Quote:
Originally Posted by Duderino
Yeah, one of the hallmarks of Philly is certainly small, narrow lots. It's an important way to preserve property ownership for the middle class, as well.
Ironically, you'll actually find a lot of hate for the design of new construction rowhomes among Philadelphians, but it really runs the gamut. One of my newest favorites is an almost all-masonry set of rowhomes along Broad Street ( https://maps.app.goo.gl/URboSVDTgjWus8Z98), but they're a pretty high-end example.
DC is another city that tends to incorporate a lot of masonry into new construction, as well, which I've always appreciated about the city: https://maps.app.goo.gl/JptnqwqsibnaWvtGA |
Wow, that neotraditional block on South Broad Street is a real looker, and a vast improvement on the gas station that used to occupy that lot.
I do notice that both of these buildings use the vocabulary of traditional rather than modern architecture, in contrast to the frankly modernist new construction on North Hollywood Street in Brewerytown posted further upthread. It seems to me that most of the hate directed at new construction rowhouses in Philadelphia has modernist housing as its target. That North Hollywood house, which looks to me like a lot of projects
Harman Deutsch Ohler Architecture produced before Rustin Ohler became a name partner, is at once quite attractive and a "sore thumb" on its block, mainly because it's built to the current height limit for its zoning district, which is higher than the two-story rowhouses that dominate it. I see that a blander box is under construction down the block, however. (HDOA's current work, judging from what's on its website, spans a much broader range of architectural styles. Lots of developers in Philadelphia use this firm because it knows how to get projects through the city's Byzantine maze of approvals faster than anyone else.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by K'ledgeBldr
Most "national builders" use a mashup of several different "styles", highlighting certain aspects. More commonly referred to as "American Vernacular".
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Toll Brothers is headquartered in the Philadelphia suburb of Horsham. I think the company is now the largest builder of "mass customized" homes in the United States.
There are certainly a wide range of architectural styles represented in the models available in that Sammamish development: I spot contemporary, Craftsman, American Foursquare, Modernist and even post-modernist designs in that mix. Seems to me that the "unbalanced ceilings" referred to upthread are found on the contemporary designs; such roof angles are not uncommon on Midcentury Modern houses.
We can probably credit another Philadelphia architectural firm with the revival of interest in the "American vernacular": Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, now known as
VSBA Architects and Planners. Name partner Robert Venturi threw a Molotov cocktail into the High Modernist orthodoxy of the 1960s with the two famous books he wrote (one with wife Denise Scott Brown), "Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture" and "Learning from Las Vegas."
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