Address: 15 East Islay Street
The earliest mention of a bungalow court that I found in California newspapers dates to 1904. And 10 years later — 1914 — I found the first article in the local paper about a bungalow court being built in Santa Barbara. Happily, that bungalow court is still here — on the southwest corner of Victoria and Laguna streets. Santa Barbara has more than a dozen bungalow courts. The word “bungalow” comes from the word “Bengal” — a region in India. The British colonists in India used the word to describe one-story cottages in India.
A bungalow court contains stand-alone houses that share a driveway or courtyard. There are three main designs: two rows of houses with a larger house at the end, two rows of houses without a house at the end, and one row of houses. The feature of this month’s column fits in that last category — Islay Commons. It contains five homes. It was built in 1915, so it is one of the earlier bungalow courts in Santa Barbara.