60 
House & Garden 
THE 
BUNGALOW PROBLEM 
Some Suggestions for the Prospective Builder 
of the One-Story Type of House 
CARL A. ZIEGLER 
T HE word “bungalow” con¬ 
veys about as many dif¬ 
ferent meanings as any other word 
in the English language and 
whether or not it originated in 
India, as is commonly supposed, 
it has come to be the shorter and 
uglier word for a country house of 
moderate size and usually means a 
house not over one and one half 
storeys in height. 
The temperature of an archi • 
tect's office usually drops several 
degrees when a client announces 
that he has come to have plans 
made for a long cherished and 
much studied bungalow. 
Nevertheless, in these days of 
high building costs, the bungalow, 
or one of its derivatives, is perhaps 
the only solution of the problem 
for the prospective home builder 
with a limited amount to expend, 
and there is no reason why the re¬ 
sult should not be successful from 
both the artistic and utilitarian 
standpoint. 
It is one of the most difficult 
types of houses to design success¬ 
fully and there are certain general 
principles that must be followed. 
As most bungalows violate these 
principles, the rules may be stated 
in a purely negative fashion. 
By the introduction of a second storey the first storey gable 
is repeated above in this bungalow type of home, the resi¬ 
dence of Clarence M. Brown at Germantown, Pa. 
1. Never plan the building with 
two storeys and then attempt to 
make it look like a one storey build¬ 
ing. This is usually done by the 
use of a gambrel roof with long 
dormer windows that are nothing 
more or less than second floor 
walls, masquerading as dormers. 
This is a much overdone stunt 
and few have handled it success¬ 
fully. It was done much better by 
the early Dutch settlers in our Col¬ 
onial days who treated the problem 
frankly and did not try to make 
two full storeys out of a one and a 
half storey building. 
In planning a bungalow it must 
be remembered that all the main 
rooms shall be on the first floor; 
such space as is used upstairs shall 
be of minor importance. The rooms 
on this first floor should be so 
placed as to afford ease of com¬ 
munication, which makes for ease 
of living and an economy of space. 
It is this economy and conveni¬ 
ence that “bungaleers” want most 
of all, and when they begin to 
worry about stairs and upstairs 
rooms they must make up their 
minds to forsake much of each. 
The hall should be reduced to a 
In a bungalow the main rooms should be on one floor. Here 
a large hall serves as for living room. The dining room and 
service are on one side. 
Upstairs there was space for two bedrooms, a. bath, large 
closet and storage tucked away under the eaves. All of these 
