Though we may say so of the American ranch house, the bungalow serves as the archetypal style of American housing. As ideas of homemaking and house planning took shape around the turn of the twentieth century, designers sought a single style that embodied the evolving American ideals in a form that could be dispersed widely. While the sensibility of home design may have seemed modern, it in fact grew out of a regressive tradition known as the Arts and Crafts movement. The bungalow—meaning "in the Bengali style"—with its simplicity of design and functionality of layout, proved to be the enduring product of modernist thought combined with traditional application.

In the late nineteenth century, massive industrial growth centered Americans in cities and often in less than desirable abodes. The arts and crafts movement argued for society to change its priorities and put control back in human hands...