Martin Drive History -- The Milwaukee Bungalow Housing style

As a common housing type found in Martin Drive Neighborhood, the bungalow, or small house, is a testament to the endurance of the Milwaukee ideal of home ownership, which began in the nineteenth century. The popular notion of working-men and women owning their own homes was evident in advertisements for the sale of laborer’s cottages as early as 1860. The one or one and one-half story houses built in Milwaukee between c. 1902 and 1925 were also representative of the Bungalow Style, a link to the American Arts and Crafts tradition, which flourished briefly in the early years of the twentieth century. Although mass produced, many Milwaukee bungalows exhibited principles of good workmanship and the use of natural materials that were revered by the spokesmen of the craftsman movement.  Most Homes in Martin Drive Neighborhood were constructed in mid to late 20s.

The Craftsman, a monthly magazine published between 1901 and 1916, promoted the ideals of editor Gustav Stickley, a Wisconsin-born designer Born March 9, 1858 in Osceola, Wisconsin, and the father of the the craftsman movement in America. Articles stressed the ideal of a democratic and functional architecture based on the integration of natural materials and forms, hand-made decorative arts, and naturalistic garden design. At the center of the craftsman philosophy was a concern for “home” and domestic life. The Craftsman encouraged the improvement of all aspects of domestic design, offering articles or advertisements for such items as “bungalow furniture” and wickerware, earthenware, table-runners, and hammered-copper bookends made by the Roycrofters of East Aurora, New York. Stickley and his followers were indebted to William Morris and the late nineteenth century English arts and Crafts tradition for the philosophy of a high standard of craftsmanship, and of design derived from natural forms intended to counter the new machine-oriented industrial order.

The simple rustic house most often illustrated in The Craftsman and Stickley’s books such as Craftsman Homes of 1909, was the bungalow. It took many forms, from Japanese pagoda to Swiss chalet, but usually maintained its low gabled roof, low, open front porch and large chimney mass.

The Martin Drive Neighborhood in Milwaukee has an excellent collection of Bungalow Styles houses inspired by The Craftsman and numerous “Bungalow Books”. Bungalow plans were available from architects, but also through mail order catalogues and many published sources. Even Sears, Roebuck and Company provided bungalow plans in their Modern Homes, a mail order plan book.

“One need not necessarily be rich to give grace and charm to his habitation. Remember that an attractive bungalow costs no more than an uninteresting old-fashioned house…”

                                Bungalow Magazine, 1914

The Milwaukee bungalow was, in most cases, a modest home, but one that was carefully detailed and well constructed. The most common material used in Martin Drive Neighborhood was a clap board siding with fronts of varying styles including brick, stucco and stone, and “honesty” of construction was emphasized over any other design principle. On many frame examples, a jerkin-head gable roof was a common feature.

Although bungalows were built as “infill” throughout the city, excellent concentrations existed on the East, Northwest, and West Sides. The larger house, built according to Craftsman principles, was found primarily on the East Side but also on Highland Blvd. near Washington Park. The design of the larger Craftsman house varied greatly, from somber, stuccoed, hipped-roof examples, to rustic, shingled gambrel-roofed examples. Natural materials, a general lack of historical references, and a spacious front porch were standard features, however.