Welcome Home: A History of the American Front Porch
Appreciation for the front porch, the home's connection to the community, is back. Whether your home has a small stoop or a Victorian wraparound, here's how to make it warm and welcoming.
March/April 2001
By Judy Ostrow
“A country house without a porch is like a man without an eyebrow.”
—Donald Grant Mitchell, Rural Studies, with Hints for Country Places, 1867.
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I grew up in a post-World War II subdivision, a refuge for returning veterans and their young families. While the houses were modest, nearly everyone had a small front porch, which we children considered the perfect setting for all kinds of games. The porch was a safe haven, within earshot of the kitchen, and we were free to conduct our childhood business inside its wooden railings, while our family carpets and upholstery remained unblemished.
After supper, the adults appropriated our space, sitting on the glider or the rush-seated wooden rockers that were the porch's "formal’’ furnishings. We could join them until bedtime, greeting neighbors with a wave and a hello as they strolled by.
The porch was a friendly yet secure connection between the family and the public space at the sidewalk, simultaneously extending the living area of our small house and expanding our lives outward to the social realm.
Front porches—from the city stoop to the genteel Southern veranda—were a fixture in American life until the urban exodus of the 1950s and 1960s changed the orientation of new homes to the backyard and the patio. While this change provided families with some sense of security and privacy, it also represented a turn away from the vitality of the close-knit neighborhood. A generation of children grew up without the sense of community that the front porch provided. So it is perhaps their collective sense of longing for this connection that has again changed the face of the American home.
For more about how to use your porch—whether large, medium, or small—to best advantage, check out the March/April 2001 issue of Natural Home.