The Porch Life

[Matt Deckard]

Something my friend Razor brought to my attention. With the lack of porches in modern design, we tend to create ... well our own idea of porches on places like driveways... you know, to fill the void.

It is quite a good read... and insightful when it comes to societal norms that have changed with modern housing styles in my neighborhood. We built porches for a reason. I think that reason is being lost with modern sensibilities.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/porch-381385-porches-house.html

 

[ButteMT61]

Every house in my neighborhood has porches. Ours is a 1906 and most here are from that era, with a few newer homes. Lots of folks here use the porches, and some are cluttered with furniture and junk. If they get too out of hand, the neighborhood will have the local code enforcement come by. People sit out on the porches, especially the older folks. It's fun and I hate neighborhoods without them. Every home our family has owned has had a porch. People don't interact like they used to - they have forums instead.

 

[this one guy]

In the neighborhood where I grew up, as time went on I noticed a decline in the usage of porches. As driving everywhere replaced walking around town, eventually there was no stopping and talking with people on their front porches, and for them sitting on porches just meant hearing road noise and staring at traffic.

It would be interesting to find out if the construction of sidewalks also had experienced a decline that paralleled that of the building of front porches. Now that the trend is more attention on health and fitness, existing sidewalks are at least getting used by power walkers - though they usually wouldn't want to interrupt their cadence to stop and talk anyway.

 

[W-D Forties]

British homes don't have porches but I wish we did. Every time I see them in films I just think..I wish I had one of those....

 

[BR Gordon]

I grew up in Southern Cal, in a home that was built before the turn of the last century. That home had a porch and all of the surrounding homes, built about the same time, had porches. From what I remember, the homes that were built just prior to WWII and later did not have porches. At least in my neighborhood, it seems that as homes were built for the general population, porches were sacrificed for cost savings.

 

[Atticus Finch]

Interesting. I hadn't thought much about porches and their social function until I stumbled onto this thread. One thing's for sure, they once were a big part of homelife here in the South. I'm guessing the heat has much to to with that. Before air conditioning, we had to spend most summer evenings on the porch just so we could breath. But I've noticed that porches have moved from the front of the house to the rear...and now we call them "decks". Many new Southern homes still have front structures that look like porches, but they're largely nonfunctional. And I can see how the shift away from the front porch to backyard living could tend to isolate families from their community.

AF

 

[LizzieMaine]

There was a sharp boundary line on the street where I grew up. Half the street was constructed between 1900 and 1920, and every house on that half of the street had a porch -- some of them stretching the whole length of the house, some of them smaller. The other half of the street was built up after the war, on a filled-in swamp, and none of those houses had porches.

Porch life in our neighborhood was confined to the summer months, obviously, and it mostly revolved around listening to the Red Sox game after supper. You could walk thru the whole porch-oriented part of the neighborhood and never miss a pitch because everybody had a radio on their porch and a couple of chairs.

Most porches also did double duty with clotheslines, so the furniture tended to be light and moveable. One guy, though, had the most extraordinary piece of porch furniture ever seen: a full-size Coca-Cola water-bath cooler, such as you'd see in a grocery store. He didn't store Cokes in it though -- he kept live lobsters in it. When the mood struck, he'd go out and grab a couple and toss them in the pot.

It's common with prewar houses here to have the porches closed in for year-round use. My house has a front "sun porch," where I have chairs, a couch, a radio, and an enormous bookcase, and I lounge out there with the ballgame on whatever summer nights I'm not working. If it gets too hot in the house proper, I've been known to sleep out there.

 

[Espee]

Garrison Keillor explained porch etiquette something like this:
If you're on your porch and you see a neighbor coming along, YOU MUST invite him to sit and visit... and maybe have something to drink.
HE MUST refuse, citing unfortunate circumstances such as errands or chores which are waiting.
Then, IF you REALLY did WANT him to visit, you may insist, telling him those errands or chores can wait a while.
Finally, IF he does WANT to visit, he's free to accept the (second) invitation.

 

[scottyrocks]

In the house I lived in two houses before this one, I had drawn up plans to construct a porch that would overlay the front stoop, extending out to the sides enough to put some chairs on. The overhang I hadn't quite worked out the details on.

Because of curb encroachment, I had designed it to be bolted together so it was not 'permanent,' and no part of it was to be fastened to the house proper so it wasn't part of the house structure.

I never did get around to building it which is fine because I'm not there to enjoy it now.

 

[Gregg Axley]

I have a house built in the 50's.
While the house has a front porch, it's not really long enough for more than 3 chairs, and it joins the driveway.
Back in the 70s I understand the former occupants used to have visitors over to sit under the shade trees, in the backyard.
A bit more private that way, but still social.

 

[Feraud]

In my neighborhood we grew up with stoops.

In the summertime adults would be out trying to stay cool while the kids would meet up at certain stoops. The kids could play games like stoop ball and use the location as an all around "base".
With the prevalence of home air conditioning and television/computer entertainment there seems to be little need cooling off outside or socializing face to face.

 

[sheeplady]

The one thing I've noticed is that in poorer neighborhoods (much less likely to have central air or air conditioning units) people still gather on their porches.

I love a big glorious porch. The house I grew up in had a semi-wrap around porch that was deep and long- probably 10 feet deep and 50 feet long wrapped around half the house. I spent a lot of time out there as a kid playing- and it was really nice in the rain during the spring, summer, and fall. One of my youngest memories was my high school neighbor stripping one of the doors from the house on the porch while I rode my tricycle all around the porch. If it was raining my mom would send me out to the porch to play. We used to eat out there too when it was nice outside. It was a great place to store my bike and other outside toys so they didn't get ruined during the summer, and that way I could get to them without bugging my parents every time I wanted something different.

My husband and I would like to add a large wrap around porch to our new home. Right now there are two decks (which I assume were once porches given the general design of the house) and we'd like to make the deck into porch and connect the two. The biggest thing is going to be the cost, so it will probably take us 10 years to save up enough- but a porch is a glorious thing. Of all of the renovations on our new house (many of which have to come before the porch) I am looking forward to the porch the most. If we didn't need a garage or outbuilding more than the porch, I'd be aiming for the porch first!

 

[St. Louis]

My neighborhood was a project developed by an insurance magnate in 1929, with the purpose of housing low-level office staff. Almost every house on my side of my block is an identical tiny brick bungalow with a huge front porch. The porch is one third the size of the entire house, seriously.

The bungees are lined up in precision order so when I sit on my front porch I can see straight through everyone else's porch right to the end of the block in both directions. Because I'm lucky enough to have very friendly neighbors, there's a lot of waving and yelling and how-are-you-ing up and down the street.

 

[-Max-]

When I was looking for the house I currently live in there were a couple of "must have" features. I wanted to live in a house that had an alley access, and I wanted a garage to work on my bikes in. I also wanted a fully functional porch, and hard wood floors. I got all of those things, and the porch turned out to be my favorite feature. I also wanted a gas range in the kitchen and a second floor, but we can't have everything we want...

When I was a child visiting my grandmother's house in southern Georgia, her front porch was where the adults gathered in the late afternoon to talk and drink iced tea. This is one of my favorite memories of summer. The house was (still is) surrounded by enormous box wood bushes, so the first bit of landscaping I did on my own home was to put in my own box woods. They have a very particular smell, one that takes me back to being young. This past year I finally got around to adding a rocking chair and porch swing, finally completing the experience.

I love it. It's way better than having a deck. You get to say hello to the next-door neighbors when they are coming and going, and the option is there to communicate with neighbors walking down the street. Several of my neighbors hang out on their front porches as well, which makes the neighborhood feel "lived in". I've spent hours outside reading books, stopping to chat with the woman next door whenever she came out to smoke a cigarette, until she moved away. It's a very nice feature for a home, and one I think is a shame that they've moved away from in newer houses.

 

[sheeplady]

Where I live porches are taxed differently than decks- decks don't tend to add substantially to your taxes but porches do. Given the cost difference just to build, I think those two are reasons why most people put on decks. (Also, a DIYer can build a nice deck, complete with pre-made materials, but a porch requires a much higher level of skill and design.)

 

[DNO]

My house was built in 1927 and has a porch running along the front. A few years ago we felt the original porch was getting very weary so we hired a couple of very nice fellows. A lot of people who replace their porches end up using decking material and the new porches look, frankly, tacky. We asked these fellows to simply replace what's there with exactly the same thing...which is what they did. It took them some time and they had to mill their own tongue and groove decking, as well as the railing but they did an excellent job. Good for another 80 years, I expect.