Bungalow & Craftsman Homes in Massachusetts

What is a Bungalow?

The Bungalow is the cozy cottage of the early 1900s, a small family home built low to the ground with a wide front porch and warm natural woodwork. Most went up between about 1905 and 1930. The look started in California, where the Greene brothers designed handsome Craftsman houses in Pasadena, and it traveled east through Gustav Stickley’s magazine. By 1910 it was one of the most popular houses a young Massachusetts family could buy. Many came in a box: Sears and Aladdin shipped Bungalows as kits, pre-cut lumber sent by rail for a local carpenter to assemble.

Why it’s special

A Bungalow was built as a comfortable home for ordinary people. The roof sits low, the eaves reach out wide with the rafter ends showing, and a deep porch runs across the front on square columns that taper inward, often set on stone or brick piers. Arts and Crafts builders loved honest woodwork, so inside a Bungalow comes with built-in window seats, bookcases, and a living room organized around a fireplace.

What it’s like to live in one

Bungalows feel warm and easy to live in. The main rooms are mostly on one floor, which keeps them practical at any age, and the front porch is a real outdoor room for half the year. Worcester has more than anywhere else in the state, with Springfield, Holyoke, and Pittsfield growing similar neighborhoods near their mills and Watertown, Arlington, and Belmont getting theirs along Boston’s old streetcar lines. A century-old Bungalow may need updated wiring and heating, and the original windows and woodwork reward an owner who keeps them.

Is it the real thing?

A Bungalow is easy to spot once you know the porch. Look for a house that sits low and wide, with a deep covered porch, square tapered columns on stone or brick piers, and rafter ends showing under wide eaves. A Cape has at most a small entry hood, a ranch has none, a Colonial Revival is white-with-shutters, and a Queen Anne is far busier. Kit houses are hard to prove, since owners changed the plans and builders copied the catalogs; a real Sears or Aladdin usually reveals itself only during renovation, when shipping stamps and numbered framing turn up. Many listings coded “Bungalow” on MLS are really the plain vernacular small house of the same years, with the low footprint but none of the tapered columns or built-in woodwork.