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  #41  
Old Posted May 31, 2022, 5:47 PM
Crawford Crawford is offline
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Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
I realize you're not going to get rowhouses across much of the Midwest, but what are some good examples of historic, highly urban residential neighborhoods in smaller cities? Someplace with tight urban streets, minimal setback from the street, multi-family walkups, etc.?
Outside of the Ohio River towns, not sure that exists. Maybe a few blocks in Dayton? Midwest is generally much newer, more spacious and more gridded. Tight urban streets, as in the Northeast, don't really exist. Legacy non-downtown, pre-auto fabric isn't common, and was probably eviscerated in the postwar years.

Even somewhat dumpy, urban renewal-crazy towns in the Northeast, like Harrisburg, Trenton and Hartford, have a decent amount remaining fabric. Hell, even Camden, which is almost certainly the most decimated town in the NE corridor. But you aren't gonna find it in Grand Rapids, Fort Wayne or Toledo.
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  #42  
Old Posted May 31, 2022, 5:51 PM
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Steely Dan Steely Dan is offline
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Originally Posted by eschaton View Post

I realize you're not going to get rowhouses across much of the Midwest, but what are some good examples of historic, highly urban residential neighborhoods in smaller cities? Someplace with tight urban streets, minimal setback from the street, multi-family walkups, etc.?
Zero setback residential is extremely rare in the Midwest, so I don't think you're going to find what you're looking for in any kind of meaningful amount in the region's small cities/towns.
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  #43  
Old Posted May 31, 2022, 6:31 PM
eschaton eschaton is offline
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Zero setback residential is extremely rare in the Midwest, so I don't think you're going to find what you're looking for in any kind of meaningful amount in the region's small cities/towns.
I said "minimal" I didn't say "zero."

Like, this block in Dayton looks to have 15 foot setbacks, but it still feels urban enough, since some of that space is taken up by tree lawn, sidewalks, porches, etc.

In contrast, this area of La Crosse has 30-foot setbacks, and just doesn't...feel particularly urban. Yeah, the houses are old enough (and some are multi-units) but it's much more of a streetcar suburban type vibe.

Last edited by eschaton; May 31, 2022 at 7:18 PM.
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  #44  
Old Posted May 31, 2022, 6:40 PM
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^ even allowing for a "minimal setback" your lacrosse example is probably 10,000x more common in the midwest than your Dayton example.

The Midwest in general just doesn't do "tight" residential streets. Hell, even in Chicago, far and away the densest city in the region, parkways (tree lawns) and front yard setbacks rule on like 95% of residential side streets.

I wonder if the seeming infinity of flat land out here had an impact on the psychology of those who built the cities and towns sprinkled across the hundreds of thousands of square miles of corn fields.
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  #45  
Old Posted May 31, 2022, 6:50 PM
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One thing I'm noticing in the suggestion is "cute as a button" downtown commercial areas are quite common. However, the level of urbanism typically dies back even a block from the downtown area. Typically you see either a sort of no-man's land of parking lots, or quasi-suburban (or even real suburban) residential neighborhoods with detached single-family homes, complete with front yards, 20+ foot setbacks from the street, etc.

I realize you're not going to get rowhouses across much of the Midwest, but what are some good examples of historic, highly urban residential neighborhoods in smaller cities? Someplace with tight urban streets, minimal setback from the street, multi-family walkups, etc.?
Each of the towns I listed in my post have urban residential areas away from the commercial main street...

Madison, Indiana
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.7404...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@38.7354...7i16384!8i8192


Maysville, Kentucky
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.6463...7i13312!8i6656

https://www.google.com/maps/@38.6469...7i13312!8i6656


Hamilton, Ohio
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.4040...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.4038...4!8i8192?hl=en
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  #46  
Old Posted May 31, 2022, 6:55 PM
edale edale is offline
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^ even allowing for a "minimal setback" your lacrosse example is probably 10,000x more common in the midwest than your Dayton example.

The Midwest in general just doesn't do "tight" residential streets. Hell, even in Chicago, far and away the densest city in the region, parkways (tree lawns) and front yard setbacks rule on like 95% of residential side streets.

I wonder if the seeming infinity of flat land out here had an impact on the psychology of those who built the cities and towns sprinkled across the hundreds of thousands of square miles of corn fields.
There probably is something to that. This also points out how the Ohio River cities and towns are different than the rest of the midwest. Towns in this part of the midwest are often constrained by hills and the river, and they have tighter streets and development patterns than places that developed with room to sprawl on all sides. Also, most of these towns are older than the rest of the midwest. Having Cincinnati and the Ohio River cities as my point of reference for 'midwest' probably gives me a distorted view of midwestern urbanism.
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  #47  
Old Posted May 31, 2022, 7:18 PM
eschaton eschaton is offline
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
^ even allowing for a "minimal setback" your lacrosse example is probably 10,000x more common in the midwest than your Dayton example.

The Midwest in general just doesn't do "tight" residential streets. Hell, even in Chicago, far and away the densest city in the region, parkways (tree lawns) and front yard setbacks rule on like 95% of residential side streets.

I wonder if the seeming infinity of flat land out here had an impact on the psychology of those who built the cities and towns sprinkled across the hundreds of thousands of square miles of corn fields.
Really, a lot of it comes down to who settled what.

There were two big streams of settlers who came to the Midwest. One of them were the New England Yankees who came through the Great Lakes via the Erie Canal. The other were people from Pennsylvania and the Upper South who came down the Ohio River.

Yankee architecture was notably different from England because they really liked to build with wood instead of brick. They also liked to spread out houses a bit side to side. Old urbanism in Upstate NY and New England is a bit tighter than in the Midwest, but still not super tight.

In contrast, in the Midlands people liked to build with brick, and built as close to the sidewalk as feasible. This continued in diminished form in the river valleys all the way out to St. Louis (and even a bit up the Mississippi river valley to Galena, etc.)

Of course in both cases setbacks from the street also increased over time, but Yankee houses crept back from the street much more rapidly than Midland houses.
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  #48  
Old Posted May 31, 2022, 8:01 PM
iheartthed iheartthed is offline
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Tightly laid street grids were mostly a pre-Revolutionary War thing, and there are only a handful of places in the Midwest that were settled by then. Most of those places eventually became large cities, and almost all evidence of that history was erased. Everything settled from the 19th century onwards was done on a grid that looks familiar to most people today.

Anyway, you can see the pattern in almost every place that was created from a settlement that existed pre-Revolution, including places like NYC, Boston, Detroit, Philadelphia, etc. All of those cities still have remnants of the pre-Revolution grid, but the evidence of it is weakest in Detroit, which had, by far, the smallest population prior to Independence.
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  #49  
Old Posted Jun 1, 2022, 12:22 PM
BigDipper 80 BigDipper 80 is offline
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A fear of fire played a big role in the general spaciousness of Midwestern cities, too. Don't forget that both Chicago and Detroit were destroyed by huge fires. More separation between buildings = less chance of a massive conflagration leveling your entire city.

Not to mention that many of these cities were founded hot on the tail of Jefferson's dream of a nation of gentleman-farmers shortly after the largest land purchase in the country's history.
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  #50  
Old Posted Jun 1, 2022, 12:50 PM
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Yeah, none of this really surprises me. Heading west from Pittsburgh, Wheeling has the remnants of some high-quality urbanism. I was also of course knowledgeable about some nice old urbanism in Cinci, Covington/Newport, Dayton, Louisville, and Evansville.

Parkersburg, WV has a handful of homes remaining which suggest prior to the greater downtown becoming half parking lots it had some high-quality urbanism. Portsmouth, OH as well.

Going west, there's only a tiny bit left past the few downtown blocks in Cape Girardeau, MO. I did find this very impressive four-way intersection in St. Genevieve though. At least one of the buildings seems to date back to Louisiana Territory! Plus more rowhouses elsewhere.
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  #51  
Old Posted Jun 1, 2022, 12:58 PM
eschaton eschaton is offline
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Originally Posted by BigDipper 80 View Post
A fear of fire played a big role in the general spaciousness of Midwestern cities, too. Don't forget that both Chicago and Detroit were destroyed by huge fires. More separation between buildings = less chance of a massive conflagration leveling your entire city.

Not to mention that many of these cities were founded hot on the tail of Jefferson's dream of a nation of gentleman-farmers shortly after the largest land purchase in the country's history.
Lots of cities had their vernacular develop due to fear of fires, but this resulted in dramatically different built forms. Philadelphia banned the construction of all wooden houses following the Great Fire of 1850. After the New Orleans fires of of 1788 and 1784, most of the city was rebuilt as either brick or stucco as a fire safety measure. Even the decision to rebuild the homes with zero setback was done as a fire-safety measure (it was thought keeping them as close to the street as possible meant less space for firefighters to travel).
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  #52  
Old Posted Jun 1, 2022, 1:54 PM
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Steely Dan Steely Dan is offline
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A fear of fire played a big role in the general spaciousness of Midwestern cities, too. Don't forget that both Chicago and Detroit were destroyed by huge fires. More separation between buildings = less chance of a massive conflagration leveling your entire city.
Those trademark 3' gangways (gaps) between Chicago residential buildings had a two-fold purpose.

Not only did the fire department want to "individualize" buildings to help mitigate fire spread, they also wanted greater block permeability wherein firefighters (and their hose runs) could get from the front of a building to the rear (or vice versa) without having to go through the building or all the way around the block, as in the case of a long stretch of continuous rowhouses or a solid streetwall of tenement buildings.

And yes, it came about directly from the great chicago fire of 1871, still one of the worst urban fire disasters in the nation's history.
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