“Our Bungalow Dreams”: Housing and Occupation in the United States West, 1920

Abstract

This study compares the spatial and occupant employment distribution of Craftsman bungalows in Pocatello, Idaho; Missoula, Montana; and Pasadena, California, in 1920. These distributions reflect major trends in urban and suburban housing developments in the Western United States during this period, in contrast with prior developments in India and Britain. Current scholarship on bungalows in the United States West focuses on major urban centers such as Seattle and Los Angeles. This study shifts the analysis to the understudied Intermountain West, and refocuses away from discussions of prominent architects or the bungalow as one of many housing types in a specific place or time, to emphasize instead the modest homes built by local builders and developers in small towns. In addition, the study provides quantitative data affirming that bungalows found broad appeal across economic groups, and that these homes and their owners were not geographically segregated within their cities and towns, again in contrast to their predecessors in Britain and India.