Help me map the boundaries of US rowhouse country

[Centropolis]

for some reason i was thinking st. paul had a fair amount of that housing built as one unit but essentially look/function like rowhouses. i'm guessing its scattered, though. i've never properly explored st. paul outside of downtown and a vietnamese restaurant.

[Centropolis]

here we go:
curbed.com

[Sam Hill]

Originally Posted by CherryCreek

I'm not aware of single block in Denver with ONLY rowhouses on both sides...

Hmmm. Off the top of my head I think I can come up with a few examples in my neighborhood of a block being dominated by row houses – like 17th Ave between High and Race, or 16th Ave between Gilpin and Williams for instance. But yeah, I think we’ve established at this point that Denver belongs in the “few” category.

I’m curious about San Diego. I lived there for 5 years and can’t recall ever seeing any row houses anywhere.

I also lived in San Francisco for a few years. I feel like I know there MUST be neighborhoods filled with row houses, but for some damn reason I just can’t picture it. I can still vividly picture some neighborhoods that consist of either mansions or small apartment buildings literally leaning against each other but I’m having trouble remembering any stereotypical row houses. I guess it’s been too long. If any of you Bay Area people can think of any examples, please post a pic. I wouldn’t mind a trip down memory lane.

[Sam Hill]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

here we go:
curbed.com

Damn. Those are beautiful.

[Sam Hill]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I can't edit the map, but I'll say the following.

New England: Only prevalent on the neighborhood level in the core of Boston. Isolated stands in Cambridge, New Haven, Hartford, Bridgeport, Springfield, Northampton, and Holyoke. All of these cities likely had more in the past, but if they had a rowhouse neighborhood, it was small and limited to areas now covered by downtown.

New York: Common in NYC and the mid Hudson Valley. Totally dominates some neighborhoods in Albany and Troy, but oddly not in nearby Schenectady in any real numbers. Not really found to any large level further into Upstate.

New Jersey: Present both in some areas directly across from NYC (Hoboken, parts of Jersey City) and Philadelphia (Camden). Not super common in much of the rest of New Jersey, even in the old urban cities, where detached wood-framed buildings (either SFH or multi-family) are more common.

Pennsylvania: Completely ubiquitous everywhere the eastern part of the state south of the Scranton/Wilkes Barre area, where they are absent. But otherwise, every single city/borough which had a notable population in 1900 will have them. In the western half of the state, they're mostly limited to Pittsburgh and the immediate surrounding area.

Delaware: Wilmington's got them in spades, and New Castle has a small amount. Absent further south.

Maryland: Everyone knows about Baltimore, but all of the smaller urban cores (Frederick, Annapolis, Hagerstown, Cumberland) have them as well. Not found on the eastern shore.

South: Obviously DC and old town Alexandria are known for them. Richmond has rowhouse dominated neighborhoods. Some stands survive in parts of Hampton Roads, along with smaller northern Virginia cities like Winchester and Petersburg. After that, you don't really find them till Savannah. Some parts of New Orleans (like the French Quarter) are rowhouse dominated.

Midwest: Generally speaking, rowhouses were not built in large numbers anywhere in the northern portions of the Midwest but Chicago, as elsewhere detached wood-framed vernacular styles were more common. They were reasonably common in the lower Midwest however. Cincinnati and Saint Louis still have neighborhoods dominated by a rowhouse or rowhouse like vernacular. Indianapolis and Columbus used to have a lot of rowhouses, but lost much to urban renewal and the expansion of their CBD. Small stands can be found in odd places like Galena, IL, and even eastern Iowa.

West: Basically just San Francisco.

The bottom line is the central "rowhouse belt" of the country runs from Albany to northern Virginia. Picking where it ends in the west is a bit harder, because it jumped around a lot. One could argue it stops at the Appalachians, and Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Saint Louis exist as islands. Or one could argue the "belt" continued to travel westward along the Ohio until it died out around the Mississippi.

Wow, that's a pretty solid rundown.

I'm curious about Portland and Seattle. I haven't spent more than a week in either city. I'm guessing row houses are basically nonexistent there?

[SpawnOfVulcan]

Birmingham is somewhat unique. The city was founded in the early 1870s and there really aren't a large number of rowhouses. But, those that exist do because of the topography of the urban core. Really, the only rowhouses around exist in the compact neighborhoods along the side of Red Mountain, where financial benefit necessitated building in very confined areas.

That being said, there are plenty of homes built in the same area that are not joined like rowhouses, but separated by a few feet. In the end, very few rowhouses were built.

[photoLith]

So, I just added a bunch. I think Altoona should be edited from lots to a few, I didn't add that placemarker. Its mostly detached houses with a couple of row houses here and there. I put New Orleans on the map because of the French Quarter, I said few on the map, probably should be lots but the row houses are confined to mainly the quarter.

[James Bond Agent 007]

Originally Posted by Sam Hill

I'm curious about Portland and Seattle. I haven't spent more than a week in either city. I'm guessing row houses are basically nonexistent there?

Pretty much, yeah, aside from newer stuff.

The first thing I thought when I looked at the map was that Providence and Charleston were missing. But then when I looked at those 2 cities on street view I realized they don't really have many (or, any). Seems like old cities dominated by brick housing are the ones with the townhouses, but ones dominated by wood aren't. And for some reason, Charleston and Providence seem to be dominated by wood in their older houses.

Several cities seem to have what I'd call "almost townhouses." Chicago is filled with them. They aren't quite sharing walls, but they come really close.

[xzmattzx]

Originally Posted by Crawford

This is the problem with this exercise. Every U.S. city probably has some.

But where are rowhouses dominant? Not too many places outside of Baltimore, Philly, and a number of PA towns.

I think there should be another layer added. It should go "few, lots, dominant".

[photoLith]

I added about 50 towns to the map, believe it or not I found some row houses in Atlanta and in Mobile. Also, I remember seeing a tiny bit of row houses in Salida, Colorado when I visited years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_Block

[photoLith]

Originally Posted by xzmattzx

I think there should be another layer added. It should go "few, lots, dominant".

For sure

[pdxtex]

Originally Posted by initiald

Richmond VA is really the southern limit from what I've seen.

Unless you mean those McMansion-style "townhomes" they build everywhere around here:

wow these are heinous!

[xzmattzx]

I pretty much took care of Delaware for you! I went based on what I've seen in person, from my extensive wandering around.

[pdxtex]

Originally Posted by Sam Hill

Wow, that's a pretty solid rundown.

I'm curious about Portland and Seattle. I haven't spent more than a week in either city. I'm guessing row houses are basically nonexistent there?

not true for portland, we actually have lots. but they are sporadically built around the city. the largest clusters of them in portland proper are in NW portland, the west slope and bethany neighborhoods on the other side of the hills. southeast portland is seeing more and more attached housing too. the far western suburbs along the light rails have tons and tons of them though. intel and nike, and lots of other tech jobs are out there. you wont find historic row houses outside of nw portland though. what we do have alot of though are triplexs. lots of mid 50s, brick mega ranch houses with shared basements and separate entrances. i live in one myself. its built like a bomb shelter but it very spacious and almost graceful inside.

[photoLith]

I added everything I know about, nearly everything in PA, VA, OH, IN, and WV I could think of, and all the towns that have any row houses along the national road to St. Louis. This was the most traveled early road in America and the gateway to the West. It originally ended in Vendalia, Illinois and was supposed to extend all the way to St Louis but then the panic of 1837 happened and ended the building of the National Road, now Rt. 40.

[initiald]

Even in preserved historic southern cores like Charleston you don't really find them. I imagine because they are better at keeping heat in and in the south moving air through was more important, hence the shotgun houses, Charleston style houses and houses with porches.

[Kenmore]

Originally Posted by initiald

Richmond VA is really the southern limit from what I've seen.

Unless you mean those McMansion-style "townhomes" they build everywhere around here:

lol, wow

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Sam Hill

I also lived in San Francisco for a few years. I feel like I know there MUST be neighborhoods filled with row houses, but for some damn reason I just can’t picture it. I can still vividly picture some neighborhoods that consist of either mansions or small apartment buildings literally leaning against each other but I’m having trouble remembering any stereotypical row houses. I guess it’s been too long. If any of you Bay Area people can think of any examples, please post a pic. I wouldn’t mind a trip down memory lane.

San Francisco's rowhouses are a bit different from elsewhere in the country because they are wood frame, but there are present - particularly in the northeast quadrant of the city. On the whole 12.5% of the housing stock is one-unit attached, versus 19.4% one unit detached.

It's often hard to tell from the street what is a rowhouse and what is a small apartment building, but it's fair to say some of the attached structures on this street are single family houses. Here's some more examples.

"Almost rows" - seperated by a few feet (like the Painted Ladies) are more common however, particularly in the next tier of neighborhoods like The Mission or Haight Ashbury.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Sam Hill

Wow, that's a pretty solid rundown.

I'm curious about Portland and Seattle. I haven't spent more than a week in either city. I'm guessing row houses are basically nonexistent there?

I read an article a few years back about a building being demolished which had one of Seattle's vanishing dive bars in it. It was very old by Seattle standards (1870s IIRC) and was originally built as a small series of wood rowhouses. Seattle used to have rowhouses basically, but they've been almost completely replaced by later development.

[eschaton]

I started tweaking the map a bit, and I have a question about the few/lots point. How would you classify a small city or borough (with only a few thousand people) where rowhouses are the dominant vernacular in the 19th century core? I would classify it as lots, but I see many people have classified these as few.