THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 22, 1995 TAG: 9510200074
SECTION: HOME PAGE: G1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOE COSCO, SPECIAL TO HOME & GARDEN
LENGTH: Long : 146 lines
MANY FOLKS IN Norfolk's Diggs Town are discovering that something there is about a porch. Something that makes you feel good, maybe even raises your self-esteem. Something that helps bring a community together. Something that's, well, just nice about a porch.
Ever since the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority spruced up the once-troubled public housing complex off Campostella Road, adding new streets, sidewalks and porches with nice white wood columns, tenants there, like Americans everywhere, are rediscovering the joys of porch life.
``I really do like it - am crazy about it,'' says Kenneth Harold, a 37-year-old landscaper who has lived in Diggs Town most of his life.
Harold looks around and is amazed by the changes that a change in environment has brought to a neighborhood once plagued by drugs and crime. The porches, he and others are convinced, have a lot to do with it. With a porch to enjoy, tenants are hanging plants and planting flowers, spending more time outdoors and getting to know each other better.
``It has made a difference in the tenants' attitudes,'' says Dorothy Brown, herself a porch lover. ``Most of the tenants love the porches. They sit out there in the evening and early morning. You get to know your neighbors better. Now we sit out there and talk more.''
Harold and his family have eaten breakfast, lunch and dinner on the front porch. His children and their friends play there. Occasionally, Harold takes his portable TV on the porch and watches a football or basketball game. Sometimes he'll just sit and watch the world go by.
``The neighbors walk by and they say, `Whatcha doing there?' I say, `Just sittin' here chillin.' ''
Brown says that on holidays, she and her neighbors decorate their porches according to the seasonal theme. But holiday or not, Brown, who has asthma, is grateful to have the refuge of her porch.
``I sit on the porch more, to get air,'' she says. ``It's just nice. It's nice to have.''
If in Diggs Town the porches are helping to rescue a neighborhood, elsewhere in Hampton Roads they are helping people recover a way of life that seemed to be fading into the past. In many new developments and subdivisions, porch life is undergoing a renaissance as builders and homeowners see the advantages of this traditional, semi-public outdoor space. Homes with porches are being built in the Christopher Farms development in Virginia Beach and in River Walk in Chesapeake, to name a few.
``It's one of the required amenities that people have been asking for,'' says Judy Crumley, an owner of the Crumley Group Inc., which has built a number of homes with porches in River Walk, where houses typically sell for $225,000 to $300,000.
An unusual Charleston-style porch was one of the attractions that sold Joel and Nomi Orr on the custom-built house they own in River Walk. The two-level porch wraps around the side and back of the house, with every room opening out to it through French doors.
``It's kind of unusual,'' Joel Orr says. ``People are always stopping and looking at it when they drive by.''
The Orrs - he a consultant in computer-aided design, she a writer - love to sit on the porch, talk and watch the neighbors walk by. ``I think when you are sitting on a porch, you're accessible to people walking by. In our community, people do a lot of walking, so when we're on the porch we can wave to them. It increases the level of contact with people in the community.''
Developers, architects and planners say that porches are part of a general reaction to suburban trends of the last 30 years, when the front porch was sacrificed in favor of the back deck, houses separated from the street by expansive front lawns and a prominent two-car garage. Now, there's a renewed appreciation for the community-enhancing virtues of front porches and homes closer to the street.
The trend began in the 1980s in planned developments such as the influential ``traditional village'' of Seaside in the Florida Panhandle and is continuing in such newer communities as Kentlands outside Gaithersburg, Md.
The movement is in part driven by land prices, according to published reports. With land prices moving up, developers are investing more in the houses. This often mean taking a portion of the large front yard, which was a showpiece with little practical use, and building a front porch, which can add $10,000 to $40,000 to the value.
The cost of a porch is, however, one downside, making them perhaps too expensive for lower-middle-class homeowners. Builders say homeowners may spend as much on a porch as they would an air-conditioned living room or den.
Still, images of sitting on a porch and gossiping with neighbors on a summer evening are hard to resist.
``Part of the sales pitch for many developments is the notion of the hometown as it used to be in the past,'' Richard Wagner, director of the master's program in historic preservation at Goucher College in Baltimore, told the Raleigh News & Observer. ``The porch becomes a symbolic element of neighborliness. That's a fairly easy image to market.''
Several other forces are fueling the trend.
One is the influence of Southern Living, a lifestyles magazine that five years ago began featuring custom-house plans with porches. As a result, house designers are encountering more and more couples who come in carrying several issues of the magazine. Many come with memories of sipping tea and rocking on their grandmother's spacious front porch.
Other factors are the popularity of casual entertaining and gardening. Judy Crumley sees this in River Walk, where porches are generally back porches that overlook protected wetlands or wooded areas. For these homeowners, the porch is an extended living and dining area for both family and guests.
``It's like a summertime family room,'' which can also be used for entertainment, Crumley says. Often, the back porch is linked to a deck or patio. Finally, city planners are helping to drive the trend. By changing zoning codes, the planners are encouraging developers to build on smaller lots, with homes closer to the street. The new codes also typically encourage sidewalks, common park areas and porches.
Planners say porches are one element in a movement called ``new urbanism,'' a return to pre-World War II design elements. ``The kinds of developments built in the last 20 years, with a deck and garage doors, don't encourage interaction with the neighborhood,'' says Jerry Turner, a Raleigh land planner. ``You don't want to lose privacy, but you want to interact with the neighborhood, too. We feel that a development that offers both is best.''
Neighborhood interaction is what Norfolk planners sought for Diggs Town and what they are shooting for in their plans to redevelop East Ocean View. There's a feeling that they accomplished what they planned in Diggs Town.
Built in 1952, Diggs Town was the first public housing project constructed under the U.S. Housing Act of 1949. It eventually went the route of many subsidized housing projects, falling victim to disrepair, despair and drugs. Rather than clear the slum, Norfolk refurbished the area, turning dirt paths between the buildings into streets with sidewalks, replacing unit numbers with street addresses and adding porches with wood columns.
Ray Gindroz, the Pittsburgh architect and urban designer who helped plan the award-inning transformation, says: ``Now it's a traditional village with streets and front porches, not an ambiguous no-man's land. Before, every night residents heard three or four gunshots. Now they hear one gunshot every three or four months. And gradually people are learning to take care of their yards, plant flowers.''
Gindroz says small details, such as real wood columns, have a way of instilling respect and dignity among the tenants.
Kenneth Harold, who is helping neighbors to improve their yards, agrees. He says his sister, who owns a $100,000 home, likes his porch better than her own.
``These people have it good with these porches,'' he says. And, he adds, they're realizing it more and more. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
HUY NGUYEN/The Virginian-Pilot
Kenneth Harold, stepdaughter Keyoceia Humphrey, 8, and daughter
Kendra Harold, 4, get to know their Diggs Town neighbors from their
new porch.
Charleston-style porches helped sell Joel Orr on his River Walk
home.
by CNB