Back in the day, Ladies Home Journal magazine was an important women’s magazine, designed to help women achieve that elusive but important goal of home-ownership. (Today, it’s more about high-fat cake recipes and low-fat diets, but I digress.)

In the first decade of the new century, Ladies’ Home Journal consistently featured a majority of articles centered on home-ownership. The February 1911 issue was devoted to the new housing style: Bungalows. One headline said, “The Bungalow, because of its easy housekeeping possibilities is becoming more popular every year and bungalows show what can be done with a little money wisely spent.” The same issue featured these articles:

When you build a little house (common mistakes to avoid)

How I built this house for $700

The Bungalow – from $250 – $2500

What I did with an old farmhouse

Two houses built for less than $1500

What can be done with old houses

A fireproof house for less than $4000

If a woman must earn her living at home (A house planned by a woman to meet this need.)

It seems as though that the ladies were ahead of the men on this bungalow thing. While Ladies Home Journal was promoting bungalows, American Carpenter and Builder described them as “tiresome.”

Craftsman houses and odd bungalows will have their day. People may like them now, but it is an extreme type and will become tiresome in course of time. The uncompromising squareness in the craftsman style, with its small wall space does not permit of much artistic decoration (June 1913).

Within the pages of a 1928 Ladies’ Home Journal, I was delighted to discover this advertisement for a catalog of mail-order kit homes. The next pictures below feature a real, live GVT #633 in Lewisburg, West Virginia and Roanoke, Virginia.

To read more about Wardway Homes, click here.

Advertisement in LHJ for Gordon Van Tine/Wardway Homes

GVT home in Lewisburg, WV

Wardway Home in Roanoke, VA