual, and more uniquely “Californian.” Although bungalows can be built in stucco, shingled wood and adobe, they share a common democratic and sensual spirit.

How bungalows shape their inhabitants

Bungalows are particularly apropos in a California climate, and are characterized by smaller rooms emanating off a central living space with a hearth and a deep porch on the front. Early 20^th Century magazine descriptions of the California bungalow stressed “the particularly fine relationship of those houses to a lifestyle that combined openness, simplicity, and informality with some degree of order and decorum.” (2) Bungalows are an architectural building style that is born in the early part of the 20^th Century, reaching its peak of popularity from 1910 - 1925. I love them for their shape, their design features, and perhaps because they are artifacts of a simpler way of life. Bungalows came about in a decidedly analog moment in history just as the car was gaining acceptance in society, and a slower culture than the world we are experiencing in the 2020s. Bungalows were popular in the 1910s all over America, but established a real stronghold in California, Bungalow architecture represents a values system that I find to be slipping from the consciousness of my countrymen. In California, the premium used to be placed upon time spent outdoors -- at the beach, in the garden, under the palm tree or umbrella. They are small, modest, elegantly appointed, communal in spirit, middle class, and located in places that can be walked to – downtown Pasadena, Santa Barbara, West Los Angeles, and Berkeley.

“It is hard to find California now, unsettling to wonder how much of it was merely imagined or improvised.”

– Joan Didion, Notes from a Native Daughter, Slouching Toward Bethlehem.

Bungalow as Symbol

Bungalows are symbols of an ideal California. It used to be that one could feel a sense of accomplishment, arrival even, at establishing a modest home where you could savor the sun on the weekend. A bungalow means bare feet in February, a small tidy house, and evenings spent barbecuing on the back porch. There was a democratic spirit to the early iterations of the bungalow. They were intended to be solid structures made with materials of integrity that celebrated a health, togetherness, and an outdoor life. In his 1984 survey of American domestic architecture, Clifford Clark Jr. suggests that bungalows were born in opposition to the growing commercialism of the country in the first two decades of the century: “Middle-class Americans were feeling deeply ambivalent about the culture of consumption promoted by national companies and urban department stores in the early 20^th Century. Although middle class Americans had initially embraced the new culture of consumption as a source of opportunity, they slowly began to fear it’s potentially seductive and corruptive lure.”

According to Montgomery Schuyler, a Southern California developer in the early 20^th Century, the bungalow avoided “the vulgarity of crudity on the one hand, and the vulgarity of ostentation on the other.”

The bungalow is a foil to the McMansions of today. My bungalow reminds me of my beachtown Santa Cruz roots - read a book in the hammock, cook daily with fresh ingredients, cuddle with family near the fire, play the records to eleven, walk along streets with leafy sidewalks, whisper a prayer to the ocean, and open the windows to inhale a salt air breeze.

Bungalows, minimalism, and the work of Shira Gill

Aren’t most of us seeking to nail that precise sweet spot of “just enough (beloved) stuff” amidst our culture of excess? In a lot of ways a bungalow reminds me of the work of author

Shira Gill

. I was gifted a copy of her 2021 book Minimalista upon moving into my bungalow post-pandemic. It became a sort of bible whilst I built the life I wanted in my new home — rooms sparely decorated yet cozy, a pantry with legible shelves of food, one nice set of towels in each bathroom (not enough storage for more in a bungalow!), and a sort of pared-down, soulful life that has allowed me to focus on my most pressing priorities (my children, business, and a rededication to simple entertaining — like hosting picnics down the street at the Mission Rose Garden. Shira’s written two more books since her first best-seller: Organized Living (2023) and just this month, LifeStyled (2024) which is a different kind of book more focused on the human rather than the home: how to structure one’s schedule and develop systems that free you up to glean what you really want from life. If what I seek is a mind as uncluttered as my bungalow, I’m confident that LifeStyled will deliver. Also, Shira appears to live in a bungalow, so I rest my case.

(1) The American Family Home, Clifford Clark Jr.

(2) The American Family Home, Clifford Clark Jr

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