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

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Does the term "stacked townhouse" mean anything outside of Toronto? If I google the term, all I get is Toronto-area examples.

It's basically a townhouse development (so both your right and left walls are attached to your neighbours'), but the units are also stacked above and below each other and there is a unit behind you as well, so you only have one exterior-facing wall. Every unit gets its own exterior entrance like a walkup.



^This is a great cutaway, but also not a common layout. Typically, the lower unit is a single floor, is smaller (usually a 1 bedroom), and the unit is partially below grade (by a few feet, so it still has full-sized windows, not little basement portholes). The rooftop deck for the top unit, instead of a yard, is pretty common, though.

Brownstones in NYC were historically built out something like this - as four-story, two-unit buildings, with the basement/first floor one living space, and the third/fourth a second. Though with the extreme gentrification of much of Brownstone Brooklyn, some have been converted into single-family homes.

I have heard of rowhouses attached back-to back in the UK, but not in the U.S. As they only had access to natural light on one side they were pretty undesirable.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Does the term "stacked townhouse" mean anything outside of Toronto? If I google the term, all I get is Toronto-area examples.
.

I live in a unit referred to as a "townhouse". It is a 2-floor unit and there is another such unit below me (and 2 commercial/amenity floors below that) so there are 2 of these units "stacked" on the 3-4 and 5-6 building floors (below street level there are 2 floors of parking garages also). I have almost identical units on either side, but none above and none front and back so I have exposure in 2 directions and skylights.

This is a fairly common sort of thing in the podium portions of newer tower condos in San Francisco. I don't know if it meets your definition exactly or not since I have 2 exterior-facing walls and not just one.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

I live in a unit referred to as a "townhouse". It is a 2-floor unit and there is another such unit below me (and 2 commercial/amenity floors below that) so there are 2 of these units "stacked" on the 3-4 and 5-6 building floors (below street level there are 2 floors of parking garages also). I have almost identical units on either side, but none above and none front and back so I have exposure in 2 directions and skylights.

This is a fairly common sort of thing in the podium portions of newer tower condos in San Francisco. I don't know if it meets your definition exactly or not since I have 2 exterior-facing walls and not just one.

It's a townhouse. My mom lives in something similar but is above a one-floor apartment, so she has the second and third floors. No one above or behind her and she can access her place through the front and back door.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by JManc

It's a townhouse. My mom lives in something similar but is above a one-floor apartment, so she has the second and third floors. No one above or behind her and she can access her place through the front and back door.

I lived in a two-level apartment on the second and third floors, with a single-floor unit beneath mine on the ground floor. My unit was referred to as a townhouse and the unit below was just an 'apartment.'

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Crawford

A duplex in NYC always means a two-floor apartment unit. Usually a luxury unit, with interior staircase or elevator access. Loft floors don't count.

"Duplex" is used similarly in Chicago, but not just for luxury 2-floor units in highrises. It is most frequently applied to 2-floor condo units in the city's ubiquitous flat buildings.

Our home is the first floor and finished basement of a 3-flat, which in the local real estate market is referred to as a "duplex down". The other common variation is a single unit on the top two floors of a flat building, which is called a "duplex up".

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

"Duplex" is used similarly in Chicago, but not just for luxury 2-floor units in highrises. It is most frequently applied to 2-floor condo units in the city's ubiquitous flat buildings.

Our home is the first floor and finished basement of a 3-flat, which in the local real estate market is referred to as a "duplex down". The other common variation is a single unit on the top two floors of a flat building, which is called a "duplex up".

This took some adjustment to hearing when I lived in Chicago. In the south a duplex is almost always a single story structure (very rarely two stories) with two separate units each taking half the slab with a ground level entrance for each unit on either side of a forward protruding attached garage.

See this street:

https://goo.gl/maps/KcyuTpaBW9TxenGK8