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THE CALIFORNIA BUNGALOW: A STYLE OF
ARCHITECTURE WHICH EXPRESSES THE IN-
DIVIDUALITY AND FREEDOM CHARACTER-
ISTIC OF OUR WESTERN COAST
WE have the pleasure of pub-
        lishing in this issue of THE
        CRAFTSMAN some of the best
        examples that have come to
us of the new American architecture,
which as yet can hardly be consider-
ed a style so much as a series of in-
dividual plans adapted to climatic
conditions and to the needs of daily
living, and in harmony with the
natural environment and contour of
the landscape. In a country like our
own, where all these requirements
vary so widely, any one style would
be altogether inadequate, but the
new architecture that is so rapidly
and steadily developing in America
is rather a general expression of that
spirit of individuality and freedom
which is especially characteristic of
this country. In the north and east,
for example, a style of building is re-
quired which would be absolutely
out of harmony with the life and
surroundings to be found in the
south and west, and in California,-
especially in the Southern part of the
state,--conditions prevail which are
found hardly anywhere else on the
continent. For fully eight months
in the year the constant sunshine,
68
unbroken by clouds or storms and
relieved only by an occasional fog
drifting in from the ocean, permits
a life that is practically all out-of-
doors, or, at all events, maintains
such a friendly relation with out-of-
doors that *the house seems more in
the nature of a temporary shelter
and resting place than a building
designed to be lived in all the time
and to afford  constant protection
from the elements.
  The country out there is one of
great restful spaces, with wide plains
and low, rolling hills which lead up
gradually to the stupendous moun-
tain walls of the Sierra Nevada and
the lesser but still imposing peaks
of the Coast Range and the Sierra
Madre. There are no thickets of
slim  saplings and   green  under-
growth, no little creeks and springs,
and none of the somewhat aggressive
picturesqueness found at every hand
in the east; only huge grain fields,
orchards and vineyards and wide
stretches of sun-dried grass, scorched
to a warm, tawny brown during the
long rainless season that follows the
brief winter of green grass and wild
flowers. The colors, too, are differ-