SOME SEACOAST BUNGALOWS 
By Mary H. Northend 
O ELAXA 1 ION of mind and body is not 
induced by the complex city home—still 
less by the even more elaborate “summer 
cottage. ” 1 he sole distinction, indeed, be¬ 
tween the urban and the rural, or marine, 
house is that the latter have grown somewhat 
larger and more expensive than the former. 
It is this tendency toward increased com¬ 
plexity with its inevitable and increasing 
burdens that has led to the bold but simple 
remedy—the bungalow. 
In size reduced to the smallest compass 
compatible with a self-respecting existence, 
this low-lying type of house affords its inmates 
a grateful relief from care, accompanied by 
a very real sense of getting close to nature 
and to a primitive life. 
The very name “bungalow’’ has an out-of- 
the-way, foreign sound, which appeals to the 
imagination; bringing, as it does, a vision of 
the thatched bamboo houses and cocoa- 
palms on the coral islands of the far East. 
Perhaps, too, it may recall the stories of some 
old sea-captain, who, while his ship was 
loading at Rangoon or Calcutta, passed his 
enforced stay very pleasantly at his factor’s 
up-country bungalow, where the trade wind 
blew fresb through the deep verandas, or 
the punkah’s rhythmic motion cooled the 
latticed chambers. 
The derivation of the word comes from its 
Bengalese origin and applies, in India and 
the East, to a one-storeyed thatched or tiled 
dwelling surrounded by a veranda. But 
in the West, the name is given, as distin¬ 
guished from the so-called “cottage” (which 
may, indeed, be of the dimensions of a palace), 
to a small one or two-storeyed summer house, 
built with especial reference to simplicity 
and compactness. 
Within the last few years many bungalows 
have been built in America in the country 
and at the seashore, and have proved well 
adapted to summer use, or for week-end 
parties; the expense of maintenance being 
slight, and the first cost easily kept down 
to a very low figure. 
The Essex County, Massachusetts, bunga¬ 
lows, shown in the accompanying illustra¬ 
tions, have proved very satisfactory to their 
owners and not expensive to build. A 
description of them, therefore, may be help- 
MR. CHARLES W. PARKER’S BUNGALOW AT NANEPASHEMENT, MASS. 
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