Old Southern homes were much the same (and not just the New Orleans shotgun houses which are just shoeboxes with a door at either end). The oldest Louisiana plantation I’ve ever visited was a bunch of rooms connected via a wraparound porch on the outside. There were no interior hallways at all. Each room led to the next like a honeycomb. The kitchen was a separate structure built a ways off from the main house.
I grew up, as did most of my peers, in a 3BR ranch house with a single bathroom, and in most cases a tiny kitchen that was massively impractical for a family, but that’s the way the houses were constructed.
In the upper Midwest, almost all houses had basements, ours included. Most weren’t finished, and for good reasons: most of the people I’ve known who did that experienced sewer backups and other problems which led to thousands of dollars of furniture, stereo equipment, etc. being ruined.
Heh. My ex used to live in an old (amazingly shitty) mill house with four of his friends after college. The door was never really locked, but when you came in you had to yell the password as loud as you could to put everybody’s mind at ease. The password was “NOT A BURGLAR!”
Your teacher seems a bit full of crap. There is no window overlooking the falls because the house is above them. Most houses don’t have windows that face the basement.
Never thought about frost. In Illinois my rental house had one, unfinished, but I suspect they have them for tornado shelters out there.
The new houses down the street from me, which could have used the rooms, do not have basements.
Not all but many basements where I grew up were finished - it was the cheapest way of adding living space.
basements are expensive and time consuming.
housing developments might be made without them to save costs and time. though in freezing winter climates they add to structural stability and are put in more homes. there are slab houses in those areas made during the fast cheap housing development booms.
I have a two bedroom ranch that was built in 1956 and looks like it. It still has the original bathroom vanity and casement windows that leak like a sieve (hopefully soon to be replaced). It also has a full basement that is not completely finished but has one room built in one corner that was used as an office. It also has the original boiler. There isn’t really a hallway to speak of, it’s only about three or four feet long and goes to the bathroom. The bathroom and bedrooms are somewhat private even though they are almost off the living room. A couple of neat things are the built in doorbell above the door (doesn’t work though) and the porch lights built into the soffets .
So are TV dinners.
Mama Plant’s house was built in 1956. There is a hallway, but I like it. The bedrooms and bath were at the side of the house, away from kitchen, dining and the living rooms. I enjoyed the privacy as a teenager.
Lower land values are just one of the factors, but it takes about twice the ground square footage to get the same space as a two story (ignoring the garage.)
The minimum area for a garage is about 400 sq ft. For 1200 sq ft living space, that takes 1600 sq ft for a ranch, or 1000 for a two story. Smaller than say 1000 sqft, 2-story doesn’t make much sense except for a little Cape Cod.
For a 2000 sqft home, it’s 2400 for a ranch or 1400 for a 2-story, which is a pretty big difference in footprint. Also, in crowded city residential areas, ranches don’t fit as well (all the lots are the same depth, but a ranch typically takes more length along the street) so it’s more economical to build up. The higher property prices are, the more it makes sense to build up. Ranches first became popular in new subdivisions in new suburbs (when even the term “suburb” was new) where property was inexpensive.
This is a pretty good overview: House Styles: The Look of the American Home
IIRC, you live in the East Bay. Basements are probably more popular in the West Bay. Cities and towns have gotten much more restrictive of the size of home you can build on a given size lots in the last 20 years. Where I live, typical lots are about 6,000 - 7,000 sq ft and you’re only allowed to build a house ~25% of that size. But if less than 4 ft of a room is above ground, that room doesn’t count towards the 25%.
Many of those single story ranchers are now 2-story craftsman style homes, some with basements. People here love craftsman style. It can be very functional, although there is definitely a trend to divorce the interior space from the exterior style, so we see lots of Victorians with open floor plans.
Cool!
I agree. This style of house is just a logical evolution of what came before, incorporating better availability of concrete for foundations and large subdivisions with lots of space. Ornamentation was out of style when they started being built, so they tended to be on the plain side. The money saved on not building a second storey could be put into exta living space and larger windows with newfangled metal joinery.
Despite the larger windows privacy is a definite positive feature in these houses - no noises coming through the ground floor ceiling, bedrooms are further from the living space, bedrooms on the ground floor can be planted or fenced off so that they can’t be seen from the street. In the one I grew up in, the long hallway meant that you could walk the entire house without disturbing anyone else, and yet the whole end could still be opened up into one big living area.
I thought that a two story house had less construction costs than a single story of the same square footage.
Fair call, I didn’t think enough on that bit.
It would depend on the cost of materials/labour. Single storey needs more concrete for the floor, and a greater area of earthworks. Two-storey would need more structure to hold up the second floor, possibly more solid founations for the same reason (Not my field, this one). For the same reason, possibly an extra structural interior wall or two, depending on the design and materials available. So it could vary widely based on the time it was built and the area. (And bear in mind that I’m 1/3 of the way across the globe from you guys 
)
And, what I was told, was that the house was built above the fall rather than downriver, facing it (as Kaufmann had expected), because Wright thought that, if the fall was always visible, it would become commonplace and less appreciated. With the house on top of the falls, you always hear it, but you have to go outside to see it.
I understood that that is why no windows faced it. Same concept on Wright’s part.
Damn, I’d want a very large picture window. 
Indeed, a sliding glass door and a deck.
Should have been named, “Can’t See Falling Water.”
I don’t really get this. Why would you need to pour a basement?
Most basements nowdays are poured cement walls which usually have a poured cement floor. Much better and less leaky than cement blocks or rock walls.