Landscape Confidential: Porches through the years

BURLINGTON -- A porch is where we welcome friends, greet strangers, gab with our neighbors, sip a cool drink on a hot day, and store oddments of domestic life. It is a place of transition between our inner and outer lives.

"Technically, we can think of a porch as a covering over an entryway," explained Thomas Visser, a professor of history at the University of Vermont. But a porch is much more than that.

As Visser details in his book, "Porches of North America" (University Press of New England, 2012), a porch is a place where social and domestic activities meet and merge, a place that communicates our social standing and offers security, and a place where we seek health and comfort. The features and uses of porches have changed over the centuries in ways that reflect broad cultural shifts. Those changing cultural patterns can be seen in the kinds of porches present in nearly any town.

There are galleries and stoops, verandas and sleeping porches, porticos and porte-cocheres, gable loggias and enclosed porches. Though most modern porch architecture in North America has roots in Europe, porches were built by native cultures throughout North America as early as 2,000 years ago. These structures served as shade in the desert regions, protection from cold in the Arctic, walkways in Mayan Mexico, and storage in Ontario.

Following European colonization of the New World, various versions of porches were brought over from Europe and adapted to local needs and customs. The gallery, a long porch recessed under the eaves of a curved roof, is found on houses built in the 1700s in areas settled by the French, including Vermont and Quebec. These porches were places to do domestic work, store goods, and chat with neighbors.

Around the same time, the Dutch brought to North America the idea of the stoop (or stoep, meaning "step"), featuring benches on either side of the door, which became a place to sit and socialize with neighbors.

The Follett House in Burlington boasts an example of a portico, a porch designed to proclaim a building s importance. (Photo by Audrey Clark)

Porches became more and more popular in North America as places that allowed people to relax the strict social customs of the Victorian era. Porches on stores were places where residents of all classes could mingle and share news; porches on houses were where young ladies could glimpse and even chat with potential suitors without the formalities of indoor life.

During the late 1800s, many homes had porches that were not attached to an entryway. According to Visser, these verandas were specifically for enjoying the outdoors while being protected from the weather. In the same vein, hotels and hospitals installed long porches, called piazzas, where guests could walk. Thus, porches began to be seen as promoting health as well as social activities.

At the turn of the last century, the tuberculosis epidemic spawned a fad of building screened sleeping porches, where residents of sanitariums could inhale the healthful night air. Saranac Lake, N.Y., hosts a glut of sleeping porches because it was a popular destination for those suffering from tuberculosis.

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Landscape Confidential: Porches through the years