The bungalow actually traces its origins to the Indian province of Bengal, the word itself derived from the Hindi "bangla" or house in Bengali style. The native thatched roof huts were adapted by the British, who built bungalows as houses for administrators and as summer retreats. Refined and popularized in California, many books list the first California house dubbed a bungalow as the one designed by the San Francisco architect A. Page Brown in the early 1890s. However, Brown's close friend, Joseph Worcester, designed a bungalow for himself and erected it atop a hill in Piedmont, across the bay from San Francisco, in 1877-78. The bungalow influenced Bernard Maybeck, Willis Polk and other San Francisco architects, and Jack London, who rented Worcester's house from 1902–03, called it a "bungalow with a capital 'B.