Small Home Gazette, Winter 2024

Bargeboard Bonanza

One of the bungalow details Bungalow Club member Krishna Dorney pointed out on his walking tour is bargeboards. According to Wikipedia, a bargeboard “…is a board fastened to each projecting gable of a roof to give it strength and protection, and to conceal the otherwise exposed end grain of the horizontal timbers or purlins of the roof.” A similar architectural detail is facia, but while bargeboards follow the angled slope of a gable, facia boards run horizontally along the edge of a roof and are typically what rain gutters are attached to.

Face it—unlike many of their West Coast cousins, Twin Cities bungalows are not known for fanciful flourishes. Our bungalows are generally handsome and sturdy, befitting the sensibilities of the Scandinavian and Germanic immigrants who settled in the upper Midwest. That said, some manage to show a little pizazz in the form of a decorative bargeboard. During his tour, Dorney explained that bungalow builders had their signature styles, generally expressed by a decorative cut in the lower tip of the board.

Below is a selection of bargeboards we have spotted on bungalows—and other house types of the era—around the metropolitan area.