Ordinary Homes of the United States

Examples shown are smaller buildings located in urban areas. Group living at suburban and rural colleges have larger yards and more parking. The largest sororities are found in the South, and have over 40,000 square feet of indoor space and are located on 1-acre lots. Time period: Mid/late 1800s to present Location: College towns Four types of student group living, separated by gender or economic system Key features - Located in clusters close to college campuses - Shared common spaces and bathrooms - In addition to residential uses, may also contain study halls and space for parties From the 1600s to the mid 1800s, college education in the United States was rare, limited to small institutions established by churches to train ministers. Liberal arts education was added in the 1800s. Enrollment was small - a couple dozen to a couple hundred students per college. In the mid 1800s, as the country grew and started to industrialize, there was a movement to expand higher education as farmin...

  Time period: 1950s-1960s Location: Los Angeles and other cities in the Western US 6+ homes and parking spaces, all on a standard house-sized lot, named after the fanciful decor tacked onto the front.  The dingbat was invented in post-WWII Los Angeles to meet the housing needs of a growing city as well as growing rates of car ownership. The standard 50' wide, 150' deep LA lot had been gridded out for detached houses, but many were zoned for low-rise apartments. Before the dingbat, the most popular types of medium-density housing were bungalow courts - a series of houses around a central walkway, as well as multistory courtyard apartments. In 1934, both types were banned by a new zoning law that required parking: one space per unit. Developers solved this math problem by turning the front yard into a driveway, leading to a carport that took up the front of the first floor. To maximize space, the second floor extends over the carport, propped up on stilts. This type of structur...

  Time Period: 1980s to present Location: Suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas nationwide Mass produced mansions for super-sized American dreams Key features - Over 3,000 square feet with 4 or more bedrooms - Designed to impress: double height entrances and other decorative features on front of house - 2+ car garage While houses have always been a way people show off wealth, and owning a house has been central to the American Dream since the beginning of this country, several factors came together in the 1980s to create the McMansion. Clothing, which had traditionally been a primary way of showing off wealth, was becoming less important, outside of a handful of places such as New York City. Casual fashion had gone mainstream, and a drop in clothing costs relative to income meant that even the middle class could afford fancy clothes if they wanted. Homes, though, were still expensive enough to remain a status symbol. Another factor was the 1986 Tax Reform Act, a Reagan-era tax cut for t...

  Time period: Late 20th century to present Location: Suburban downtowns and car-centered cities across the country How to provide lots of apartments, while hiding the parking. Key features - Mid-rise apartment building wrapped around a multi-story parking garage. - Requires large piece of land. - Higher density than garden apartments, less dense than a podium building. Everything's bigger in Texas - including the apartment buildings. After World War II, advances in air conditioning technology made urban living in hot and humid climates more desirable. Texas was also going through an oil boom. While oil fields tapped out and production peaked in the 1970s, the state's early lead in oil production locked in its position as a headquarters for oil companies, as well as banks and suppliers that supported oil drilling elsewhere in the world.  Since the 2010s, the fracking boom has brought a new wave of oil related jobs to Texas. While its main Sunbelt rival - California - went down...

  Time period: 2010s Location: New York City How to get better views while staying under the floor area limit. Key features - Extra-high mechanical rooms on lower floors, with ceiling height of 100 feet or more. - Upper floors of multimillion dollar views. While supertall towers are extraordinary buildings, I have included them in this survey of housing as they come from the same roots as a stucco box apartment or suburban tract house: they are not custom homes designed by the future resident. They are a commodity, designed to make money. The history of zoning in New York is a constant back-and-forth between an economy that makes tall buildings profitable, and zoning laws that limit their height and bulk. The mechanical void ban is one of the latest chapters of this story. The modern skyscraper dates back to the invention of the elevator and the Bessemer process,which made it possible to mass produce steel.  Both were invented in the 1850s, and together they made taller buildi...

Location: Philadelphia, Seattle Time period: 1600s-1800s and 21st century   While the 5-story version is new, tower houses are one of the oldest types of homes in the United States.  The early version of it exists in Philadelphia, where they are known as trinities, so named because there are three floors, each with one room. The first floor would be the living room and kitchen, and the upper floors would be bedrooms.  Trinities are also known as "Father, Son & Holy Ghost houses".  When the US declared independence, Philadelphia was the largest city, and its metropolitan area population remained similar in size to New York until NYC overtook it following the completion of the Erie Canal in 1821. Tiny houses went hand in hand with tiny streets. Among the most famous example is Elfreth's Alley in Philadelphia, the oldest continuously inhabited residential street in the USA.When William Penn founded the city of Philadelphia in 1682, he laid out the street grid wit...

  Time period:2000s to 2015, limited height afterwards Location: Washington DC Adding floors (and homes) on top of a rowhouse  Key features - Narrow lot - Reuses lower floors of an existing rowhouse The rowhouse, a multistory house on its own lot but sharing a wall with its neighbors, is a common type of home in the Mid-Atlantic region. In Philadelphia and Baltimore, rowhouses make up half of all homes. In Washington DC, 1 in 4 homes is a rowhouse.  Elsewhere in the United States, rowhouses make up less than 10%. The classic rowhouse is only one room wide, and has the living room and kitchen on the 1st floor, and two bedrooms on the 2nd floor. Like other US cities, DC started getting tall buildings in the late 1800s. However, unlike other cities, the US Congress has the power to pass local laws in DC, and in 1899 Congress passed a citywide height limit that banned skyscrapers. In the mid and late 20th century, as number of government workers increased, this height limit ...