Architecture - Style of my house

Answer
Meredith --

The floor plan you describe certainly sounds bungalowish. It's possible you have a kit, but ... from the image it's hard to tell because of the enclosed front porch. The porch enclosure may easily be a modification to the original house. Colonial style details were streamlined over the years but remained popular from before 1900 to about 1950, with less ornamentation as the decades went by.

It looks like the original house may have had a standard hipped roof that extended over the front porch. It probably had a simple railing. And it probably looked like any one of the many small bungalows that were built in every city in the US.

From about 1905 to 1920, Craftsman-style bungalows often had wood-cased frames around the doorways inside. Are yours cased with wood or plain?  Can you get some more pictures?

I make a distinction between Craftsman, "craftsman style," and bungalow. (For detailed definitions, see http://www.antiquehomestyle.com/styles/craftsman.htm and http://www.antiquehomestyle.com/styles/bungalow.htm .)

So, for the purposes of style ID, though your house has a distinctive Colonial-style porch, I think that was a later addition made sometime between 1930 and 1960. If it was removed and the house was restored, I think you'd have a true bungalow in the Craftsman tradition. I can't see if you have the exposed rafters, and you don't mention built-ins or woodwork.

Back to the kit idea: It's possible it's a kit. I've just looked through the plan books for several manufacturers including Gordon Van Tine, Sterling, Sears, Lewis, and Aladdin from 1916 to 1923.  It sounds like a very "modern" plan for 1920.  

Kit houses typically had the fireplace on an outside wall. There are a few with the fireplace on an inside wall, but nothing similar to your house.  I agree that the floor plan is typical of a standard bungalow. If you can get into the attic, look for any markings that appear on the beams or boards. They may be stamped in ink or even have a paper label. Pre-cut kit homes were assembled piece by piece like a big puzzle. However, manufacturers also did custom designs and sold just the plans so that's another possibility, which makes IDing it as a kit a bit problematic.

As for color, the standard advice in 1920 was to keep the color scheme simple. People tended to favor whites and light neutrals for Colonials with a color for sash and front door, especially on little houses. On bungalows, the colors were often darker: brick red with dark brown trim, various shades of warm grays, warm greens, and dark mustardy yellows. Often analogous schemes were favored with a dark taupe body, sash in a warm gray, and the front door in a mahogany red. I have a series of color schemes taken from the 1916 Aladdin catalog if you are interested. (Contact me directly through my website if you would like to see them.)

Stains were frequently used on the bungalows because the shingles could be dipped before they were installed making for easy maintenance. Stains were often in the grey and brown range of the color spectrum, then trimmed with white or green.

Best regards,
Rikki Nyman
www.antiquehomestyle.com

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