Revisiting the front porch
Upon reflection, I find I have taken my front porch for granted. I have sat on it for my lifetime, visiting with relatives, watching the kids play, observing what needs to be done in the yard and soaking up the sun for years.
My mother sat on the porch before me, watching folks walking, riding and later driving by. She once enjoyed an organ grinder with a monkey who performed for free for her and her sisters and brothers when her mother explained she did not have enough money to pay him. Much later she saw Army vehicles during World War II churning past. A lot of life passes by a front porch without our really noticing it.
The front porch is a uniquely American bit of architecture. It arose in the 1700s, first documented on slave dwellings. From the mid-1800s until WWII it was a ubiquitous feature of houses across the country. One architect developed a philosophy of the front porch as well as a physical design. He saw it as the transition between the idealized wilderness of the Hudson River school of artists and the home as a man’s castle perception of a dwelling. It was a buffer, a neutral ground.
After the second world war the front porch mostly disappeared, a victim of affordable cars, TVs and air conditioning. Folks spent time in the family room, and increasingly in the back yard, a private place no longer occupied by outhouses, chicken coops and pig sties, clothes lines, gardens and other reminders of the endless work required to look after a home.
Thankfully things have changed in recent years. The front porch is again making an appearance on houses in neighborhoods. Some neighborhoods have even required a front porch be part of the house design.
(Pat Brothers is a local gardener who works at Atlantic Avenue Orchid and Garden Center.)
