Description
Book SynopsisThe Seattle bungalow was the nation's first modern home, and it established the essential characteristics of popular housing. This book modifies the common notion that architectural change flows only from the design elite - the architects, reformers and planners - and argues that ordinary people played a crucial role in creating the bungalow.
Trade Review"This book will be an essential resource for historians examining modest housing anywhere in America in this period . . . . Bungalows are still popular today. . . but their current romanticization obscures a much more interesting story of how a building type was developed for and changed by a lower-middle-class clientele. Janet Ore has fortunately brought this history to light."
* IA: Journal of the Society for Industrial Architecture *
"Ore provides a fine addition. . . . By adopting a broad perspective, The Seattle Bungalow adds to our understanding of the process by which builders and owners expanded the twentieth-century markets for housing."
* Winterthur Portfolio *
"The Seattle Bungalow presents architectural history from the bottom up. It unravels not only the decisions of designers, builders, and housing entrepreneurs, but also those who lived in such buildings. In Janet Ore's expert hands, the bungalow becomes more than an arts and crafts icon of the simple life. . . . she has demonstrated its significance as symbol, commodity, and place of living."
* Western Historical Quarterly *
"The Seattle Bungalow makes an important contribution to the study of bungalows and early-twentieth-century architecture."
* Technology and Culture *
"By stitching together her variously themed chapters with constant reference to one house and one family, she brings an ethnographic approach to the study of the modern built environment. . . Ore's work amplifies on regionally based studies of the bungalow."
* BC Studies *
"Ore's book is a valuable addition to American cultural history. It is based on imaginative and wide-ranging research, is clearly presented, and is illustrated with a large number of photographs."
* Oregon Historical Quarterly *
"A valuable retrospective."
* Choice *
"The Seattle Bungalow is recommended not only for urban historians but also for Seattle and Northwest historians and history buffs… Ore's analysis of the maturation of finance, salesmanship, consumerism, and citizenship in the early 20th century (is) well worth the read."
* Columbia *
"Certainly every Arts & Crafts enthusiast should have this title on their bookshelf. As should architectural historians, students of material culture, social life and customs."
* New York-Pennsylvania Collector *
Table of ContentsPreface
Acknowledgments
1. Blueprints for "The Seattle Bungalow"
2. Idealizing The Seattle Bungalow
3. Building The Seattle Bungalow
4. Selling The Seattle Bungalow
5. Living in The Seattle Bungalow
6. Legacy of The Seattle Bungalow
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
