Ordinary Homes of the United States

Time period: 1890s-1920s, 1960s-1980s, 2020s to present day Location: Suburbs nationwide The classic US fourplex is a 2-story building with four apartments: two upstairs, two downstairs. First becoming popular when streetcars (also known as trolleys or trams) made suburbs possible, the fourplex offers choice for households who want to get out of the crowded city but can't afford or don't need a standalone house. Cross section of a fourplex . Before streetcars, city dwellers lived within walking distance of the city center. Few people could afford horses, so walking speed limited the physical size of cities. Adults walk at 2-3 miles per hour, which meant the largest ancient and medieval cities were just a couple miles wide. When population grew, cities would grow upwards, replacing houses with townhouses and tenements, 3-7 stories tall, built right next to each other with walls touching. Streetcars were invented in 1887 and could go much faster. Even with time waiting at traffi...

  Time period: 1960s to present Location: Florida, as well as other coastal cities and resort towns Up until the industrial era, beachfront property was not desirable. Unless someone's work required them to live near the ocean, people avoided beaches. There were good reasons: storms, pirates, and other invasions. Most large cities in Europe - even some major ports - are located inland.  This changed with the Industrial Revolution. In England, the rich started going to the beach to get away from pollution in the city, and the beach gained a new image as a healthy place to exercise or recover from disease. By the 1800s beachgoing had spread to the upper class in the US as well, with cities such as Cape May in New Jersey attracting tourists, many of who arrived by boat - Cape May is the closest spot on the shore to Philadelphia by boat. A growing middle class and the construction of railroads led to further development of East Coast beach towns. Most of these beach towns remained...

Time period: 2010s Location: Denver, especially the neighborhood east of Sloan Lake. Cleveland and other cities with Form Based zoning also have them. Also known as: Sideways-facing town homes or fraux homes (combining the words faux and rowhome) Since the 1990s, Denver has been one of the fastest growing cities in the United States, going from a population of 467,000 to 715,000 over the last 30 years. Many Californians (and others) were attracted by Colorado's lower housing costs, clean air, and access to hiking and other outdoors activities. The tech industry also expanded, bringing lots of high paying jobs. With that came a demand for housing, especially large homes desired by the upper middle class. In 2010, Denver updated its zoning code to a Form Based Code (FBC) to encourage more "missing middle" housing - a range of density between detached houses and large apartment buildings. They were the one of the big cities in the US to use an FBC. The intent was to get rowh...

Time period: 2010s to present Location: Suburbs and rural areas The modern farmhouse has its roots in the late 1980s, starting out as a down-to-earth interior design trend for people tired of or turned off by the shiny glitz of 1980s conspicuous consumption. That said, the farmhouse is also a a status symbol. The gilded penthouse condo stands for financial and industrial wealth, the farmhouse stands for wealth from land ownership. Farmhouse style is based on the farm owner's house, rather than the shacks and labor camps of tenant farmers and migrant farmworkers. Farmhouse style grew in popularity in the 2010s, through the popularity of home improvement TV shows that showed how old farmhouses could be modernized from merely rustic, to rustic but with modern comfort and style. Compared to the 19th-century and early 20th century farmhouses that serve as inspiration, modern farmhouses are much larger and have modern floorplans.  Modern Farmhouse design features - Interior and exterior ...

  Time period: Late 20th century to present Location: Rural areas and exurbs Barndominium, sometimes abbreviated as barndo, is a fun but inaccurate word that combines Barn and Condominium.  In reality, barndominiums are standalone houses in rural or exurban areas, multifamily barndos are basically unheard of. More accurately barndos are barnhouses - they combine the wide open spaces and storage areas of a barn with the insulation and residential finishes of a house. The idea started in Connecticut in the 1980s for people who own horses for recreational riding.  In the original example, the houses were detached from the horse stalls, which were sold condo-style in a large shared barn located near the houses. Later developments, especially if they were a single custom home, would combine the house and the barn. The idea found even greater popularity in the 21st century in the South, Midwest, and West, and with modern variations where the barn holds boats, cars, workshops, a...

  Time period: 21st century Location: Within walking distance of a flagship state university Large apartments designed to be shared by roommates, plus amenities and retail. If you live in a college town, chances are you've seen a number of large apartment towers pop up on the skyline just outside campus. These massive buildings, the largest of which house over 1,000 students, might be called "luxury student housing" or "student containment blocks" depending on who you ask.  They are the result of a number of trends that started as far back as the 1970s and have converged today.  Unlike other apartments that often end up stuck with vacant retail spaces due to there being too much retail space relative to the number of customers, student housing has a high enough population density to support first floor retail. Dining, cafes, and bubble tea are common retail tenants, so the space should be built kitchen-ready. Enrollment Trends at Public Universities In the USA...

Time period: Late 19th and early 20th century, revived in 21st century. Location: Used to be everywhere.  Today: Seattle and New York City. A mid-rise building with a couple apartments on each floor.   In most cities, you'll find two types of mid-rise apartment buildings in the 4-7 story range. First, there'll be some small historic buildings downtown, side by side like books on a shelf. These are the original point access blocks. Then, there are the big modern buildings taking up a whole block and with long, windowless hallways inside. These are double loaded corridor buildings. Floorplan of a point access block.   Note that apartments have windows facing the front and back of the building.     In contrast, except for the corner units, apartments in a double loaded corridor only have windows facing one direction. Both the point access block and the double loaded corridor were designed to be the most efficient floorplan given the building codes of th...