I have never really been fond of split level houses - for the main reason you can get 4 stories in the same foot print by using full levels and stairs, you have to climb the damned stairs anyway so you might as well go all the damned way. Nothing except common use says you have to center your stairs in the middle of the house, you could do what is common in many commercial buildings and have the stairwell outside the footprint [in a small addition on an end or a side.]
Though I have to admit I like Azay le Rideau, a central hall and stairwell with the ‘apartments’ on each side. [apartments in the older sense of clusters of rooms such as a sitting room with one or two bedrooms and wardrobes [rooms used to store items, occasionally with a garderobe shaft on an exterior wall] assigned to a person or family group within the overall residents. ]]
In my creaky old age [of 53] I have determined that I am tired of small houses and want something with some elbow room like a victorian or oddly enough a ranch. I don’t mind small rooms, mind you - what I want is a bedroom, an office, a library/study/reading room, a room to spread out my various handicrafts, a large combination dining room/kitchen and a living room that gets to stay tidy because I am not trying to have my computer, read, sew or bead, have mrAru carve bone and have some visitor drop in unannounced. And a couple spare bedrooms for guests would be fantastic. I don’t have a lot of clothing so I don’t need a walk in closet, I don’t wear makeup nor do mrAru and I try to get ready for anything at the same time so we don’t need a huge bathroom with 2 sinks. I do need wheelchair accessibility and either an elevator or a stair lift and a few other minor modifications and I would actually like a minimum of a bath and a half.
Perhaps because they were designed to appeal to post-WWII veterans and/or those on the GI Bill? And because they were affordable to those of modest means?
That’s what I live in now, and I’m starting to wish we bought a one-floor, single level house. I’m getting old, too, with some real problems with arthritis etc., and nowdays I have to ask my husband to carry the laundry up and down stairs to the laundry room, and help me out in other ways that wouldn’t be necessary in a one-story house.
There are several of these units in my neighborhood that look exactly like your photos. If you take care of them, they look fine but most people don’t and you see the result.
I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t evaluate them on a purely aesthetic basis. We lived in a 1920’s craftsman bungalow in a declining neighborhood, then the 1850’s French 2nd Empire mentioned earlier. In an ironic twist on Le Corbusier’s “machines for living,” my memories cause me to see the ranches and split-levels as incubators that created nasty little suburban families who disliked anyone who lived in anything different.
If you’ve got stairs, that isn’t a Ranch.
Well, I suppose a Ranch might have a basement that would be accessed by stairs, but I think you are referring to a “raised ranch”: where there is a landing inside the front door, and half a flight up or down to access either floor of the house.
I have no idea why they were so common, but in the town I came from there were houses that predated electricity, a handful of Cape Cods built right after WWII, and a TON of ranches and raised-ranches in little clusters. It seems like every one of my friends from school lived in one except for those in my neighborhood.
Every ranch house I have ever been in had exactly the same floorplan: Front door admits to the living room which shares one end of the house with the dining room (which had a super-wide doorway from the living room. There is a sliding glass door out the back from the dining room. A hall runs from the living room to the far end of the house, separating rooms into front side of the house and rear side of the house. Front side held the living room and two small bedrooms, back side had the dining room, the kitchen (with doorways into the dining room and the hall), bathroom, and the master bedroom. The only variable was the stairs to the basement, which might be front side between the living room and the bedrooms, or back side between bathroom and kitchen, or between bathroom and master bedroom.
Every raised ranch I have ever been in had the same floorplan: top floor essentially the same as ranch, but smaller living room to make space for the stairs and landing by the front door. Downstairs was one or two large finished rooms at one end and a garage at the other, although the facing of the garage varied (out the front or out the side). These houses were built on hills so the bottom floor rooms could have windows (if a little high on the wall) (and ground level access to the garage), while the sliding door off the dining room was at ground level there.
I thought your 800K line was just a joke until I looked at the price of the crappy little extreme fixer-upper linked. $1.2 million for that! :eek: I though houses were too expensive where I live before I saw that.
Here is the link again. I hope somebody really, really likes those types of houses and has money to burn.
Close, but not exactly. In our little subdivision, the floor plans are often L-shaped, with the basement stairs along the rear of the house from the kitchen. The short part of the L is a family room that opens to the back yard.
But but-my woo is wooier! And I still don’t like colonials. Although I’m now glad that my stairs are wood. If wood is good, though, is a log cabin very good luck?
(Also-I apparently am watching far too much House Hunters to have picked up all these Feng Sui tips-ie; no 4s in the numbers, no house at the end of a T-crossing, no water to be seen from the front door etc.)
The sad thing is that I have no idea if that is supposed to be a joke or if you are dead serious. That ad has twisted and distorted my perception of reality beyond repair.
I’m picturing how that “works” in a city with a grid address system. :dubious: For example, in Chicago every address on a north-south street between Irving Park Rd. (4000 N.) and Argyle St.* (5000 N.), or between 40th and 50th Streets,** and every address on an east-west street between Pulaski Ave. (4000 W.) and Lavergne Ave. (5000 W.) has a 4 in the address. :eek::rolleyes:
*Ironically, the “New Chinatown” neighborhood is around the Argyle St. L station. Of course, it tends to be more Vietnamese and Thai than Chinese. But then 24th Street runs right through the heart of the original Chinatown neighborhood.
** Including the north end of upscale-ish and aging-hippy Hyde Park, where some people might actually subscribe to this sort of nonsense.
In that case, I pity the fool that decides to buy it. It is objectively terrible house on a tiny lot and I don’t care where or who you are. That is a $40,000 house max in the vast majority of the country and yet that is just a rounding era in Palo Alto for some reason. We are talking urban trailer park material. If it comes with a lifetime supply of hookers and blow, we can talk. Otherwise, it is just a ugly property with a good sales pitch for a rich fool.
That house is a good example of the direct architectural descendants of Frank Lloyd Wright gone extremely wrong. Even the originals were terrible and barely habitable but it gets much worse once his academic grandchildren put their own personal spin on the horrible style.
The U.S. has many beautiful styles of houses ranging from the humble log cabin to grand Victorians, colonials, Edwardians and even some workable modern designs. California in particular has both the Mission style as well as modern designs that are attractive, fully functional, long-lasting and structurally sound. I have no idea why people adore a half-baked 1950’s architectural style given its extreme limitations.
If you want truly modern, you have to be modern. You won’t see those same people using early 1970’s computers just because they think they are beautiful. That style of architecture is the same way. It was innovative at one time but it needs to destroyed now because it is horrible compared to any design today. The same isn’t for most classic architectural designs ranging from Greek Revival to Craftsman houses. If you live by the sword you have to die by the sword.
My dream in life is to buy every existing Frank Lloyd Wright house plus as many derivatives as I can afford and then have them demolished on the same day on national TV.
But then 24th Street runs right through the heart of the original Chinatown neighborhood.