My Post World War 11 Bungalow

Recently I met a woman who is renovating/restoring a late first period Conolinal house in Woodbury. It is a timber frame dwelling. Many years ago, I attended a lecture given by Joan Berkey on Timber frame houses of Cape May County. It was a fascinating talk and I bought her book which I never got around to reading until today.

I took a short lunch break and contemplated, again, my own somewhat historic house, which becomes more historic as time goes by. My house was built as a single house (as contrasted with a development house) in 1947 by a single man. When I bought it, it had a parlor, kitchen, bedroom and bath and a short attic. The attic was actually built to replace the flat roof with a pitched roof, likely because of the leaking that flat roofs are prone to. I surmise this because of the phantom light switch in my bedroom and the obviously replaced ceiling, which was done rather roughly. The dry wall seams are not very carefully taped and plastered. At one point there must have been a ceiling light in the bedroom that went with the now defunct switch, but ehere is no ceiling light now.

When I was teaching adult classes back in the 1980's, I had the good fortune to meet a woman whose aunt had once lived in this house. The aunt's name was Elsie Finch. This lady gave me some papers in a cardboard box which I have since lost, buried in the attic, which described some of the history of this house, the date it was built and that the land it was built upon had been a glue factory. Some years after this house was built, a development of bungalows was built around it, somewhat larger than this original house.

Among teh many things I have loved about this house from the firs time I saw it, has been that the original large trees that were here are still here. The trees, some of them, probably pre-date the house. Others were no doubt built at the time of the house due to their placement right next to the house on every side. The roof overhang is now not much more than a foot from the trunks of these trees, maples mostly.

My land is pie shaped so that at the street we are ten sidewalk squares along the street but at the back, my yard borders five other backyards. All the trees that were here when I bought it, nearly 40 years ago, are still here and I have added planted Christmas trees, many holly trees and the holly trees have propogated some offspring of their own.

We don t often think of houses from the 1940-s and 50's as historic but increasingly they are! We are a scant 20 years from these houses being a hundred hears old! I hadn't thought of my houe that way until I had a piece of EXCELLENT advice from a nice man, now deceased, who was married to an old friend of mine. I was ontemplating putting aluminum siding on my wooden clapboard house and he advised against it. He reminded me that there are FEW wooden sided houses around anymore, and that the aluminum siding would destroy the wooden siding because the wood, not being able to breathe and dry out, would rot. As it is the wooden siding is in good shape. I never burned adn re-painted as you are supposed to do. It has been painted twide over the eyars and wll we did was dust and wash the old siding, scrape off some of the old paint and paint over top of it. This seems to have protected it well enough and I have never even had any additional peeling. The windows are original too. This is all comforting to me in a strange way becaue it is the architecture I was brought up with, the old sash windows, the wooden siding, tree shaded yards, a nice little porch that I sit on at least once or twice every day.

It is a shame that there isn't more scholarship on houses from this era, such a very interesting period - the post Eorld War II Baby Boom era, the era of tract housing in New Jersey. Coincidentally, since I have always been a second hand store furniture hunter, the kitchen set I bought at Bill's 2nd Hand furniture store in Mt. Holly (I don't know if it is still there) was made in 1947 at Van Sciver's. And my bedroom furntirue is circa 1930's Waterfall Art Deco. I have a chiffarobe in the back room which is also 1920's 1930's era. It just happened that the furniture I bought was correct period to the house.

My big fear is that after I die, flippers or realtors will come here and demolish this 'histori bungalow' and cut down all these old trees in order to put up some huge modern house, and another piece of New Jersey history will be destroyed.

That's all I have to say about my Baby Boom bungalow for today, but who knows, maybe some day I will expand upon this. There are no books on this topic, I have looked! There are probably books about tract housing of the 1950's, such as Levittown and so on, but the 1940's seems underrepresented in literature.

Hope this gives you pausse to consider your own home and the history it no doubt has! Happy Trails - Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com