Quote:
Originally Posted by 3rd&Brown
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.
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I have to say that the one thing I don't like about Philly rowhouses is the ubiquity of flat roofs. Here in Pittsburgh flat-roofed rowhouses are comparably rare (save for the later ones built in the 20th century) with most two-story rowhouses either having a forward-facing slanted roof with a front/rear dormer. Our old rowhouse had one, which was a lifesaver, because we converted the attic into a "master bedroom" (kinda, with no bathroom though), which turned our "two up, two down" into a three bedroom house. But really the main thing is two-story rowhouses don't generate enough of an urban feel unless a street is very, very narrow. I have read about the idea of an "outdoor room" in urban planning - basically there's a golden ratio in terms of minimum building height to width from building to building. Two-story rowhouses (lacking attics) on a two-way street starts to feel a bit open and sparse, though not quite suburban-feeling.
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.