Michael May, Sami Crouch, Adam Jones, Jackson Myrick, Josh Southwick, Hector Zumaeta
Our group visited the neighborhood near Westminster College to look at bungalows. The first thing we saw was Westminster itself. Since it was founded in 1875, a good 45 years before the bungalows as we know them came into being, its style is significantly different compared to the other buildings we visited. It seemed much more distinguished and old, which is what a college built in 1875 is expected to look like.
The neighborhood itself was interesting in that nearly every building was either red or tan, and hardly any had any really exciting colors.
The color in the neighborhood largely came from the plants and vegetation. It seemed like the
neighborhood its
elf was trying to blend in with it's surroundings. This was especially true of one of the houses we visited that was entirely covered by plants.
A bungalow is a house that's longer than it is wide, with a spacious patio and public front that hides a private back. This seems to fit well with the time period of the 1920's, because those were the roaring twenties; with people's new found fortunes they certainly would feel the desire to show off their succ
ess, but every person needs their privacy.
Also worth noting is how close each house is to one another, and how close each house is to the street. This suggests a kind of community that's very social, but that's not what we found there. We only saw a few people around, although part of that is probably because we were there around 6-7 o'clock at night. It seemed like it was a welcoming neighborhood, but not an extremely social one, which was interesting because it varied from what the houses described the neighborhood to be like a bit.
Apart from the bungalows, a few houses stood out in particular. One was the house covered in vines. Another was a house that, for some reason, had both Dish network and Sattelite. Nobody in our group could come up with a good reason why a house would need both. Another noteworthy house was one that seemed to be in the Victorian style. Among the bungalows, it stood out quite a bit as being almost fancier than the other houses. It seemed that the owner of that house wanted to seem like he was in some way better than everyone else, an observation that was validated when we saw that he owned a boat.
In conclusion, the neighborhood both satisfied some of our expectations, while breaking others. It just goes to show you that you can't judge a book by it's cover, and you certainly can't judge a place until you've been to it firsthand.
What do you think is the effect of the college and the hundreds of students who come to school everyday and park on what are to residents, neighborhood streets? Even though the school buildings are high style--Gothic Revival--for the most part and grand and even impressive, the interaction between the college and the residences nearby is a sort of tug-a-war, a war for limited resources, namely the street and peace and quiet. The scale of the houses in the streets surrounding Westminster is modest and attractive to middle class families. Although some of the houses have garages not all of the homes do, which throws even more cars into the street. Isn't it interesting that you only noticed one notable Gothic Revival house and that there was so much architectural homogeneity throughout the neighborhood? The bungalows were all pretty much pattern book designs that you could have found anywhere in the region with pretty much the same materials, colors and forms. The monochromatic earth tones palate that you noticed (and didn't much like) is very typical of the bungalow style and in fact was part of the design aesthetic of the arts and crafts style--which was anti-Victorian and all the bright colors typical of that style. Westminster has evolved into a very eclectic neighborhood with a mix of apartments, student occupied houses and single family homes. It feels like a transitional neighborhood despite its architectural distinction as a result. You always make such lively and colorful comments about what you see! Nice work!
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