What don't you like about Pittsburgh? (Aliquippa, Beaver Falls: buying a house, construction, pros and cons)

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Katiana

I think a lot of those houses were built by the steel companies. I know this is true for Aliquippa.

Indeed, but when you shift to places upriver like Aliquippa, as opposed to the South Side, you are actually moving to a new phase in the development of the steel industry in the region. And as that link makes clear, J&L moved from the South Side to Aliquippa precisely in order to build a huge new operation, and a company town. The company towns of that era were indeed precursors of modern suburban developments, as the little picture included on that page suggests.

I thank Tallysmom for saying what I was trying so hard to say; these rowhouses, when built, looked alike, at least all the houses in each set looked alike. And how that is "different" from a subdivision built 30 years ago that has since matured is way beyond me. I don't understand what the difference is.

Maybe it is just me, but I think the difference is clear from the pictures. The "sets" of similar rowhouses are sometimes as few as 2 or 3 (or maybe just 1), and the same block on a single street may contain several of these sets of rowhouses. Compare that to a "modern" subdivision, where the same developer may have built the same homes, or an "apple-lemon-orange" combination, across many, many blocks.

I do not live in a subdivision where all the houses look alike. I actually live in an area where the homes were built by different builders and therefore there is a lot of variety. That is my preference, frankly.

It is certainly possible for modern developments to contain a lot of variety, particularly if they were not completely built up in a short period. Indeed, you can obviously have neighborhoods full of architect-designed homes, and those will all be one-offs.

The comment about my hairdresser was meant to be an analogy. A house has bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom and some sort of a living room at a minimum. A standard two story floor plan is living room and kitchen, with dining room if any one the first floor, bedrooms and bath on the second. A standard ranch house has the kitchen, living room arrangement on one end of the house and the bedrooms on the other. Kitchens are usually in the back of the house. What else can you do? Do you want the kitchen upstairs?

Again, you are talking about just the basic layout. An entire house plan includes everything that defines the house: materials and construction methods, detailed floor plans (including closets, bays, nooks, and so on), built-ins, fixtures (plumbing, lighting, and so on), interior and exterior elevations, cross-sections (showing things like ceiling heights and shapes), windows, doors, moldings, architectural elements (columns, coves, and so on), patios, porches, and on and on.

Edit:

There always have always been lots of posts on this forum about how old houses are somehow 'better', either for people or the environment or something. Just look through some on this thread. The thinly veiled sarcasm about lving in 'suburban sprawl', the comment that people shouldn't have more house than they need, etc. Just who decideds how much house anyone needs? I'm sure there is some government agency that has decreed just how many square feet everyone should have and so on, but someone living alone has a lot more house available to them than a family living in most "McMansions".

I think it is important to distinguish expressions of preference from normative statements. I happy to tell anyone why I like historic homes, but I would never say that people SHOULD like historic homes.

I also think it is important to distinguish (as we did above) higher-density and walkable neighborhoods from historic homes. The former are demonstrably more energy efficient and environmentally friendly, and I think there is good reason to believe the market for such homes is undersupplied, but you can do new-builds that conform with those notions (that is what "new urbanism" is all about). Historic homes in contrast can often be found in such neighborhoods, but not always--and there is nothing particularly energy efficient about, say, living in a historic farmhouse out in a low density area.

[Katiana]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Indeed, but when you shift to places upriver like Aliquippa, as opposed to the South Side, you are actually moving to a new phase in the development of the steel industry in the region. And as that link makes clear, J&L moved from the South Side to Aliquippa precisely in order to build a huge new operation, and a company town. The company towns of that era were indeed precursors of modern suburban developments, as the little picture included on that page suggests.

OK, well, look at this then:

Europeans established small enclaves near the Jones and Laughlin mill in Hazelwood (15th Ward), in company homes in "Painter’s Row" on the Southside, and in the industrial communities of Homestead and Braddock(9)."

From: The first part of this project will be to set up a display containing materials we already have on local authors, history and people of prominence

Company housing was everywhere! In fact, I once read that Aliquippa was very 'progressive' in allowing workers to buy rather than rent their houses. No one came over here from Europe, uneducated (for that is who was recruited) and worked 12+ hrs a day in a mill, then built a string of rowhouses in their spare time! You can google this, just like I did.

[scrapp]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Indeed. Interestingly, though, no one here seems to be trying to argue that new homes are bad. Rather, people who don't like older homes seem to be trying to catalog all the downsides with older homes (which exist, but we older home owners know that already).

So I've owned both brand new and older homes. I currently live in a home that is over 100 years old. I don't dislike my current home, but I vastly underestimated the time and expense required to properly maintain/improve it, and that has cut into my free time and my discretionary budget more than I ever expected it to.

The reason I posted wasn't to catalog anything, but more to provide a counterbalancing point of view responding to other posts that seem overenthusiastic to me.

[Tallysmom]

Originally Posted by scrapp

So I've owned both brand new and older homes. I currently live in a home that is over 100 years old. I don't dislike my current home, but I vastly underestimated the time and expense required to properly maintain/improve it, and that has cut into my free time and my discretionary budget more than I ever expected it to.

The reason I posted wasn't to catalog anything, but more to provide a counterbalancing point of view responding to other posts that seem overenthusiastic to me.

That's also very true -- an older house has a way of becoming a money pit. We've been very fortunate -- ours, while a stock house, was well built from the cheap wood of the time -- which was redwood. (I'm in California) A great wood to build with.

But when we bought our house, we discovered that what was standard so many years ago is not standard today... so when we needed to fully repair our toilet, we ended up with a new toilet. (Not a bad thing -- this one is much better on water). When our hot water heater finally gave up the ghost (what a SHAME!) we found out that is was a WWII model....

But the other thing about my favorite (NOT) word -- walkability. I live in an urban area. Oakland CA -- urban area. My specific urban area was built up around WWII and after (although the little development of homes I live in were built in 1920's) and it was built so the workers could walk to the GM plant to make vehicles for the war effort.

While you can walk to the old GM plant -- until recently -- there was no reason to. There was nothing there.

The whole walkability thing is still a dream in many ways. And, as a result, the walkability thing isn't feasible. I just don't think it's reasonable to have housing that's walkable when you have nothing to walk to, and for 60 years or more we have been in our cars driving to shopping centers -- so now a few generations of people are trained to shop weekly and buy lots.

It's going to take time to break that -- and good shops to replace the massive grocery chains.

Now -- there is a good start to making urban shopping areas and restaurants... and a great deal of interest in the moving back into our cities... but the reality is people still love the suburbs. I will someday move back to that -- that wonderful mix of suburban rural-ness -- where I won't have to listen to boom boom rap and Mariachi music.

There are days I really feel I have done my time in urban hell.

[Katiana]

Originally Posted by scrapp

So I've owned both brand new and older homes. I currently live in a home that is over 100 years old. I don't dislike my current home, but I vastly underestimated the time and expense required to properly maintain/improve it, and that has cut into my free time and my discretionary budget more than I ever expected it to.

The reason I posted wasn't to catalog anything, but more to provide a counterbalancing point of view responding to other posts that seem overenthusiastic to me.

Overenthusiastic is a good word. I think my dad, who could have hosted "This Old House" would agree. There are always these little surprises, as Tallysmom indicated.

I would agree as well. Our house was built in 1980. When we remodeled the basement in about 2000, and the kitchen in 2001, the areas being remodeled had to be brought up to code. A basement window had to be dug out by hand, b/c we only have 8' side yards, and it had to be made bigger to provide egress. That cost a lot! Even in 20 yrs, the codes changed. It goes on. And really, if you're talking energy efficiency, you're probably better off in a new "cookie cutter" home than in any old house with no insulation and single pane windows.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Katiana

OK, well, look at this then:



From: The first part of this project will be to set up a display containing materials we already have on local authors, history and people of prominence

Company housing was everywhere!

Indeed, but Painter's Row was a different sort of company housing than what was built in Aliquippa: Carnegie Steel (part of U.S. Steel) bought existing rowhouses for use by its employees when it established a plant in Painter's Mill. See here:

South Side: Painter's Row

In fact, I once read that Aliquippa was very 'progressive' in allowing workers to buy rather than rent their houses. No one came over here from Europe, uneducated (for that is who was recruited) and worked 12+ hrs a day in a mill, then built a string of rowhouses in their spare time! You can google this, just like I did.

That is correct, of course. Just as now, there were local builders, sometimes the people who owned the land, who would put up this housing for use by other people. And indeed it might well be rented rather than sold (and long-term leases were also more popular back then than complete ownership).

Accordingly, the immigrant craftsman I am mentioning are not people who were working in the mills and then building their own homes. They were immigrants who came and worked for the local builders, building homes for other people to live in. As we have agreed, the rowhouses they built were mostly for working class people, but they also built homes for middle-class merchants and professionals, and indeed mansions for the upper class, or "robber barons", of the time.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by scrapp

So I've owned both brand new and older homes. I currently live in a home that is over 100 years old. I don't dislike my current home, but I vastly underestimated the time and expense required to properly maintain/improve it, and that has cut into my free time and my discretionary budget more than I ever expected it to.

The reason I posted wasn't to catalog anything, but more to provide a counterbalancing point of view responding to other posts that seem overenthusiastic to me.

Certainly no one likes such surprises. But having been through the process myself, I am not sure it is fair to say my expressions are "overenthusiastic", as they simply reflect the level of enthusiasm I (and some other people) genuinely feel, despite all the tradeoffs involved.

That said, I'm not trying to imply we should sweep the tradeoffs under the rug (so to speak). I just think it is a bit odd to judge another person's enthusiasm level.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Katiana

And really, if you're talking energy efficiency, you're probably better off in a new "cookie cutter" home than in any old house with no insulation and single pane windows.

Again, though, adding roof insulation and either storm windows or new windows to something like a brick rowhouse often makes for an extremely energy-efficient house.

In fact, that is true of a lot of older brick homes. Another popular style in Pittsburgh are the Foursquares and Bungalows of the Craftsman era, but often in Pittsburgh they were built with brick. Again it takes a little work, but with the right roof insulation, addressing the windows (storms or new), and a perhaps some repointing, the end result tends to be quite energy-efficient.

[BrianTH]

Originally Posted by Tallysmom

Now -- there is a good start to making urban shopping areas and restaurants... and a great deal of interest in the moving back into our cities... but the reality is people still love the suburbs.

Surveys have suggested that around 1/3 of people have a strong preference for more urban/dense/walkable areas, 1/3 have a strong preference for more suburban/spread-out/rural areas, and the remaining 1/3 are not sure.

The thing is that for various reasons, the amount of new housing stock done in the more urban/dense/walkable fashion has been well-less than 1/3 for many decades. A lot of the problem is zoning, but also public subsidies tend to reward certain sorts of development (e.g., public investment in highways rather than public transit, or using property taxes rather than income taxes to fund schools).

Anyway, it seems to me the key is figuring out which sort of person you are, and then living that way. For example, I am quite sure I am in the urban/dense/walkable category. it sounds to me you might have started out in the middle 1/3, but now are leaning toward the suburban/spread-out/rural category.

Which is fine as far as I am concerned--it really is a matter of taste.

[Katiana]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Indeed, but Painter's Row was a different sort of company housing than what was built in Aliquippa: Carnegie Steel (part of U.S. Steel) bought existing rowhouses for use by its employees when it established a plant in Painter's Mill. See here:

South Side: Painter's Row

Perhaps, but the fact is, there was a lot of company housing in Pittsburgh at one time. Most of the steelworkers rented. And to refer to downtown Aliquippa as "suburban" is not correct, to put it mildly.

That is correct, of course. Just as now, there were local builders, sometimes the people who owned the land, who would put up this housing for use by other people. And indeed it might well be rented rather than sold (and long-term leases were also more popular back then than complete ownership).

Accordingly, the immigrant craftsman I am mentioning are not people who were working in the mills and then building their own homes. They were immigrants who came and worked for the local builders, building homes for other people to live in. As we have agreed, the rowhouses they built were mostly for working class people, but they also built homes for middle-class merchants and professionals, and indeed mansions for the upper class, or "robber barons", of the time.

The "robber barons" were not living in row houses; they were living in the larger, single family homes in Squirrel Hill, Shadyside, Sewickley, etc. This has been documented in some of the links I have posted.

And let me tell you how much energy efficient windows cost. They could easily cost more than the value of some of those houses. We put in new windows just last year. Plus, these houses need more than roof insulation. Yes, they have common walls, but they have a front and a back as well. My childhood home was one of these brick houses with no insulation. My dad tried a lot of things, but nothing worked very well (at least not as well as he thought it would, and perhaps not as well as the salesman told him it would).