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At one time a very popular style of working class homes in the Northeastern United States, they can be found in many New England cities as well as communities right outside New England such as upstate New York and northern New Jersey. I even saw a few in Saint John, New Brunswick of all places (yes, New England style architecture in Canada!). The triple decker was arguably a multi-family home designed to look like a single family unit. They were mostly built close to one another with cheap materials, lacked accessibility (I remember yanking myself up three fights of stairs on a narrow staircase when I lived on the third floor of one), and were complete fire hazards. For all of these reasons, triple deckers, at least traditional ones, mostly likely will never be built again. Yet during their heyday, they definitely served their purpose well in housing hundreds of service and industrial workers who would not have been able to afford anything else. Entire extended families often packed into one triple decker. Yet with the current housing crisis in our nation, one has but to feel nostalgic about how such a simple design did so much to improve the lives of many so long ago.
Yes, also known as the "stacked triplex", these can look very modest, or even kind of swanky, and the apartments can be 1-3 bedrooms each. Usually there is a common staircase at an outside corner of the house. Usually if it's a full three stories, you've got the 3 apartments with floorplans that echo one another, and if it's 2.5 stories, the top floor is smaller, with a different layout. In New England, many of these survive but have been remodeled to polish them up a bit and converted to 3-unit condos.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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In Seattle these are very common as 4-plexes, built in the 90s-2000s on small vacant lots that used to hold an early 1900s Victorian. There will be a garage and front door on the ground level, you go in and there are stairs to the living room & kitchen, and half-bath, then more stairs to the bedrooms.
I'm from Baltimore where we have miles of them all over as row houses. Both upscale brownstones like this:
They are not the same thing!
Almost all "triple deckers" and other colloquialisms were individual buildings. They usually didn't "share" a common wall- like townhouses, row houses, and the like; which were also usually single family residences.
In Seattle these are very common as 4-plexes, built in the 90s-2000s on small vacant lots that used to hold an early 1900s Victorian. There will be a garage and front door on the ground level, you go in and there are stairs to the living room & kitchen, and half-bath, then more stairs to the bedrooms.
That doesn't sound like a "triple-decker." Rather, it describes an SFR with four stories.
A triple-decker or triplex would have a separate apartment on each of its floors, just as a duplex consists of two separate dwellings in a single building.
I sure wouldn't call them cheaply built by today's standards! Most have architectural features, brick or stone exteriors, solid core doors, hardwood floors, etc.
They were also a great path to home ownership since if one bought a triple decker, one had rents form 2 other units.
Lots of triple deckers in my neck of the woods have gone condo which has contributed to lack of apts for rent.
There were 6000 built in Worcester between 1890 and 1900. 4000 still remain. Of course all are in walking distance of old factories. 50% of the city's rental stock of 38,000 units are in triple deckers.
We call them 3-flats in Chicago, and they’re making a comeback — bring back the “missing middle”!
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