Unique (or-semi-unique) vernacular housing styles in your city...

[eschaton]

Hey all,

Given how much threads in this forum tend to drift towards discussion of housing vernacular anyway, I thought it would be nice to have a thread to discuss housing vernacular in general. So, as an opening question, what vernacular is your city known for - or, if not known for, something which is locally quite common but rare in other areas.

Here in Pittsburgh, the most logical answer I can come up with is a particular style of rowhouse - the front gabled row, often with a gabled dormer. You can find other roof typologies, such as flat roof (particularly in early 20th century rows) and mansards, but this roof style is quite common anywhere there's 19th century rows or "near rows." This is likely because historically Pittsburgh was significantly snowier than other rowhouse cities, making a flat roof not a particularly good idea.





Despite what you might think, even attics with single-window dormers can be functional as occupied rooms, though historically these attics were more used for storage. I'm seeing an increasing number of the single-window dormers being swapped out for wider ones, often with a shed profile.

There's also a very common style of bungalow in the metro which was ubiquitous during the early 20th century. While design details varied, they tend to be very boxy compared to similar homes from other areas, and usually have a brick first story and a frame upper portion. They always have the big overhanging front porch typical of the bungalow style however. This was a common enough style it was advertised as "the Pittsburgh" in catalogues.

[Steely Dan]

common vintage chicago residential vernacular typologies:


chicago bungalow (narrow lot SFH):
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9649...7i13312!8i6656



2-flat (two bungalows stacked on top of each other):
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9479...7i16384!8i8192



3-flat (three bungalows stacked on top of each other):
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9702...7i16384!8i8192



6-flat (two 3 flats smooshed together):
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9200...7i13312!8i6656



corner aparment building (two 6 flat smooshed together on corner lot, rotated 90 degrees from each other to address each street):
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9667...7i13312!8i6656



courtyard apartment building:
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9636...7i16384!8i8192



and within that above general framework above, there are loads of variations and combos.

i intentionally tried to find more common, everyday, bog-standards of the types, not the gussied-up fancy ones.

and the above are all early-20th. there's a fair deal of late-19th century stuff in the older parts of town, but it tends to be less cohesive.

[SFBruin]

Lots of housing in Seattle is like this:

https://www.google.com/maps/@47.5658...7i16384!8i8192

I don't know what it is called, but it is basically single-floor, wood-framed rectangular housing with lawns on all sides.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by SFBruin

Lots of housing in Seattle is like this:

https://www.google.com/maps/@47.5658...7i16384!8i8192

I don't know what it is called, but it is basically single-floor, wood-framed rectangular housing with lawns on all sides.

That seems to me to be a very plain style of Cape Cod.

[SFBruin]

Originally Posted by eschaton

That seems to me to be a very plain style of Cape Cod.

Never been. Would love to visit, though!

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

common vintage chicago residential vernacular typologies:


chicago bungalow (narrow lot SFH):
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9649...7i13312!8i6656



2-flat (two bungalows stacked on top of each other):
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9479...7i16384!8i8192



3-flat (three bungalows stacked on top of each other):
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9702...7i16384!8i8192



6-flat (two 3 flats smooshed together):
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9200...7i13312!8i6656



corner aparment building (two 6 flat smooshed together on corner lot, rotated 90 degrees from each other to address each street):
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9667...7i13312!8i6656



courtyard apartment building:
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9636...7i16384!8i8192



and within that above general framework above, there are loads of variations and combos.

i intentionally tried to find more common, everyday, bog-standards of the types, not the gussied-up fancy ones.

and the above are all early-20th. there's a fair deal of late-19th century stuff in the older parts of town, but it tends to be less cohesive.

Pittsburgh has nothing like the Chicago Bungalow belt. However, if you look in the right places, you can find occasional three-flats and six-flats very similar to Chicago.

This style of two-flat is a more common small multifamily typology though. Occasionally it's combined to make a four-flat. It was only really built during the 1920s (as opposed to the Chicago-like stuff, which was all built from 1900-1915 or so) and it generally involves heavily-textured red brick which ended up soaking up soot like a sponge, so that most of them are a very dark red today.

[plinko]

Originally Posted by SFBruin

Lots of housing in Seattle is like this:

https://www.google.com/maps/@47.5658...7i16384!8i8192

I don't know what it is called, but it is basically single-floor, wood-framed rectangular housing with lawns on all sides.

Those look like much of what you see across the western US in GI Bill housing tracts, built between 1946 and about 1960. A shoebox with an attached or detached garage on a 5,000-6,000sf lot. I live in a neighborhood of them in Ventura, CA.
https://goo.gl/maps/ea4n5SLhuuXjjRND8
Not my house or street, but is in my neighborhood...

[bossabreezes]

You pretty much see this kind of multifamily only in Los Angeles. Definitely unique, love it!

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0675...7i16384!8i8192

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

Originally Posted by bossabreezes

You pretty much see this kind of multifamily only in Los Angeles. Definitely unique, love it!

https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0675...7i16384!8i8192

Me too! It's a great style

[edale]

The 'dingbat' comes to mind when I think of LA vernacular housing. Found all around LA, with varying degrees of charm.



https://www.google.com/maps/@34.1036...7i16384!8i8192


I also think of bungalow courts, which are oriented perpendicular to the street, and homes front a central courtyard or passage way.

[TempleGuy1000]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Nice I like these. There are a few good examples of this type of Federalist Style in Philadelphia and NYC.

Bishop White's House in Old City Philadelphia is an 18th century example taken care of by the National Parks Service.


Harrison Street in Tribeca is a good example in Manhattan



If I had to pick what I thought was 'unique' to Philadelphia, it would probably be the gothic-revival style of West Philadelphia.

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9483...7i16384!8i8192

Also I have never seen anywhere else in the US have a tiny English village in the middle of it like the Rittenhouse neighborhood in Center City:

There's quite a bit of variation in St. Louis. We still have a lot of that "missing middle" that everyone raves about. The most common multi-family typology is probably the four-family flat but there are lots of 2–6+ fams and grand old apartment buildings as well. Sadly, many of the multi-fams are being converted to SFH and town homes, and the cute old shotguns are being replaced with larger SFH. In any case I think these photos encapsulate the prevailing aesthetic pretty well:









photos by sc4mayor at urbanstl.com: https://urbanstl.com/viewtopic.php?p=339901#p339901

[iheartthed]

I've never seen this particular style of flat housing anywhere else but Detroit: https://goo.gl/maps/w1uBRVJq1APmhxPz6

[Comrade]

Salt Lake City has a prairie-style bungalow that I don't really think exists much outside the state. These bungalows dominate much of Salt Lake's southern area of the city (part of Liberty Park neighborhood as well as the Sugar House neighborhood):



To be honest, I haven't really seen these outside the Utah, and maybe a bit of the interior west. Though, I guess I could be wrong.

[Comrade]

Originally Posted by plinko

Those look like much of what you see across the western US in GI Bill housing tracts, built between 1946 and about 1960. A shoebox with an attached or detached garage on a 5,000-6,000sf lot. I live in a neighborhood of them in Ventura, CA.
https://goo.gl/maps/ea4n5SLhuuXjjRND8
Not my house or street, but is in my neighborhood...

Yeah. Salt Lake City has a good amount of these too throughout the areas of the city that were developed in the 1940s and 50s. Many are brick, tho:

[BG918]

The Denver Square is a vernacular found in most older Denver neighborhoods. One of the defining Colorado features is the rough hewn sandstone parapet caps and sills



https://news.ucdenver.edu/what-is-a-denver-square/

[benp]

Other cities have duplexes, but in Buffalo the "Buffalo Double" is the predominant housing structure in the city. A popular style from the 1920s is a lower brick enclosed "sunporch" and an upper open or covered porch.

Carmel Street by bpawlik, on Flickr

Buffalo Doubles by bpawlik, on Flickr

IMG_20191111_123115971 by bpawlik, on Flickr

In many older East Side neighborhoods there are Telescope Houses, which are traditional worker's cottages on narrow lots from the mid-late 1800s that have been expanded over several generations by adding increasingly smaller rooms onto the back until nearly filling the property.

Telescoped by bpawlik, on Flickr

Over the Houses by David Schalliol, on Flickr

Also in multiple neighborhoods Turret Houses seemed to be a popular trend among late 19th Century homes, some functional and some merely decorative

IMG_20200128_104453567 by bpawlik, on Flickr

IMG_20181021_102641647_HDR by bpawlik, on Flickr

IMG_0675 by bpawlik, on Flickr

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by IWant2BeInSTL

There's quite a bit of variation in St. Louis. We still have a lot of that "missing middle" that everyone raves about. The most common multi-family typology is probably the four-family flat but there are lots of 2–6+ fams and grand old apartment buildings as well. Sadly, many of the multi-fams are being converted to SFH and town homes, and the cute old shotguns are being replaced with larger SFH. In any case I think these photos encapsulate the prevailing aesthetic pretty well:









photos by sc4mayor at urbanstl.com: https://urbanstl.com/viewtopic.php?p=339901#p339901

Some of those have Montreal-ish flourishes. Not surprisingly.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by plinko

Those look like much of what you see across the western US in GI Bill housing tracts, built between 1946 and about 1960. A shoebox with an attached or detached garage on a 5,000-6,000sf lot. I live in a neighborhood of them in Ventura, CA.
https://goo.gl/maps/ea4n5SLhuuXjjRND8
Not my house or street, but is in my neighborhood...

Not quite the same thing due to the lack of any visible driveway (though there might be one in the rear alley) along with the prominent center chimney - which is a dead giveaway it's a Cape Cod IMHO.

Originally Posted by TempleGuy1000

Nice I like these. There are a few good examples of this type of Federalist Style in Philadelphia and NYC.

Yeah, I didn't mean to say they didn't exist anywhere else, only that in Pittsburgh that is by far the most dominant style of roof - particularly in more modest 19th century areas where you don't see as many Second Empire-styled mansards.

Generally speaking you don't see rowhouses so old as to be Federalist here though. I think the most common styles are Greek Revival and Italianate.

[muppet]

London's Georgian era saw spare, minimalist design take over from Neo-classical Italian insipiration. Almost moderne 2-300 years ago, and that bled into early Victoriana.

London mews are the former stables of grander homes on a street behind - a stable boy would live above the horses. They now sell for $1-6 million a pop, for the cobbled street and village atmosphere in the heart of the city, despite being so tiny:






A couple steps up on the rowhome ladder would be the worker's cottages - although no different from other UK cities, London ones tend to be very smarted up, sell for a few million and are colourfully painted, rather than the brown brick. Very bijoux:




Then the merchant's houses - slightly more industrial and bricky (note the shutters, taken over by French Huguenot refugees, fleeing Catholic persecution)





Next up were the middle class homes, that could house a servant girl in the roof. You might even start seeing some stucco on the ground floor


https://www.montcalm.co.uk/blog/wp-c...sea-london.jpg


Upper middle classes could house more than one servant, and were located in private squares, sometimes with private parks. These now sell in the tens of millions, or are subdivided up into flats that sell for a few million. The private parks still come with a personal key to the gate (one week a year they're all opened up to the general public).


https://www.propertypriceadvice.co.u...-London-RS.jpg, https://www.trfihi-parks.com/images/...520652_SKK.jpg


You'll start to see more stucco and embellishments