How Tasteless Suburbs Become Beloved Urban Neighborhoods

[nei]

Originally Posted by Katarina Witt

The best way to describe houses without front lawns is "old". I noticed this when visiting my friend in NOVA, Round Hill to be exact. The old houses in the old part of town had zero to minimal front lawns. Now there in NOVA, I'm talking VERY old houses, built well before WW II or probably even WW I, or maybe even the Civil War. That's just the way they built them back then. As you proceed to newer parts of town, the front yards get bigger. It's actually the same way here in my town in CO, which has an "old town" that predates the 20th century as well.

You can sometimes find not so old neighborhoods with small front yards, though in general older lots tend to have less front yard space. Oddly, some houses in my neighborhood have about zero front lawn others are decently setback even though they're from the same time.

As for driveways and integral garages, as my psych teachers said, "help the patient accept reality". Cars are here to stay, at least until some better form of personal transportation comes along. They need to be off the roads when they're not being used. Rear lot garages require an alleyway access, which is a waste of space, and they take up a big piece of the yard. Better to have them attached with a bedroom above, or a family room behind, as is seen in many newer houses.

They do not need to be off the road. It is certainly more convenient for a car owner for them to be off a road. Some years, I usually had mine street parked.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by I_Like_Spam

Depending on how the plan comes together, the new development could build around it---like they built the Trimont on Mt. Wash basically wrapped around the beer distributor at Grandview & Plymouth, the only old building left on the block.

I've seen the site plans on the Pittsburgh Planning Commission's schedule. Attached is the preliminary site plan. I'd also post the rendering, but frankly, the hotel looks like everything else under construction now, so there's no point.

You can see they are building the site around the house they didn't buy out, but otherwise, the block is cleared - for parking.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by nei

You can sometimes find not so old neighborhoods with small front yards, though in general older lots tend to have less front yard space. Oddly, some houses in my neighborhood have about zero front lawn others are decently setback even though they're from the same time.

As noted upthread, the oldest houses in Pittsburgh (pre-1850) tend to actually be set back slightly from the street (5-10 feet typically). In contrast, the houses to either side, which generally are late 19th century, will have zero setback. The reason isn't so much age as when the houses were built, the neighborhoods which later became filled with dense rowhouses were still semi-rural.

Regardless, consistent rules on setback didn't really arise until the 20th century, IIRC. So if the setback wasn't zero it could essentially be anything.

[RogersParkTransplant]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I've seen the site plans on the Pittsburgh Planning Commission's schedule. Attached is the preliminary site plan. I'd also post the rendering, but frankly, the hotel looks like everything else under construction now, so there's no point.

You can see they are building the site around the house they didn't buy out, but otherwise, the block is cleared - for parking.

Interesting -- I think it's the area in the white box marked "future" where the old houses are still standing, in addition to the nice one they don't own. It may be that they haven't decided whether to rehab those buildings or start over with new construction -- I realize that's a very optimistic take, but my sense of October is that they actually do like to preserve and rehab old buildings when it makes sense to do so.

Thanks for the info, eschaton.

[PreservationPioneer]

Originally Posted by RogersParkTransplant

Interesting -- I think it's the area in the white box marked "future" where the old houses are still standing, in addition to the nice one they don't own. It may be that they haven't decided whether to rehab those buildings or start over with new construction -- I realize that's a very optimistic take, but my sense of October is that they actually do like to preserve and rehab old buildings when it makes sense to do so.

Thanks for the info, eschaton.

October promotes their development as preservation-minded, but they have now demolished some viable old homes. I believe all but one house was demolished on Phineas, and they demolished some pretty cool alley houses in Deutschtown. The alley houses were in the gentrifying part of the neighborhood and should have probably been saved, and the houses on Phineas were clearly very old.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by PreservationPioneer

October promotes their development as preservation-minded, but they have now demolished some viable old homes. I believe all but one house was demolished on Phineas, and they demolished some pretty cool alley houses in Deutschtown. The alley houses were in the gentrifying part of the neighborhood and should have probably been saved, and the houses on Phineas were clearly very old.

I'd say October Development is unusually good at having historically-minded infill, but not really preservationist. It's just that they got their start doing rehabs - probably because they lacked the capital initially to do true infill construction. Since they've gotten more capitalized they've turned away from this however. In their redevelopment of Suisimon's 700 block recently, they filled in a major gap in the street wall, but also demolished four old frame rowhouses which appeared to be quite salvageable.

[RogersParkTransplant]

OK, I was wrong. I just walked down Phineas, and the nice red house is still there, as is the one behind it -- if you look at the plan eschaton posted, those are the two that you can see marked on there, with the parking lot around them. I guess they are safe for now, but I hope someone fixes them up soon because they're not in good shape. The rest of Phineas is indeed gone -- I still think it wasn't all that long ago that the ones by Teutonia Maennerchor were still standing, but I can't really remember when the last time was that I actually went by to look. Anyway, it IS sad, but I'm still going to hold out hope that the rest of the neighborhood will fare better.

I'm attaching photos I took just now, in case anyone is interested in matching them up with the photos Preservation Pioneer took last winter so you can see what has been saved, and what is lost. There's also one picture of the other side of Phineas Street, directly across from all the construction, which is pretty well intact but not in great shape.

Here's the photos PP posted earlier, just for reference -- you can see that the two surviving houses were not boarded up as of last winter.

Discovering Historic Pittsburgh: RIP: Phineas Street (North Side)