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

[Matthew]

This is a great thread! I've enjoyed reading the responses to it. I'll try to contribute to it.

According to Preservation North Carolina (they would know!), "Y-Houses" are unique to Winston-Salem. They are around 100+ years old and can be found in historically black neighborhoods in the city.

Two Y-Houses (notice the Y-stairs):

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I'll try to guess a few more that could be unique or at least not very common in other places. These are just my guesses and they may not be as unique as I think. Historic neighborhoods and a variety of housing options are a strength of Winston-Salem. It's a city with architectural tourism! I'll also try to keep the files small (compressed together as one image) and use a smaller image size than I usually post.

These could be semi-unique to Winston-Salem? Moravian Houses built between roughly 1760-1820?

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They feature tile roofs, kick eaves, tile stoves, may have a business space built into the house, and are often built into a hillside with much of the home's cooking and laundry happening in the half-exposed basement floor. Winston-Salem had a water system in the late-1700s and President Washington visited the city to see it. Homes with water would have a connection to the water system in that basement storey. The architecture of these homes was used to create a new architectural style for Winston-Salem in the 1910s/1920s called Moravian Revival. Yes, Winston-Salem also has a "European village" neighborhood on the south end of downtown. These are National Landmarks.

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The textile mills in Winston-Salem weren't in the housing business. The lack of mill housing and the lack of shotgun houses in Winston-Salem is very unusual in the South. Only one textile mill in the county built homes for their workers. Instead, workers would construct 3-6 room homes on their own. These houses were built between roughly 1830-1890? Some of these were expanded over the years, but if it's one-storey it was originally three rooms (on average) and if it's two-storeys it originally had six rooms (on average). This neighborhood was given National Landmark status a few years ago, with homes from 1788-today and historic factories constructed between 1838-1880.

Unique in the South? - Small, Factory Worker Houses (built and owned by the factory workers!):


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Not sure how unique they are? - These 4-flats are ubiquitous in Winston-Salem and look similar to single family homes:

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Even if you only see two doors, there are usually four units. Count the mail boxes. They date back to when Winston-Salem was North Carolina's largest and fastest growing city. They allowed four families to live on one single family home lot. They look almost like a typical SFH from that time, until you notice multiple doors and multiple mail boxes.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by IWant2BeInSTL

Another style that's pretty ubiquitous in St. Louis which I haven't seen in other cities is the ~1.5 story mansard or "mini mansard." Though, I wouldn't be surprised to find them in Montreal.

Cincinnati and the NKY river cities have a bunch of those.

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1179...7i16384!8i8192

[Steely Dan]

here's an oddball vernacular chicago style that is not super common, but you can find them here and there.

they are flat-roofed single family homes that look almost exactly like bog-standard chicago 2-flats, except that the 2nd floor simply wasn't built. as such, their proportions look very strange to my eye.

i don't know that they have a specific name, but i think "1-flat" makes as much sense as anything else.


https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8543...7i16384!8i8192

[eschaton]

Another weird Pittsburgh vernacular is what's known as a "low-side home."

Basically, due to the crazy topography in some sections of the city (sections that never should have been built), you could end up one side of a street uphill, and the other downhill. The "high-side" homes are pretty much normal - there's just a ton of stairs to get into them. But the "low-side homes are not.

From the street side, these homes often look quite stubby. Here's a group of them. But from behind they look like normal houses. The entrance is actually on the second story, with stairs leading down to a sort of half-basement which is open to the backyard. The layout of these homes can be crazy due to the entrance being on the second floor - often you enter from the kitchen, and the bedrooms are either in the attic or the basement.

Here's a different style right around the corner from me. The Google Car somehow missed the front, but it looks like a totally normal (if run down) foursquare. But from the back, it's five stories.

I wouldn't be surprised if similar homes existed in Cinci, given the similar topography.

[BigDipper 80]

Columbus has a lot of "Columbus-style rowhouses", which are really more like horizontal apartment buildings than individual houses:

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9957...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9896...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9494...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9473...7i16384!8i8192

[dave8721]

Old Coral Rock houses are an interesting South Florida vernacular. There are very few left standing:

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Matthew

These could be semi-unique to Winston-Salem? Moravian Houses built between roughly 1760-1820?

Not identical at all, but they remind me of some of the brick cottages you can find in German Village in Columbus.

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

here's an oddball vernacular chicago style that is not super common, but you can find them here and there.

they are flat-roofed single family homes that look almost exactly like bog-standard chicago 2-flats, except that the 2nd floor simply wasn't built. as such, their proportions look very strange to my eye.

i don't know that they have a specific name, but i think "1-flat" makes as much sense as anything else.


https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8543...7i16384!8i8192

On a similar note, this house about a 5 minute walk from my house has always intrigued me.

At first glance it looks like a nice bungalow. But it has very odd dimensions for one in Pittsburgh - and it's all brick. It's almost exactly the same dimensions as the foursquares on the block - and has pretty similar detailing. It really seems like someone built half a foursquare and changed their mind and slapped a bungelow roof on once the first story was finished.

And of course, as noted upthread, there are flounder houses. Often in the 19th century people would build the rear ell of their home first, and only later build the front wing when they had more money. Only sometimes it didn't work out and you ended up with a small house with an asymmetrical roof line set way back from the street.

[photoLith]

Originally Posted by IWant2BeInSTL

Another style that's pretty ubiquitous in St. Louis which I haven't seen in other cities is the ~1.5 story mansard or "mini mansard." Though, I wouldn't be surprised to find them in Montreal.


https://www.pinterest.com/pin/3377768450747843/L]

This style of housing exists in Covington, KY. There’s a whole bunch of these houses on the south side of the Ohio. This example is in a dump neighborhood east of Covington.

https://goo.gl/maps/81LZPfoshPy4GvX97

[hauntedheadnc]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Another weird Pittsburgh vernacular is what's known as a "low-side home."

Basically, due to the crazy topography in some sections of the city (sections that never should have been built), you could end up one side of a street uphill, and the other downhill.

That's a common thing in Asheville as well. Here are some infill houses built like that: South Charlotte Street. Elsewhere it's very common to see a house where the basement only starts out as a basement on one side, and emerges as the garage or another room with windows and sliding glass doors on the other side.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Not identical at all, but they remind me of some of the brick cottages you can find in German Village in Columbus.

that's reminiscent of chicago's 19th century brick "workers cottages".

this one below obviously veers towards the fancier side with the intricate rake detailing and sculpted lintels, and it has been extremely well preserved/restored, but it was the best pic i could find from a 15 second google search.



source: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.p...53634048491661

[Investing In Chicago]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

here's an oddball vernacular chicago style that is not super common, but you can find them here and there.

they are flat-roofed single family homes that look almost exactly like bog-standard chicago 2-flats, except that the 2nd floor simply wasn't built. as such, their proportions look very strange to my eye.

i don't know that they have a specific name, but i think "1-flat" makes as much sense as anything else.


https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8543...7i16384!8i8192

I always thought this home in my neighborhood was weird, like someone karate chopped the roof. I've seen some like this peppered throughout the city:

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9493...7i16384!8i8192

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Investing In Chicago

I always thought this home in my neighborhood was weird, like someone karate chopped the roof. I've seen some like this peppered throughout the city:

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9493...7i16384!8i8192

I'm aware of lots of examples in Pittsburgh where the roof was outright removed and replaced with something else. Often this is done with a lot of the big old foursquares, because they were chopped up and turned into rentals, which led to a lot of unsympathetic renovations. Like, this must have started as a hipped roof with dormers, like everything else on the block. On the flip side, they sometimes "expand" the homes like this. It's much more common though to see the front porches ripped off these homes, often resulting in an ugly "scar" which can't be hidden - as the area underneath the porch roof was never meant to be displayed.

[softee]

The above mentioned Toronto "Bay and Gables" are by far the most distinct local vernacular, and IMO the rowhouse versions of those are the most notable, but Toronto also has this funny thing where a lot of the old rowhouses look as though they were meant to be detached homes, but instead they were stuck together in rows even though they look completely different from one another. Most rowhouses in other cities seem to be uniform in style and appearance, whereas here that didn't seem to matter.

https://goo.gl/maps/rQKmkvJTvHLsBNs28

This row even has a single Bay and Gable crammed in the middle of it
https://goo.gl/maps/CYDASfWxxxQhQKmY7

Lots of mis-matching styles in this row:
https://goo.gl/maps/orBC5MwyW5dY5wbf8

Many of the oldest inner city neighbourhoods were built this way.

[MonkeyRonin]

Those aren't rowhousing (single build of connected dwellings), they're just attached housing (separate structures built to the lot line).

[softee]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Those aren't rowhousing (single build of connected dwellings), they're just attached housing (separate structures built to the lot line).

Ah, right, but it's still funny that the homes were built attached to one another in a row in the first place. You don't really see that too much in other cities.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by softee

Ah, right, but it's still funny that the homes were built attached to one another in a row in the first place. You don't really see that too much in other cities.

There is a term for this - its a townhouse.

Essentially, the term townhouse originally meant homes which were built in the style of British "towns" (meaning cities) - attached housing. These could have been built one at a time or in groups of a few at once.

The term "rowhouse" came about later - and is distinctly North American, with the brits using terraced housing instead. This came to the fore in the era of industrialized construction, and is meant to refer to a group of homes built at once as part of a row - sometimes in stands as small as 2-3, but often encompassing entire blocks.

The thing is, the terms drifted over time. Townhouse has been so corrupted by its use to describe newer homes that terming something 100+ years old a townhouse seems odd. So the term rowhouse has drifted to describe any attached housing which is older - and is sometimes even used for semi-attached housing as well, depending upon the style.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by Investing In Chicago

I always thought this home in my neighborhood was weird, like someone karate chopped the roof. I've seen some like this peppered throughout the city:

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9493...7i16384!8i8192

The conflicting roof pitches are... jarring. This wouldn’t be nearly as awkward if the gable with the bay had the same pitch as everything else. Ya know... so we’d actually see the gable?

I bet the person who built this house thought it was a great idea on paper and hated the end result.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by dave8721

Old Coral Rock houses are an interesting South Florida vernacular. There are very few left standing:

These are beautiful. Very obvious mediterranean infuences and they almost have a mid-century modern (albeing HIGHLY ornamented) dynamic to them as well with the low slung rooflines, short stature, and largely clean lines.

[urban_encounter]

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.

The postwar houses are referred to as ‘cottage’ style. I realize that ‘cottage’ has different variations but at least in Northern California we refer to these postwar homes as ‘cottages.’

My first house was one of these in Sacramento’s Hollywood Park neighborhood. Very simple design, but it had a lot of character to build upon. The stove and oven in the house I bought, had the original Wedgwood oven. Extremely heavy but also charming. There were recipes printed during the manufacturing on the inside of the oven door, detailing how to make biscuits and cornbread from scratch.

[Matthew]

I like those Coral Rock houses, too! It's also interesting reading about houses that were never fully completed to the street.

Originally Posted by BigDipper 80

Columbus has a lot of "Columbus-style rowhouses", which are really more like horizontal apartment buildings than individual houses:

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9957...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9896...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9494...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9473...7i16384!8i8192

Interestingly, Winston-Salem has these rowhouses, too. They were located on the streetcar lines. The rising cost of land pressured developers to build as many units as they could on the sites. Many are renovated, as we see replacement windows and Moravian Arches (local Moravian Revival architectural style) that are from the past 25 years on residential structures that are 111 years old and 118 years old. I guess being plain leads to efforts to give them more style and make them more attractive to potential residents? One of the plain rowhouse structures (not pictured) was renovated in the 1980s with an over-the-top faux-Queen Anne look that is grandfathered in an overlay historic district. Maybe one day they will all be restored?


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