Front Porch Returns as Back Yard Shrinks

Few American institutions are as highly revered as the back-yard barbecue on a summer afternoon. Yet, there was a time when most Americans would have balked at the suggestion of relaxing, socializing and eating at a family gathering in the back yard.

Before its recreational potential was discovered in the 1920s, Americans used the back yard as a service entrance to the house. Rather than the smell of hamburgers on the grill, the back yard was associated with the odor of burning trash--or, on a sunny day, the sweet smell of clothes drying on the line.

The private recreational back yard is a thoroughly 20th-Century invention, a product of the vast suburban expansion of American cities in the 1920s.

Before homeowners began to orient their houses to the back yard, outdoor recreation took place on the front porch and front yard. The transition from front to back was important because it heralded a new era of the American city in which community interaction was relinquished in favor of the private life of the family and the home.

Only recently have architects and developers begun to acknowledge the excessive privacy of the back yard and the potential benefits of the front porch.

At the turn of the century, nearly every American house--from modest cottage to opulent mansion--had one element in common: a front porch.

A favorite recreational pastime was “porch sitting,” an activity that included drinking tea, reading the newspaper or simply conversing with family and friends as the daily parade of pedestrians, horses and carriages made their way through the neighborhood.

In the 1910s, the California bungalow became popular in Southern California, and was soon found in towns and suburbs across the country. The California bungalow was distinguished from other houses of the period by its oversized porch and wide roof overhang, yet it would be the last popular house type in America to feature a prominent front porch. By the 1920s, porch sitting came up against a formidable obstacle: the automobile.

“The contest for the use of the streets, waged between the conflicting purposes of traffic on the one hand, and play, promenade and outlook from the windows on the other, has clearly been won by traffic, and the losing side is now looking for accommodations elsewhere than along the streets,” wrote a town planner in 1929.

What better place for suburbanites to go than into their own back yards? There, amid newly planted lawns and shrubbery, they could enjoy the outdoors without the noise and danger of the automobile.

Home magazines from the 1920s are full of testimonials from readers who cleaned up their weed- and gravel-strewn back yards, hid their clotheslines behind carefully manicured hedges, and discovered the quiet pleasures of the back yard.

Unlike the front porch, which offered the “cheerful publicity of out-of-doors” according to a 1915 commentator, the back yard in its ideal form was a private and reclusive place.

A 1927 article in the Los Angeles Times emphasized that it was “almost a necessity” to enclose the recreational back yard with a wall to “give the effect of shutting out the surrounding stretches of barren country or adjoining houses.”

The privacy of the back yard was characteristic of a broad suburban trend. A home in the suburbs had always offered a considerable amount of privacy relative to the apartments and row houses of the inner city. As suburban development increased in scale, it became difficult for suburbanites to cultivate a viable community with neighbors who spread for miles in all directions.

In this new environment, suburban residents had few significant social contacts outside their immediate nuclear families. The porch became superfluous to the suburban lifestyle.

“Our back yard allows us to draw away from the confusion and bustle, read our favorite books and think our happier thoughts,” wrote a reader of House and Garden in 1924. “In this age of excitement and tension we crave a spot of our own, in which to steal away and lose ourselves.”

While popular magazines glorified the benefits of the private back yard, town planners sought a different solution to the problems caused by the automobile and rapid suburbanization. With a series of plans that culminated in the construction of Radburn, N.J., in 1929, planners sought to create a “community back yard” safe from the automobile.

In the community back yard, fences were abandoned in favor of a series of parks and pathways shared by all residents. At Radburn, these walkways allowed residents to walk to school or the store without ever encountering an automobile. Radburn houses were equipped with porches that faced the community back yard rather than the street.

But the “Radburn Idea” could not compete with the private back yard. Front porches were omitted from the design of new homes, while back-yard patios became a standard feature. In the 1950s, portable barbecues were mass-produced for the first time, and the institution of the private back yard was quickly ingrained in the American consciousness.

Only in the past decade have Americans begun to incorporate the front porch back into their new houses.

In a move known among planners and architects as “neo-traditionalism,” whole communities have been built using the prewar model of rear alleys and front porches. The most famous of these developments is in Seaside, Fla., designed by architects Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zybeck in 1983.

Other planners and designers have recently proposed developments more along the lines of Radburn, with houses oriented to a commons at the rear rather than an enclosed back yard.

UCLA Prof. Dolores Hayden has suggested that by allowing neighbors to share such tasks as day care and cooking, the shared back yard is an appropriate response to the changing character of the American family.

In Southern California, where the ideal of the private recreational back yard came into its own in the 1920s, the front porch has recently staged a minor comeback, appearing in housing subdivisions around the region.

Perhaps even more important, Southern California residents have begun to re-evaluate their concept of the importance of the single-family home with a spacious back yard. Increasingly, decisions about where to live are based on an area’s “sense of community,” rather than the size of its houses and yards.

The developers of major new projects, such as the Rancho Santa Margarita Co. in southern Orange County, reflect these changing values by emphasizing public spaces in what have become known as “new towns” or “urban villages.”

In most of these developments, back yards are narrow and cramped; parks and other community facilities are relatively abundant, streets are designed to prevent through traffic, and, in some instances, the front porch has re-established itself as a comfortable place for sitting outdoors and acquainting oneself with family, friends and neighbors.