Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Dan
interestingly, chicago is like the bizzaro boston in that regard. chicago was ridiculously heavy on the wood-fame until the whole enchilada burned to the ground in 1871. after that, chicago became on of the most brick heavy cities in the nation outside of the eastern seaboard.
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Pittsburgh basically went through four distinct phases when it came to brick/frame.
1. The basic rule in Pittsburgh in the 19th century was housing was built out of brick if it was built for rich or middle class people, or was built on flat land by the rivers. In contrast, if it was built up on a hill, it was almost invariably frame. A lot of this came down to the 20% price differential between frame and brick, coupled with the sheer cost of hauling brick up steep slopes. So you ended up with something of a divided landscape, with brick rowhouses in the flatlands by the river, and detached frame houses dotting the hillsides above.
2. Around 1900-1910 there was a localized building boom which basically exhausted the ability of the clay pits to keep up with brick demand. Thus many houses built during this period (save for the wealthy) were frame, even if in areas which otherwise would seem conducive to brick construction.
3. Then, immediately following this period, you have a major shift to brick, with the ubiquitous foursquares and localized form of bungalows (which are mostly brick on the first story) appearing everywhere. Pittsburgh's suburbs continued to be built out almost entirely in brick well into the 1970s.
4. Then of course, the modern turn away from brick in the late 20th century, as builders became cheapskates and didn't want to pay bricklayers what the work cost.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Dan
and just like boston, chicago built a shit-ton of "triple-deckers" from 1870 - 1930, but it built them almost exclusively out of brick and called them "3-flats".
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Three flats are almost entirely absent from Pittsburgh, though
there are a few streets which have both these and six flats.
There's a localized form of two-flat which was very common in the 1920s, but otherwise that typology is unknown here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed
Row houses were not rare in Detroit. Attached row houses were built all over the city throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, and in varying styles.
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Again, I never argued they were absent, just they didn't predominate anywhere.
I mean, you can find isolated rowhouses lots of places.
Columbus has a lot of stands, but no real "rowhouse neighborhoods." There's isolated examples in areas as far afield as Atlanta, Minneapolis, New Haven, and Dubuque. That doesn't make any of these rowhouse cities - just cities with some rowhouses.