The NPR show Marketplace is doing a series in their Adventures in Housing category, where they explore some styles of housing that are associated with specific locales. So far they have done 3:
Is there an iconic housing style in your area of the world? It doesn’t have to be exclusive to that region/city, but somehow associated with it.
I’m not sure what, exactly, distinguishes a Cape Cod, but I’ve heard the term.
What’s a dingbat apartment?
A Cape Cod house is a low, broad, single or double-story frame building with a moderately-steep-pitched gabled roof, a large central chimney, and very little ornamentation.
I think Capes are so generic that while they originated for the Cape Cod weather they are present everywhere.
For the greater Boston area, I would nominate the Triple Decker. I lived in one for 15 years in Somerville MA, and it’s what I think of when I think of the bulk of the housing in the area.
The linked article goes into the derivation of Dingbats, but it’s basically an apartment style with garage bays underneath some of the units, and the kitschy ornamentation or names led to the name.
I was going to post about triple deckers but even though I had never heard the term before moving to New England 20+ years ago, I never imagined they were almost unique to New England.
There’s the Detroit Bungalow, craftsman style 1 1/2 stories. But like much of Midwest we have old Victorians,American four squares, with Michigan basements damp low ceilings constructed of field stone. Mid century Ranches and split levels in the suburbs.
Who knew there were that many styles of Bungalows?
Montreal is well known for it’s twisted outdoor staircases leading to the upper units in multiplex housing.
We used to live in such a building, and they certainly can be a challenge. We started to shop for a home around the time we started thinking about having kids. The idea of carrying a car seat and groceries up and down those stairs just terrified me! I did love that apartment though.
Yeah, Chicago Bungalow was the first thing to come to mind.
There’s also the Chicago Greystone which is similar to the brownstone but made of local limestone. More of a location specific material than an actual architecture style, though.
My home town (Mason City Ia) has several houses of the Prairie School type architecture. At least 1 house and 1 hotel (apparently the last one in existence) were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Disclaimer: I’d never heard of a “dingbat apartment” until last week, when I listened to that Marketplace episode.
It’s typically an inexpensive one- or two-story apartment building, raised up above a parking area at ground level; mostly popular on the West Coast, and Los Angeles in particular.
The name apparently comes from the kitschy mid-century symbol decorations (stars, asterisks, etc.) which often adorned the building’s front, reminiscent of the “Dingbats” typographical fonts.
My understanding is that there aren’t as many as there used to be in Los Angeles, as many of the older ones no longer meet modern building codes on earthquake resistance (i.e., the pillars that support the building over the parking area were prone to collapse).
Same here; I live in a Chicago-style bungalow, in an older suburb where probably one out of four homes are that design.
Chicago bungalows are nearly always brick exteriors, raised up a half-story above street level, with the front door offset to one side or the other of the house. They usually have a full basement, and a single floor of residential rooms – most often two bedrooms, one bath, a living room, dining room and kitchen – plus a large, high-ceilinged attic (the indicative second-floor windows overlooking the front are in the attic). The living room is usually in the front of the house, with windows overlooking the street, contributing to the Chicagoism word “frontroom” (pronounced “frunchroom”).
Many Chicago bungalows (including mine) have had the attic “dormered out,” to create living space on the second floor.
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Thanks, both. I can think of a few commercial buildings I’ve seen that are like that; parking at street level and offices above. The ornamentation reminds me a little of Googie, although toned down quite a lot.
I just came across this; which is a fairly distinctive design and very localized.
Posting in another thread reminded me about the cave houses of Sacromonte in Granada, Spain.
Caves at Sacromonte, near Granada, Spain, are home to about 3,000 Gitano people, whose dwellings range from single rooms to caves of nearly 200 rooms, along with churches, schools, and stores in the caves.[citation needed] From 2021–2023 Beatriz Flamini spent 500 days alone in a cave in Granada in an experiment on the effects of social isolation.
Sacromonte:
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Thatched cottages are pretty iconic throughout Britain. I think they have thatched roofs in other places - the Netherlands has some, but they are different in style to ours in a way I can’t quite put my finger on.
Here’s a fairly typical example of one from Hampshire (the material of the walls differs by region and the budget of the original build - in some cases, bricks and flints; in other cases, timber frame with wattle and daub infill, and others such as cob (rammed earth).
