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@ niwell/ others, thanks for info on fire/ design. |
I grew up in the neighborhood where MonkeyRonin posted the google streetview snapshot from. From my experience directly facing windows are rare but in a neighborhood like this even though most lots are the same size, building sizes are very seldom uniform so sometimes you would have a combination of a shorter three flat building with a coach house and no yard next to a two flat with no coach house and longer yard next to a 3 flat that extended all the way back to the alley. Ive definitely accidentally seen people doing it or changing or getting out of the shower.
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Rowhomes come in all shapes and sizes. Some are two story buildings - and can be as small as 600sf. I lived on a block like this about 10 years ago - most of these homes are under 1000sf: https://goo.gl/maps/ap4TsygidtVU9BGx9
There's also Philly's historic Trinity - which is a 3 story rowhome that's effectively 3 boxes stacked on top of each other. Pretty awesome starter home for a couple - as you can get wedged into some great neighborhoods and alleyways. https://www.trulia.com/p/pa/philadel...03--1005292017 And there's also mansions - with elevators. This "rowhome" around the corner from me is 7,000sf: https://www.trulia.com/p/pa/philadel...03--1005292017 To the OP - Philly also has Brownstone rowhomes. Spruce Street is a good example: https://goo.gl/maps/XWJV4sEEoF7a5mFx9 |
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for our home, only one of the windows in our kitchen kinda lines up with our neighbor's kitchen window, but it's a high sill window over the sink, so it's never bothered us. our bedroom windows along the gangway don't directly line up with any windows on our neighbor's building, but we still have the translucent privacy shades down >95% of the time. when we first moved in, i would draw them open every morning, only to close them later that afternoon. i eventually got out of that habit so now they just stay down the vast majority of the time. we're on the 1st floor of a 3-story building and our gangway is only about 5' wide at that point, so there's not a ton of light that comes through them anyway. |
I don't even live in a "pseudo rowhouse" any longer, but the houses on my street are close together - about eight feet, IIRC.
There are virtually no windows on the sides of my house. Part of this is because the stairway is on the left side of my home, and part of this is because there are four different chimneys - one for each of the main rooms on each floor (my home is foursquare style). On my left wall - the stairwell wall - there is a nice stained-glass window right off the grand stair, and a smaller window you can see through on the way to the third floor. On the right wall, the only rooms on the second and third floor which have windows are the bathrooms - and one of those is stained glass and thus not really see through anyway. The houses on either side of me are basically an identical plan to my house. Thus even though the windows are centered on the midpoint of the house, we cannot look into each others windows. Because on my right wall, the windows are on the 2nd/3rd floors, whereas on my neighbor's left wall, they're on the stairs between the 1st/2nd and 2nd/3rd. |
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Right now basically a row house. attached one side and narrow gangway on the other side. Three unit condo in wicker park, Chi . It's great. Late 90s construction... we are a "duplex down" with first floor walkup and half-underground lower level with extra bedroom and bath.
wouldn't trade it! I can walk to anything most of my local streets filled with same kind of thing. |
I used to live in this building in the Mt. Adams neighborhood of Cincy:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/12...992!4d-84.4992 The two (maybe 3?) buildings have been dramatically altered over the years, so I'm not sure how the building was originally intended to be split up. The building on the right was originally built as row-housing (I think), but had been converted into apartments, with the garden level and sunken level on the backside being separate units than the upper stories, which are served by the street facing staircases. The building on the left is an OTR tenement type of building that has about 8 apartments. This is the closest I've lived to a row-house. |
I just moved from one rowhouse (built 1890, row of 9 houses) to another one! (Built 2019, row of 4 houses)
Here in the UK something like 25% of all homes are rowhouses, plus another 30% are semi detached houses attached to just one other. Then the rest is something like 25% detached houses, 20% apartments. Fire doesn't seem to be an issue with rowhomes here, you very rarely hear of any problems, house fires are much less common generally than they were in the past when more people used solid fuel fires for heating and also has deep fat fryers which nobody seems to have these days. The major fire in the UK in recent years was the Grenfell Tower disaster a couple of years ago in a block of apartments. Some of the old Victorian rows of houses were built with a common roof void along the whole row which wouldn't be up to code if built now. Many will have had block walls retrofitted for fire safety reasons and also security reasons if people are worried their neighbours might go up through their roof hatch and then down into the neighbouring houses through their hatches. But I think there will still be a lot of those type houses that haven't had the roof voids partitioned properly. |
Lived here in Sydney - not quite a row house but a 'terrace' - the one storey version such as this are very small but makes for a great urban form and neighbourhood density
https://www.google.com/maps/@-33.896...thumbfov%3D100 |
^ interesting — looks very sea statey — and very tropical!
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I lived in an attached flat in SF. Downstairs and upstairs unit of a house. Like a lot of houses in SF, the gaps in between houses are not real; they're still attached.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/72...!4d-122.445444 |
I've lived in nothing but rowhomes my whole entire adult life and I quite love them.
When you own one, it's super economical. They're very energy efficient, because you share masonry walls with your neighbors, and when and if you remodel them, you can go all out in terms of materials because very often you don't need that much of whatever it is you're buying. Ditto for doors, windows, etc. A typical Philly 2 story rowhome will have only 3 front windows. So instead of replacing them with sh*tty vinyl Home Depot windows, on a tight budget, you can replace them with beautiful wood or clad windows that you'd find in much more expensive homes/neighborhoods. Every rowhome I've lived in had a maximum utility bill of $100 a month. Typically, it was $20 gas / $80 electric in the hotter months and the reverse in the cold months when you run the heat. As Londonee says, I'm not sure why the hate for Philly rowhomes. Virtually everything, at least in and around Center City Philadelphia is a rowhome. A rowhouse can be a 10,000 square foot mansion with elevators or a 600 square foot trinity with a basement kitchen. The beautiful thing about Philadelphia in particular is that very often they sit side by side and most passer-bys wouldn't even know it. Some streets I've lived on: https://goo.gl/maps/wxXgKa9YmRFt1pyX6 https://goo.gl/maps/XZLf8zuQRV1tSW6w6 https://goo.gl/maps/8acZ8am6Q64JcWef6 Currently renovating a house on this block with much wider rowhomes: https://goo.gl/maps/8acZ8am6Q64JcWef6 I currently split my time between NYC and Philly. In NYC, I live on a super block of big pre-war apartment buildings. Most old NYC apartments are chopped up into a million rooms whereas most rowhomes have been opened up at this point. Both have their merits. I'd say the worst thing about living in a rowhome is the stairs...3 of the 4 I've lived in were 3 floors. I do very much enjoy living on one floor, as is the case in my NYC apartment. It makes keeping up with putting things away a bit easier, as you're not always traversing floors. |
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Aside from contributing to a solid street wall for the "urban feel," some other great facet about rowhomes is their immense contribution to egalitarianism and finely-grained urbanism (and which is particularly true about Philly, with such a wealth of smaller rowhomes): 1) They are really the "secret sauce" to affordability because they very preserve small, individually-owned parcels of land that are so hard for truly working- and middle-class folks to attain in almost every other bona fide urban city. The desire to make homeownership common amongst the masses was precisely why Philadelphia was developed as it was; and 2) The inherent narrowness of each rowhome lot means that you can very easily integrate some fascinating architectural diversity in a very confined setting. Granted, there are still plenty of blocks with uniformity and monotony, but as these homes are modified or redeveloped with individual flair like different facade styles, materials, or other flourishes (thoughtfully, of course), the diversity is visually stimulating and contributes greatly to the dynamic feel of a neighborhood. |
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But, excepting a few fancy neighborhoods, they're far from ideal for how people live today. Most of these rowhouses are extremely narrow, spartan, tiny and dark, with extremely modest proportions and ceiling heights. They were built for very working class families. Even the generally much grander Brooklyn brownstones are usually too dark and have too many stairs. I love them from the street, but would not live in one unless gut renovated with back blown out with glass walls (which is getting extremely common - unrenovated they're always too damn dark). And probably an elevator. But all that is serious $$. |
Yup, lived in three different late 1800s row houses in Pittsburgh. It mostly sucked and they were all cold and or really hot and loud. I now live in a 1915 arts and crafts detached house. I'm sure rowhouses with non slum lords are fine but all the ones I lived in were really cheap and owned by slumlords who never fixed anything.
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I lived in a small townhouse located in the Jeffery Manor in the far southeast part of Chicago for most of my life. They weren't really well designed. It gets claustrophobic even with a small family. Rooms are too small to accommodate much. No basement, but there was good backyard space. A garage could be added.
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Philly is a grid with EW and NS streets. Literally 25% of the lots sit on the north side of EW streets with direct southern exposures. Of course, if you're one of those prudes who feels uncomfortable having any hint of your house exposed to the outside, then it's going to be dark inside. But I'm not. A lot of rowhomes are elevated 3 or 4 steps up so in theory, you don't even need blinds on the first level because pedestrians are below you at street view. Anyways, different strokes for different folks. A lot of people I know live in suburbs and have 38 vinyl windows on their vinyl house and every window is covered as if the taliban is going to discover young girls going to school inside. People need to just relax. |
Yep I have. It was built in the late 1800s and the owner completely redid the inside and it was very nice. Solid old construction and wasn't too noisy and the location was awesome. HOWEVER, seeing one catch on fire and quickly spreading down the block does make me think twice about doing it again. Unfortunately I have lived through two fires due to the carelessness of others and it's an awful experience.
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The other thing that I think doesn't work for Philly is the "industrial scale" of the rowhouse building. Here in Pittsburgh, while there's lots of attached housing, typically each house was either built as a singleton or in small stands of 2-6. An entire block of identical houses is quite rare - only a few intact forms like this survive anywhere in the city today. While a block of identical rowhouses can look quite nice if they're higher end/ornate on a street with trees, in a working-class area it just makes the street feel institutional, desolate, and - perhaps worst - boring. The essence of a good walking environment in an urban area is never knowing what you're going to find when you turn the corner, which is why some heterogeneity in form/function is for the best. Remuddling has actually in a weird way helped with this a bit. |
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Especially with a wife from a warm, sunny country, we want lots of big windows with natural light and, like most households these days, we prefer open floorplans. Neither preference is easily accommodated in a rowhouse format. But, again, I love rowhouse neighborhoods, because they're fantastic from an urbanist/pedestrian perspective. |
I was obsessed with Philly rowhomes for a few months(weird thing to say, even on here lol) and I was Zillowin' every night. I love them. When they look nice on the outside, remodeled on the inside, have three bedrooms and a basement that is also renovated, you can't beat it.
I love that people in the city can get a quality home, nice and cozy, in a decent area...for a good price. In any case, we don't need all the space we act as we do. I figure a typical small Philly rowhome would be more than sufficient for a family of 4. Hell, if me and the gf bought one now(childless) we would feel like we live in a damn mansion. |
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Two up, two down: The smallest regular layout. Two rooms on the first floor, two on the second. Usually the smallest of these have a steep staircase which runs left-to-right, party wall to party wall. Every room has natural light from one external-facing wall. Two deep with third story: The same basic layout as above, but with a second flight of stairs leading to an attic or a third floor, which may be furnished. Two deep with rear ell: Same basic layout, but on the first, and usually the second story there's a rear extension. This is usually where the kitchen, and (due to convenience when it comes to the sewage stacks) the second-floor bathroom are located. The negative of this style is it means the "internal room" on the first and second floor typically only have a single window due to the shape of the rear ell. Also, in its more narrow incarnations this means the second floor is set up "railroad apartment" style, meaning one bedroom has essentially no privacy. Grand rowhouses: The big difference here is a grand rowhouse tends to be significantly wider, which allows for both a grand stairwell which goes front-to-back on the house, along with allowing for a hallway on at least the first and second floor. Often the third floor is large enough for multiple rooms. Occasionally you see a rear ell large enough for two sets of rooms on the first/second floors, but you invariably end up with the "railroad apartment" issue, because the ell will be too narrow for a true hallway in all but the widest rowhouses. |
^ awesome post.
being from a non-rowhouse city, i really appreciate the descriptions of the layouts. they sound quite a bit different from chicago's long and skinny flats. as someone who best learns visually, is there a good resource for generic stereotypical rowhouse floor plans? |
Yeah, I think those are the most common U.S. typologies.
The light issue is fixable. Here's an article on opening up the back walls of brownstones. This really is expected now with higher-end gut renovations: https://www.brownstoner.com/interior...steel-windows/ The floorplan issue is not as easily fixed, unless you extend the structure into the rear yard, which is obviously a massive undertaking. The city usually allows significant alterations to the back of brownstones in landmarked districts, provided they're not visible from the street. A lot of those 19th century blocks now have very modern, extended floorplans. |
When I was born my parents had a rowhouse in London. Since they sold it, it has increased roughly 18x in value. Oh well.
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Here’s a west London rowhouse (with, frankly, an atypical layout): https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property...-84971366.html Here’s a smaller “worker’s cottage”: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property...-65490114.html |
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One of the selling points for my house (detached, built in 1906, basically "grand foursquare" in style) was how historically intact it was. Cherry floors on the first story, unpainted original woodwork everywhere on the first floor (save the kitchen) grand stairwell with bannister, pocket doors, built in sitting benches, stained glass windows, clawfoot tub on the second floor, etc. I wouldn't have bought a house that looked the same from the outside if they gutted it and put in an open floor plan, painted the woodwork white, and replaced everything with shitty drywall. |
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Something like this is, to me, the perfect rowhome: https://thebrooklynhomecompany.com/d...arfield-place/ But traditionalists will hate it. |
In my city, no, but in other cities, yes.
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i've lived in a variety of both intact and gut-rehabbed vintage chicago flats. both have their advantages/charms, but as someone who really, really struggles with summertime heat, i've come to love the modern HVAC systems of gut-rehabbed places. i love the inventor of central A/C almost as much as i love Pizza God. our current home is a 20 year old gut-rehab of a 100 year old 3-flat, and i love nearly everything about it, except for the fact that the rehabber cheaped-out on the replacement windows. we have 28 (yes, 28!) individual double-hung windows in our unit, and that's just a fucking shit-ton of operable windows for a single housing unit, so we got stuck with cheap vinyl replacements. replacing all 28 double-hungs with a quality window like a Marvin clad product would probably cost around $20K. |
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The previous owner got a set of more expensive windows on the first floor which actually match the dark wood grain on the inside. It really bothers me that they're white on the outside though. It bothers me even more they put in a Trex front/back deck, which includes tan plastic railing and spindles (though the original posts are still in). At some point I want to replace all that, because I'd love to do a bolder color combination on my wood trim (like cobalt blue and purple to match our stained glass) but the tan trex and white windows really don't go with that. |
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it's a sun porch issue, and because we have a "duplex down" unit (2 floors), we have 2 sun porches, so lots of windows. on the plus side, LOTS of natural light for our two front rooms. |
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There is also variety in terms of how many floors up the back of the house goes in comparison to the front. These are typically houses that have been added onto at some point. For example, there are a lot of trinities that have bump outs on the back of the house on the first floor that were added to bring the kitchens up from the basement, but nothing above it. So it's a 2-1-1. I lived in an extended trinity that had been extended two floors but not on the third. So the first floor was living room (f) kitchen (r). Second floor bathroom (f) master bedroom (r) (in bump out), 3rd floor bedroom 2 (f) with sliders to walk out deck on the roof of the 2nd floor bedroom. There are also airlites which are newer mid century versions of the rowhouse that tend to be wider and mimic the layout of a four square, sort of. Wide living room with straight stair in front of first floor. Back of first floor is a dining room next to a kitchen. Upstairs a master bedroom on one side of the house that's the entire width of the house with 2 smaller bedrooms generally in the back of the house. And then there are tons of rowhomes in places like Mt Airy Germantown and Chestnut Hill that are essentially mansions and don't fit any of these prescribed layouts. |
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That's what's always appealed to me about Philly-style rowhouses (or a Toronto equivalent) - I want my own modestly sized freehold property, without the maintenance of a detached house with a big yard. Quote:
I'm in Chicago right now and I was actually surprised at the number of (true) rowhouses along the lakefront neighbourhoods. Though I know they get pretty rare farther out. |
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only 3.4% of chicago's housing units are "1 unit attached", according to the 2017 ACS, and many (most?) of those are of the more contemporary townhouse style, not classic 19th century rows. by contrast, 42% of chicago's housing units are in 2-9 unit buildings (2-flats, 3-flats, & 6-flats), the classic chicago urban typology that dominates the city the way that rowhouses dominate philly. |
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https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8629...7i16384!8i8192 |
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In a rowhouse, you control all of that directly (except in rare cases like a common chimney, like I outlined above). |
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I have never been to Chicago, but what about the Gold Coast? https://goo.gl/maps/z132MrrLLHxMBFrB6 |
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they share no common party wall, like a bonafide rowhouse. though the results can sometimes look similar. here's an example of a true 19th century rowhouse in chicago: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8698...7i13312!8i6656 but they really are pretty damn rare, relatively speaking. |
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I always loved these Gold Coast homes on Elm. But they're far from typical: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9032...7i13312!8i6656 |
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https://maps.app.goo.gl/9mmtqmQQrhpvNaoz6 https://maps.app.goo.gl/fMxPdyT7vZTjtJqd8 Far the predominant style I know, but there were more than I was expecting. |
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A house from 1906 really isn’t that old. There are thousands of Georgian rowhouses in London from the mid-19th century or earlier, and when they were built they didn’t have bathrooms. Modern plumbing didn’t exist, so people used chamber pots that were emptied by their staff. The kitchens, if there was one, were dark rooms in the basement with the servant’s quarters next to them. I don’t think most people would be ok with that setup these days. |
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There are relatively few Victorian houses in my city with a lot of internal elements left intact, and those that there are are quite expensive. And of course everyone updates kitchens and baths to some degree. I think it's sacrilege to paint white (or remove entirely) built-ins and ornate woodwork. |
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That's inevitable...especially if a house is 'well lived in' with kids. Unless you can do the work yourself, the cost of fixing dings, sanding and refinishing would cost a small fortune. We had our wood paneled living room repainted white/ grey rather than refinish (original color was dated 70's stain) as we were looking at 5-10k to restain. The paint job cost about a grand. |
I've pretty consistently lived in rowhomes for the last five or so years.
The "classic" Philly rowhome has a very simple floorplan: two or three floors high, basement, three rooms on each floor. Usually, the setup is like this: * First floor: Parlor - Dining Room - Kitchen * Second floor: Master Bed - 3rd Bed - Bathroom - Back Bed * Third floor: about the same as the 2nd I currently live in the smallest bedroom of a rowhome. Sure, it's not a lot of space, but I don't need a lot anyway. Stairs and hallways in rowhomes do tend to be on the narrow side. But that's never been a big deal in any of the rowhomes I've lived in. I think the most annoying thing is that the dining room is usually quite dark. I really like open-floorplan renos for rowhomes in this regard, because natural light percolates through much better, and so does a breeze. Rowhomes are easy to keep warm in summer and cool in winter. Mine doesn't even have A/C and I've noticed that the dining room never breaks 80, even on the hottest days of the year. I think rowhomes are very underrated. They're very utilitarian with their space, and usually trade off internal grandeur for spaciousness where it counts (the parlor, dining room, kitchen) and coziness where it's appropriate (e.g. small bedrooms). A 2-floor rowhome is definitely enough space for a 4-person family, and a 3-floor rowhome just gives you a whole bunch of extra rooms to play with. I daydream of being able to buy a 3-floor rowhome and building a library in one of the unused bedrooms. |
I've lived in 4 rowhomes in South Philly in recent years. Lot size of 14 or 15 by 45 to maybe 65 feet. 2 stories, about 800 to 1400 square feet (not including basements). Pretty typical for the area.
Regarding light, a lot of the deeper rowhomes aren't connected all the way back on both sides so you have side windows on one side for most, if not all, rooms. Basically a light well you'd see in an urban apartment building. The biggest thing I like about rowhome neighborhoods is that the houses and backyards are very small so all street life gets pushed to the front of the houses, ie the street. Especially on the narrower side streets (not the main numbered streets or cross streets), there is a really block community that is unlike anything you'd find in suburban neighborhoods or denser urban, apartment building neighborhoods. Even dense streetcar suburb neighborhoods in Philly aren't quite the same. Block parties in the summer (Philly is famous for very high number of block party permits issued), beers on the front steps, children playing on the sidewalks, chatting with your neighbors multiple times a week on your way in and out, old ladies staring out their window or door all day. As an example, while I am typing this someone on my block is having an engagement party on their sidewalk with a sound system set up in front of their house. |
Of course. I live in a rowhouse. :D But unless you're loaded, everything in the core here is rowhousing.
My poor neighbourhood: https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...f13d2c8b_b.jpgHome from Galway by R C, on Flickr Nicer ones: https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...3c1577aa_b.jpgSeptember 14, 2019 by R C, on Flickr |
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Guilford Street, London WC1 https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property...-61750257.html Lansdowne Crescent, Notting Hill, London, W11 https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property...-83073368.html Richborne Terrace, Vauxhall, London, SW8 https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property...-60562551.html Chepstow Crescent, Notting Hill https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property...-62847819.html But these places would have all lost their original interiors long ago. And oftentimes one is renovating to replace work done in the 1950s-70s, which like most things from that era was truly awful. |
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