If the garage height is the same in both cases, how can it not be true that raising the floor of the garage also raises the ceiling of the garage?
I think that the misunderstanding stems from the fact that the second house has the “front steps” inside the house. Until you described the house, I didn’t think to look at the photos of the inside of the house, because of course the first floor is at the same level as the front door. It’s not - but that hadn’t occurred to me. And the steps being inside means a photo of the front of the house doesn’t show the actual level of the living room floor.
Ok - so that’s just what @LSLGuy said, that’s the case where the living room floor is raised above ground level.
If you want only a short flight of stairs between living room and bedroom floor levels, your choices are either to lower the garage floor below ground level with a reverse-sloped driveway, or to raise the living room floor above ground level.
OK, so the living room level is above ground level. (Note that even the one with the downscoping driveway has a step up to the front door. And I believe the front lawn slopes up slightly from the street. As far as construction is concerned, what benefits would the reverse driveway provide to offset the rather clear negatives?
“Ground” level impresses me as a somewhat imprecise term, since it seems as though most of the homes have the “ground” sloping up to the main level foundation. I think a better factor to focus on is whether the driveway slopes up or down from the street. I apologize that my phrasing seems to have confused people.
It appears as tho considerable earth was moved in constructing this neighborhood. The streets are consistently below the floor level of the “main” level. I do not know if they excavated the street area, or built up the homesites.
Well, as a construction issue obviously having to excavate for the garage is offset by not having to raise the living room floor.
But I would think that it’s more the preferences of homebuyers that are driving it. Some people may think it’s more important to have the garage at ground level; others may prioritize having the living room at ground level without having to go up steps when they walk in the front door or back door.
As someone who has built custom infills, one very similar to what is pictured, it seems to mostly be about curb appeal. It moves a big visually dominating door below the main level. The builder in your area may have chose it as a concession to Development to break up the appearance of adjacent properties.
Mostly it raises the cost of the project. It does save a few loads of backfill from being hauled back to a site that does not have room to stage fill. It likely helps with development constraints on roof height.
It adds structral complications like retaining walls, guard railing, filling and compacting the slab substrate (unless it is actually all the way down to footing level). It also can add development approval headaches. We needed a 42" guard rail along the sides wherever the drop was over 24" for building code, but Development insisted this was an overheight fence, took forever to get past the pedantry. Stormwater and meltwater management is a major issue.
I would never build a garage that required a reverse slopeed drive again. Don’t get me started on all the doomed-to-leak reverse sloped roof systems that are being pushed by architects and designers.
Thanks for the detailed answer. Are you saying the reverse sloped drive is more expensive/complicated (save perhaps a few loads of backfill?)
I don’t know what sort of zoning requirements there were back then. My impression is that this rectangular area of maybe 6 stretches of streets 3-5 blocks long were all built at the same time in the late 50s-early 60s. Any of the splits are lower than the 2-storys. I think homes are roughly evenly split between ranches/splits/2-storys. The 2 splits I see across the street from me have gutters/peaks no more than a couple of feet different from each other
Just about every house with a reverse slop driveway has some complicated drainage system at the bottom. I would hate to own one of those homes when a big storm was moving in…
In case anyone is interested, these are 2 such homes next to each other. The white and red one has a downscoping drive, and the tan and yellow one a flat drive. You can see how the lawn slopes up from even the level drive towards the front door. If you click on the ling, then click again on the picture, you can move around and see the street view. To the left of these 2 houses is a 2 story, and to the right, a ranch. This gives a good view of what I’m talking about. (What a boring neighborhood I live in! 
)
When they excavate for a foundation they also excavate a ramp for the hoe to drive in and out. If you are building a below grade garage, you can just put that ramp where the driveway will be. Then you do not have to fill it in at least. Everything else just adds up to more work than a driveway at grade would be.
I misunderstood about the age of the properties. I saw a picture of what I thought was an infill, but that was maybe from another poster.
When you build infills you will usually need a development permit as well as a building permit. Development is concerned with how the property will affect other parties. If you develop a few lots side by side they will often want you to make them distinct from each other to maintain the variety of the neighborhood. I was thinking this might have been the case.
Development will certainly be involved with design of a new subdivision, but probably not as strictly in the early sixties as they would now. There would still have been height restrictions though. With that style of split level in your link it was very common to have a major living space over the garage, but they were still trying to achieve a low sprawling style like bungalows. A below grade garage level certainly helps with that. The home at 892 does have a sleeker appearance than the other. Ultimately I think it was a choice made to add variety to the properties more than anything else. You may think its boring now, but back in the day that street offered something more interesting than the post war Sears bungalows people were looking to upgrade from.
There is not a dramatic grade on that drive, but I bet water still runs into that garage whenever it rains.
Thx again for the voice of experience. There are several steeper drives than that. I just picked these 2 because they were side-by-side.
And I’d prefer not even that grade on days when we get freezing rain…
We had water issues in our previous 2 houses. So I admit we are hyper sensitive to grades and drainage.
mY HOUSE was built in 1969. The builder used half of my basement -level for a two car garage. The point is the builder saves $ by not having to build a garage;… he just took half of my basement and installed garage doors. The other half of this lower level is 4 feet below grade and thus sheltered somewhat from heat and cold. I have NO storage in either attic nor basement, and so had to build a storage shed in the backyard. That building allowed me to move my extension ladder, step ladder, bikes mower, shovels rakes and other “implements of destruction” (thanx Arlo) to the back yard shed.
FWIW, I spent my first 11 years in a split level which had been built in 1960. The builder in this case left the garage at ground level and used infill from digging the basement to create an artificial hill for main level access. The long, gradual slope in the backyard made for some really fun sledding.
I think this is the crux of it. Yes there’s more cost for drainage and retaining walls, but there’s savings in foundations and footings, especially in climates where frost depth is pretty deep, or good undisturbed bearing soil is far down. If the garage can be “in the basement” then you’re getting it almost for free, whereas a garage at grade may still need a three, four, or five feet of foundation underneath it.
Cincinnati has a lot of houses like this where the garage really is in the basement. They’re not split levels, but since the streets here tend to be dug out a fair bit lower than the lots, leading to raised front yards, and the houses themselves are still popped out of the ground a couple of feet, there’s similar effects.
One of my neighbors had his house torn down and rebuilt from scratch. It has recently been expanded and renovated, and i spoke with the guy tearing it down, who said it was well-constructed.
My neighbor said that he was starting from scratch in part because he wanted to regrade the driveway, did water didn’t run into the garage.
One advantage to doing it that way is that the dirt you excavate for the sunken garage can be used in the neighboring lot to raise the main living area. Whether that’s actually useful depends on them being built at the same time and probably by the same developer. But moving dirt, either to or from, is expensive.
Pretty sure your going to need a drainage ‘grate’ in front of the garage door and likely a dedicated sump pump. In cold climates probably going to need to heat the driveway. Non of which are insurmountable problems at all.
I know of a house in Denver that added a garage under the house. The driveway is super steep as the house is not set far back from the road. But they did it.
There are I’m sure specific codes for garages under a house. One being for fire danger. Same with attached garages, but may be stricter if under the house. Not sure
Oh yeah, all these things can be engineered around. Especially here in 2023.
The OP was talking about middle class mass-market suburbia being built in the late 1950s - early 1960s. A different world where “faster, cheaper” meant everything and “better” was just not on the developer’s list of things to do.
None of which were present on my neighbor’s house, which was never an especially cheap house.
Can you make it work? I suppose so. Better grading is a lot simpler and more reliable, though.
Agree. IF you can grade the lot to do it. It seems that people want to build their houses all the way to the set back no mater what. And then pop-tops show up and the ‘deck’ goes on the roof. That actually looks kinda cool, but comes with an entirely different set of drainage issues.
When building an addition, I thought about making it one story and put a deck on the roof. My roofing buddy laughed and laughed and laughed. It can be done though. I ended up making it two story with a standard pitched roof.
Location ($), location($$), location($$$).
My house is uphill from the driveway, which is black and faces south. I love my solar powered self-defrosting driveway. I realize that not every house can be situated that way. But minimizing actual problems seems like a good idea.