Saving Edina's historic homes

The bungalows that were built in Edina between 1905 and 1935 were homes for working people. Practicality ruled. Swinging doors between the kitchen and dining room let women who didn't have servants ferry meals between rooms with the push of an elbow.

But there was elegance, too, with beautiful built-in buffets and bookcases adding class to the modestly priced buildings.

Now Edina is moving to ensure that it doesn't lose the 100 to 125 bungalows it has left in the Morningside neighborhood. Matching a $5,000 grant from the Minnesota Historical Society, the city will survey bungalows to find their common architectural features. Owners will be able to nominate their bungalows as Edina Heritage Landmarks, which will help guide any future remodeling.

It's a mini-version of what's already been done in the city's historic Country Club neighborhood, where homeowners who want to make significant changes to a house must clear their plans with the Edina Heritage Preservation Board. But instead of designating an entire neighborhood as historic, bungalow preservation would be done house-by-house on a voluntary basis.

"It's a matter of preserving them," said Joyce Repya, associate Edina city planner. "This identifies the uniqueness of bungalows in Edina. ... It's a charming part of our city, and it's nice to embrace that and not lose it."

Morningside's charm

Morningside is Edina's most eclectic neighborhood, arguably resembling parts of Minneapolis more than Edina.

In a suburb where 85 percent of the homes were built after World War II, 100 to 125 of Morningside's 600 houses are early-20th-century bungalows.

Robert Vogel, the city's preservation consultant, said that when Morningside grew up around streetcar lines that were completed around 1905, it coincided with the mass popularity of bungalows.

"The bungalow movement was instigated by some fairly revolutionary thinkers in North America who wanted to create architecture that ordinary working people could afford," he said. "Home ownership rates didn't exceed 50 percent in this country until the 1950s."

In Morningside, bungalows generally have a footprint of 1,000 square feet or less and are one to one-and-a-half stories tall. Most have low-pitched hip or gable roofs, an open or closed entry porch and four to six rooms on the main floor. Builders let their clients personalize the homes.

"They made decisions about where the windows were, whether the porch was enclosed or open," Vogel said. "It was the first houses that citizens could put their own stamp on."

"They're interesting historically and valuable architecturally," Vogel said. "And now there's a real market for this kind of house."

Vogel views the house-by-house landmark designation as a "more sustainable way to do preservation" because only homeowners who want to participate will be involved.

"If you don't want to do this, we won't waste taxpayer money to convince you to," he said.

Spreading the word

Meetings will be held this fall to explain the project. The city will use the survey to create a list of common characteristics as a guide for homeowners to use if they want to preserve design elements.

He doesn't think that will be a problem because people wouldn't buy a bungalow if they didn't want a bungalow. The city has been flexible on issues such as garages, allowing owners to replace single-car garages with doubles more practical by today's standards.

"Our goal here isn't to freeze-dry these homes," Vogel said. "Everything eventually falls down. ... It has to be a partnership between the city and the property owners. They should tell us what they want."

He said the bungalows are quite adaptable. "There are a lot of places where you can add on without changing the character of what you see from the street," he said. "They were built sound, with a lot of really solid lumber. They accommodate Jacuzzis and air conditioning and can even be made [handicapped accessible] more easily than I thought."

The biggest challenge, he said, may be limiting participation.

"We're constantly getting requests from people asking us to come and look at their house," he said. "We think a lot more people may want their home to be landmarked than we can accommodate."