They came out of California, featured window seats and shingled tiles, were clad in weatherboard and Auckland has thousands of them.
But altering bungalows is challenging and they pose a real dilemma for architects, according to the NZ Institute of Architects.
So it has made this one of the topics during a week-long showcase of their art this month in "Bungalow vs Architect - a conversation about one of Auckland's most popular, but belligerent, resistant to change and difficult to extend housing types".
Architects Pete Bossley, Megan Edwards and Graeme Burgess, who feature in the new Random House book Bungalow, will debate their own and other's successful approaches to extending and renovating bungalows with the book's editor, Nicole Stock, as part this week's Auckland Architecture Week.
• Bungalow vs Architect, AUT Sir Paul Reeves building foyer, Sunday September 28, 11am, free.
