If there was a “golden age of porches,” it was the mid to late 1800s, when the porch served as an outdoor parlor, “an integral part of domestic social life.” As the growing middle class moved to the suburbs, they started spending their money and their leisure time on porches, as construction materials became cheaper and more widely available.

Porches in their original forms were intended to optimize air flow and provide a cooler place to sleep in hot climates. Architecture styles typical of West African houses and those in the Caribbean and Haiti, which were brought to the U.S. by enslaved persons, influenced structural designs like the long and narrow building style known as the shotgun house. It has a porch on the front, a back door, and windows lining the side walls, making a crossbreeze possible within the house and allowing work and leisure time to be spent in the covered outdoor space of the porch. The functionality of indoor-outdoor space and a connection to the surrounding landscape was applied to a variety of housing, especially in the hot and humid climate of the southeastern U.S. Shotgun houses, now ubiquitous in places like New Orleans, and later Bungalow, Craftsman, and Prairie houses are all small-scale residences that feature a styled porch. In contrast, many government buildings and private mansions feature large columns and Classical influences, drawing from Greco-Roman roots. Other styles, like the wrap-around Queen Anne style porches, which debuted in 1876 at the World’s Fair, developed from European porch and balcony varieties.

By Reed Schick, from a 48 Hour Residency at the Harrison Center.

Post-WWII American life, though, led to a decline in front porches. Suburbanization, industrialization, and individualism informed the choices people made when building and buying homes. Bigger lots in the suburbs and a growing desire for privacy translated to garages, fences, and back decks. Indoor plumbing meant no more outhouses and a more comfortable space to gather outside, behind the house. New homes were built without porches and many were removed in remodels to update the look of the house to a more modern stoop or a flat front.

Cultural and generational shifts in recent decades have also shifted the priorities of home building and buying. New homeowners are seeking out porches or restoring them on older houses, and building the structures onto new homes has risen from 42% to 65% over the last two decades. Many recent trends in architecture and urban planning have emphasized walkability and shared public areas, creating natural opportunities for “eyes on the street.” This phrase was coined by Jane Jacobs, a principle theorist of new urbanism, to describe the theory that safety and connection would increase on a visibly populated and active street. Jacobs believed that community-minded streets and neighborhoods, what she called the “smallness of big cities,” were key to making the city a healthy and thriving place.

The porch springs up as an aesthetic and functional answer for more connected neighborhoods. It has taken on a nostalgic, almost mythical quality, as shorthand for connection and community; a neighborhood with an eternal summer— kids that play in the yards and neighbors that wave to each other, offering to cut the grass when they’re away. The porch has become increasingly popular as a social symbol and practice, with a life larger than just a space outside the front door.

The porch has become a venue for a wide range of events. Historically, past presidents of the U.S., including James Garfield, William Mckinley, and Benjamin Harrison, hosted campaign speeches from the porches of their own homes. Now, festivals like Porchfest, first held in upstate New York in 2007, use the front porch as a stage for local musicians. Porchfest has since expanded, and is now an annual event held in over 104 different locations within communities, including in Carmel, Indiana. In Indianapolis, Porch Party Indy, started by the Harrison Center, supports the neighborhood ritual of gathering on front porches. The “porching” initiative, which aims to build relationships, particularly between new and long term neighbors, is city and state-wide, with over 52 Indiana counties participating.

As people in American cities and suburbs reimagine what community means and trade individual privacy for a connected neighborhood, it is not surprising that the changing sociological wave has brought front porches back along with it. Their presence influences us, like all of our physical surroundings do.

Antoine de Bottone wrote in his book, Architecture of Happiness, about the effect a built environment has on us as humans:

“We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need-- but are at constant risk of forgetting...

We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.”

(p.106-107)

The pace and demands of a culture that emphasizes individualism, consumerism, and productivity don’t reinforce the natural rhythms of human connection, so we must make them for ourselves. The presence of a front porch is a stage set for daily engagement, reminding us of the opportunity we have to be a neighbor each time we walk out the front door.

Author: Macy Lethco

Consulting Supervisor: Kipp Normand

Humanities Delivery Essay Series: Back To the Front Porch