Radford's Artistic Bungalows: The Complete 1908 Catalog

Rating:
Summary: Radford Book
Review: I found this book to be of little use. In fact, I looked through it in about 10 minutes and have not picked it up since.

Had it not been so inexpensive I would have sent it back.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating look back....
Review: I'm obsessed with bungalows and cottages, so I found this book a wonderful resource. Some of the designs and plans shown were absolutely bizarre...I'm always looking for local examples to examine. I also loved the practical use of space and simple designs, like smaller bathrooms and larger living areas. Call me crazy but these houses have twice the charm of the monstrosities being erected today. If you tend to wax nostalgic, I recommend adding this book to your home library.

Rating:
Summary: Lots of variety, no photographs
Review: Radford's Artistic Bungalows is one of a series of books from Dover (publishers) about house plans. These books are actually exact reprints of original plan books from the turn of the century (1880-1925, roughly). Dover adds little or no modern explanations, just presenting the catalog as it was. So when one looks to review these books, one isn't really judging the modern-day publisher, or editing, or writing. The only modern element is the accuracy of reproduction- in some cases, if pages in the originals that Dover found are damaged or torn, that page is reproduced in the original with the tear, smudge, blot, or hole showing. So to judge the books, one has to compare each one to others of its kind, and then to decide whether the material in it is thorough and complete according to the standards of its time. Since there are several dozen of these catalogs published by Dover, we have the basis for such a comparison.

So how does this one shape up compared to, say "California Bungalows of the Twenties" or "Craftsman Bungalows"? Well, there's very little text. Other than an introduction (from the original catalog maker), there is no descriptive text accompanying each house plan. In fact, the same boilerplate paragraph about what the blueprints and specifications include is the only text on each page, other than the house dimensions and the price of the plans. Then, there's no suggestions for furnishing, for colors to paint the house, or for what kind of lot or location the house might be best suited for. Many other catalogs include this kind of description. The illustrations of each house are elaborate drawings/paintings, presented at an angle view. Some catalogs present many of their houses face-on, which means you can't visualize what the sides really look like; the views in this catalog give you an idea of the front and at least one side in every case. There are no photos, and no illustrations of any of the interior of the house, nor of any of the specific styles of built-ins available. Some catalogs show a typical bathroom, a typical living room, etc., and have a few pages showing the styles of kitchen cabinets available; this one doesn't.

On the other hand, this catalog includes a wider variety of architectural styles than the title might suggest, and some of the most interesting exteriors I've seen. Our own house, built in 1919, has curved eaves on the gables meeting curved eaves on the main roof, and we've always wondered whether the architect was on drugs. Now we know that he may have gotten his inspiration from Radford; several of the houses in this book have curved eaves meeting each other. Haven't seen that in other catalogs. The book has a wide definition of what's a bungalow, so there are houses with gambrel roofs, 3-room cottages, and 9-room expensive houses with servants' quarters. One interesting thing about the Radford plans is that, although published in 1908, virtually all of the houses have indoor bathrooms - only 2 plans in the whole book, that I recall, don't have an indoor bathroom. In 1908, that's unusual - many other contemporary plan books have as much as a quarter to a third of their models without a complete indoor bathroom or even an indoor toilet. Not only that, many of Radford's houses have both an upstairs full bath and a downstairs half-bath (toilet and sink) - almost unheard of at the time! So the architects were apparently fairly forward-thinking. A few houses even have two full baths, a feature that otherwise wouldn't become common until 40 years later.

The floor plans are, for the most part, large enough to be clearly readable, and there are only a couple of cases where the architects have left off the dimensions of a room. Ceiling beams, pull-out beds, built-in seats and benches and shelves, are all indicated on the floor plans.

In sum: good variety of exteriors and floor plans, some advanced features for the time; poor in its lack of interior illustrations or actual photos of completed houses. This shouldn't be your only plan book - there are others with lots more detail if you are just getting acquainted with the genre - but if you are collecting several such books, then this one is a nice addition to the variety in your collection.