Porches reclaim their place

In its Sunday real estate section, The New York Times reports that porches are gaining popularity, in part because they add character to a house, even when the house is otherwise mundane.

"It changed the entire personality of the house," Xenia Frisby said of the porch that she and her husband added to the front and side of a plain raised ranch in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. “Now people drive by and call out, ‘We love your porch!’ One guy even yelled, ‘Killer porch!’”

The star of The Times's coverage, however, was a porch with a 14-foot ceiling on the front of an 1851 Gothic clapboard dwelling, also in Hastings-on-Hudson.  

The paper quotes Paddy Steinschneider, operations officer of the New York Chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism:

“When we embraced this weird thing called suburbanization, homeowners started living in their backyards,” Mr. Steinschneider said. “Front porches fell out of favor, especially in the late 1900s. Now people are turning back to them.”

“New urbanism didn’t invent front porches,” he added, “but it recognizes the importance of the porch in making the idea of community work. You can sit on your porch and watch the comings and goings of your neighbors and share a friendly hello. A deck in the backyard can’t do that for you.”