Seattle, the 21st-century bungalow city
Seattle's love affair with the modest, architectural backbone of neighborhood housing continues, with an important landmark designation and new design guidelines for the next generation of urban cottages.
Eugenia Woo/Historic Seattle
One of the things that sets Seattle apart is its sprawling single-family neighborhoods, the backbone of which are acres of cozy, one-story bungalows. We're not the only bungalow city, but like Portland and Spokane, we came of age during the early 20th-century bungalow boomlet. Bungalows were the high-density, low-cost housing of that era, and shaped much of what we now mean when we talk about Seattle's character. Bungalows were an affordable, do-it-yourself (you could order them from Sears) solution to urban housing.
The status of the bungalow took an important step earlier this year when Seattle's Landmarks Board nominated and then designated in June as a city landmark a charming little house in West Seattle, for no other reason that the fact that it was an exemplar of the species and in prime original condition (not that common, as many old bungalows have been tinkered with over the years by home-improvers). Eugenia Woo of Historic Seattle championed the nomination.
Called The Bloss House, even those who supported its designation admit that it doesn't leap out at you, and that's typical of bungalows: They don't make grand, architectural statements like fancy Victorians or modern edifices. They are bread-and-butter shelters, often with wonderful-but-quiet character, reserved mostly for their inhabitants.
According to the minutes of the Landmarks nomination meeting last spring, Andrea Mercado, director of the Log House Museum, said The Bloss House "has survived trends of avocado, orange shag carpet, gray and mauve of the 1980s and granite." She went on to argue for recognition of these humble abodes: "[W]hen you walk in, you stop and note 'this is what it was like in 1915' and . . . this is something to recognize in the history of Seattle because we're changing a lot, we are losing what we were. She said this is a working class house and we talk a lot about the people with the money and who changed and built Seattle as we know it. She said that these are the people who worked for those people — they may not have been visible and unheard of but vital to the history of Seattle."
Seattle has designated bungalows as landmarks before, but for special reasons. James W. Washington, Jr.'s Central Area bungalow was designated because of its association with him. Washington was an important Seattle African-American artist. The unique Ellsworth Storey Cottages at Coleman Park near Lake Washington Boulevard, a cluster of 11 bungalows, also were landmarked; they are on the National Register of Historic Places. Storey was (forgive the pun) a storied Seattle architect and one of the first to integrate native materials into his designs. The cottages are both wonderful in themselves and important because of their influence on local design. But The Bloss House is remarkable simply as a survivor, a time machine, an important example of what makes Seattle Seattle.
Will that open the floodgates for further bungalow nominations? Undoubtedly there are others out there deserving of a look: It is doubtful that The Bloss House will be the last word in bungalow appreciation, but it could be the start of giving heritage recognition to the urbanization trend that made Seattle what it is — and to the way a different century responded to the challenges of affordable density.
Lest you think the bungalow boom is over, it is not. In fact, the city is encouraging the next generation of bungalows, better known now as backyard cottages. Last year, Seattle decided to expand the permitting of these cottages throughout the city after a successful experiment with them (a move that attracted national publicity including this feature in USA Today). According to a press release from the Seattle Planning Commission and the Department of Planning and Development, 32 permits have been issued for new cottages since Dec. 2009, which will nearly double (to 60) the number of cottages in the city.
The city is pushing designs that help integrate backyard cottages into single family neighborhoods. One of the positive results from the initial test of them in South Seattle was that neighbors often didn't know they were there. If it works correctly, this is a quiet, backyard evolution in which the DIY impulse wins out over Big Development.
Invisible housing is the opposite of being a "landmark," until your city matures to the point where not being a landmark constitutes a qualification for being a landmark, as with The Bloss House. But look at the design guidelines (pdf) from June 2010 on the city's website and you might be struck, as I was, with how much it is official city policy to make these cottages as much like mini-bungalows as possible.
You might call them bungaloids. Indeed, the first image you encounter is a drawing of "Prototype A," a classic Craftsman-style cottage of studio-apartment size. But the similarities are in more than appearance. First, bungaloids are small and detached. Second, they are intended to increase the stock of affordable housing in single-family neighborhoods. Third, their selling point is that they aren't excessive but provide simple, efficient, and sustainable housing. Fourth, they fight sprawl one backyard at a time. Fifth, they are best if they preserve everyone's privacy (landlord, tenant, neighbors). Sixth, the guidelines encourage "timeless" design, especially design in keeping with the original architecture of your home which, in many cases, is probably a Seattle bungalow or classic Seattle box.
True, the guidelines provide examples of many architectural styles, but they keep coming back to Craftsman-influenced designs. Prototype F puts an Arts & Crafts-type, chalet-style cottage atop a garage, for example. The guidelines are quite interesting and lay out many best practices and examples to help educate the cottage builder. In some sense, they remind me of the catalogs and pattern books of the early 20th-century bungalow era, when you could pick a home kit or pattern from a catalog.
The city is helping Seattle cottage builders to think in a "Seattle way," encouraging design that works here rather than design that challenges the senses and sensibilities of your neighbors. No giving the folks next door the architectural finger. That's a smart move for many reasons, especially because they don't want to create backyard backlash and cause the city council to rethink cottages. When the council approved them, some council members stipulated that if they became too intrusive, they'd review the policy and perhaps limit their number.
The good news is, there's an active sensitivity to Seattle's architectural fabric, adapting examples of innovative turn-of-the-20th-century ideas to the turn-of-the-21st. This is a wonderful departure from the wrecking-ball mentality of the real-estate-bubbled '00s.
Note: For those eager to learn more about bungalows, Historic Seattle is putting on the 13th Annual Bungalow Fair, Sept. 25-26.)
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Comments:
Posted Fri, Aug 13, 3:12 a.m. Inappropriate
The city isn't helping this potential cottage builder. To convert an "accessory structure" built to code eight years ago into an ADU "cottage," I would need to bring it up to current energy code. Sounds great, but in this case the only possible way to convert the R-11 walls to R-21 would be to tear off all the siding, ship it off to the giant "away" in Arlington Oregon, re-insulate then re-side the whole structure. The old siding (Hardiplank) is not reusable.
There is probably no way to accurately estimate the time it would take for a marginal increase in wall insulation in this otherwise heavily insulated and energy efficient structure to save more energy than that which would be lost by shipping tons of perfectly good siding to a landfill then replacing it with new material. But I bet it would be a long, long time. It would also be monumentally wasteful, and just plain stupid. There won't be any "cottage" happening here anytime soon.
Sorry about the rant, but a realistic approach to energy costs and benefits would IMHO be much more useful than cutesy design suggestions that look like they were drawn up by people who have never actually built anything.
Posted Fri, Aug 13, 9:04 a.m. Inappropriate
You're right, Seattle is hardly alone as a bungalow city -- it's a Northwest thing. I'd add Tacoma, Boise, Olympia and Bellingham to your list. All can benefit from a plan to increase density while preserving cool old neighborhoods.
Posted Fri, Aug 13, 9:18 a.m. Inappropriate
Provoking.
Do note that the trend toward backyard cottages while charming and useful is one more wooden peg in the coffin of our canopy. Ah, mixed metaphors. What I mean to say is that many a mature backyard shade tree will come down to make room in the backyard. The new permissions need to address that, and our DPD is busy gutting tree ordinances right now.
Happy to read of the landmark designation of the Bloss Bungalow for surviving as an exemplar. May it never face an oncoming freeway or two.
The Roanoke Historic District is miraculously surviving so far at more or less the corner of I-5 and SR 520. Eighty of its 99 single-family houses have retained their architectural integrity. For a quick survey of how Seattle lived in earlier decades, drive in at E Edgar St and Harvard E, noting the William H. Parsons house on the corner, and slowly on down Broadway, turning right at Shelby and on back up 10th to Roanoke. (That's close to the route the streetcar tracks SDOT dug up on 10th this week, just south of the 10th bridge, used to follow.)
Under a mature canopy of 100 year old elms and Horse Chestnuts, you'll see examples of the residential work from 1899 to 1939 of just about every architect (some 29 of them) who was in town in that period of significance. The numerous styles in the nine-block district, together in surprising harmony, make it a little garden of residential architecture--Colonial Revival, Neo-Classical Revival, Tudor Revival, Mission/Spanish Revival, French Norman Revival, Italian Renaissance Revival, Swiss Chalet Revival even a "Garrison Revival," also Queen Anne, English Arts and Crafts, a "California Monterey" built in 1933, and yes, plenty of Craftsman and American Foursquare.
Some of the first residents were builders who moved in with their families. Some were workers. Some were worked for. Not the grandees of Millionaires Row or the Harvard-Belmont Landmark District, they were apparently ambitious and versatile, which reminds me that several Dennys ended up living modestly in the Roanoke Historic District, including Louisa Boren Denny, widow of the bankrupted David T. Denny, and writers Emily Inez Denny and Sophie Frye Bass and Roberta Frye Watt in their widowhoods, and Elizabeth Frye Bogue, widow of Virgil Bogue.
See this piece of Seattle history while it still can be described (improbably given its neighboring freeways) as "a quiet, largely unexplored island of tree-lined streets with lovely residences that reflect early 20th century home styles." (Seattle Architectural Foundation) If a Portage Bay Bridge widened to seven lanes doesn't turn out to be the tipping point, the subsequent widening of I-5 to accommodate more traffic from those seven lanes will be.
Posted Fri, Aug 13, 3:43 p.m. Inappropriate
Erin: You raise good points. One is, Seattle needs more protection of historic neighborhoods in general. We're way behind the curve on that. Second, trees are an issue and cottages, especially those not built on existing footprints (like garages, driveways or sheds) mean that habitat and canopy could get whittled away, which is why the number of cottages is a concern. Also, we need much stricter rules about cutting trees, particularly mature trees, more incentives for keeping trees, and harsher penalties for those who violate tree laws.
Posted Sat, Aug 14, 1:36 p.m. Inappropriate
There we go again: the big lie about tree canopy.
Posted Sun, Aug 15, 2:22 p.m. Inappropriate
Love cottages and bungalows .. our historic neighborhoods and housing stocks deserve protection. Trees too! (there's an argument?).
My concern is that 'cottages and bungalows' taken out of their historic context - lower cost working, lower middle class housing on affordable land, with a particular relationship to house size and lot coverage, at the margins of urban development of the era - simply becomes an intellectual excuse for over designed architectural doll houses that maximize lot coverage and price per square foot returns to developers.
Too many examples, local and regional, to mention ('Treehouse' in Port Townsend comes to mind ) of increased density at a high price point with none of the benefits, individually or socially, we associate with 'cottages and bungalows' (unless having your neighbor close enough to brush your teeth for you is what you want).
Nostalgia and romance are wonderful things ... in their proper context.
Just think "townhouse's" and some of the manifestations we see in town.
Posted Tue, Aug 17, 8:22 p.m. Inappropriate
Not such a lie about the canopy, but bungalows are not to blame. Look instead to condos and townhouses, where every square inch of land is used to provide square footage, leaving miniscule (if any) outdoor spaces with precious little room for any kind of plant, forget trees. Ah, for the days of the courtyard apartment!
Posted Wed, Aug 18, 10:54 a.m. Inappropriate
How true, Luiga. The new buildings in South Lake Union stand in a sea of pavement. We'll need jackhammers to make some room for trees and shrubs.
Posted Sun, Sep 5, 9:11 a.m. Inappropriate
i love bungalows, used to own one that i restored. and i love backyard cottages. and i love the idea of greater density, for a lot of reasons.
but what really gets me are "design guidelines" that include aesthetic requirements. what knute described as "giving the folks next door the architectural finger" varies from person to person. nothing irks me more than "craftsman" styled, builder-grade, and design guideline influenced new construction. craftsman architecture is a historic style, and not something that belongs in land-use code. i've got no beef if that's what you want to build on your property, so long as you don't tell me that that that's what i have to build on mine.
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