Small Home Gazette, Spring 2024
Letter From the Editor: comments from neighbors
Our friends Mike and Tom, who live in a bungalow in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis, recently found an envelope that had been slipped through their mail slot. Inside was a card with a handwritten note.
“Hello, neighbor! I’ve lived in this neighborhood for about 10 years now and have admired your house about a hundred times. Each time I do I think I should drop off a note and thank you for making your place look so great…”
This isn’t the first time Tom and Mike have received house compliments, though they’re usually offered verbally by passersby. Their house is not grand. It’s a classic, two-bedroom, one-bath bungalow with not quite 1,000 square feet of living space.
The neighbor’s note continues: “The style, the landscaping, the multi-trim colors…It all adds up to a very beautiful house. Great work!! Good job!! Way to go!!”
That a house this modest can elicit such praise speaks not only to the owners’ care, but also to the particular, enduring appeal of bungalows. The form and style touches something deeply domestic in the observer. It does in us Bungalow Club members, anyway. You can have mega-mansions with cathedral-ceilinged great rooms, and modernist boxes with expanses of chilly, white walls. We will take enveloping spaces, soothing colors and a manageable scale.
The note wraps up: “It’s a house like yours that makes a person smile and appreciate curb appeal as they’re taking a walk to the park. It’s a house you should be proud of!”
The nice thing about a bungalow with great curb appeal is that it never seems as though the owners are boasting. There’s no three-car garage fronting the street, and there’s no two-story entryway. A nice bungalow doesn’t intimidate; it welcomes. It welcomes one to the neighborhood, and it inspires neighbors to believe that their house could do the same.
Do you have a neighbor who might appreciate a note?
