“A Paradise of Small Houses”: The Story of Incremental Development in America
The way some tell it, the United States has always been a nation of single-family homeowners, a land of parceled fiefdoms with each person having their own patch of grass. We’ve built it into our mythology and attached a moral weight to a certain way of living, where a healthy distance between households is ideal.
This has been codified across the country, baked into the codes that decide how a new subdivision or home in an existing neighborhood might look. American society heavily subsidizes this dream, offering low-interest loans vouched for by the federal government. A host of supporting rules and systems — such as building regulations, fire codes, accessibility requirements and lending conventions — prop up this status quo.
It’s been this way for so long that folks have started to forget that Americans have always lived in a variety of housing types, sometimes in buildings with multiple families in them, sometimes in neighborhoods with row houses or apartments nested together, sometimes on the second floor of main streets overlooking the shops below. There are many alive today who grew up in this kind of small housing, but, in the great postwar leap that canonized suburbanization and vilified building close to one’s neighbors, these ways of building and dwelling have been forgotten.
However, as our housing market has careened out of control, what writer Max Podemski calls “small houses” have taken on a new sheen. Homes that can host multiple families hold an inherent advantage over those that cannot: dividing up the cost of living between households makes things more affordable, giving people the chance to live in places that would otherwise be out of reach.
This kind of housing remains in many of our cities and town centers. I’ve had the good fortune of living in duplexes in two separate streetcar suburbs over the past few years, and I was able to attend graduate school and access jobs because the shared space made it more affordable.
For a country looking to house its people in ways that are dignified, affordable and edifying, the story of small houses in America is inspiring.
Podemski’s recent book, "A Paradise of Small Houses" (2024), is a history of this unsung way of living, chronicling the rise of now-beloved buildings and architectural styles across the country. It also offers a fresh perspective on the current crisis, a way of building more housing without becoming subservient to institutional developers and a means of rewriting our national narrative of how Americans ought to live.
Urban housing has long been the refuge of those with little means who are looking for opportunity. For many people, it helped their migrant ancestors establish a foothold in this country. It's an efficient way to both provide shelter and build wealth.
It was not — at least until the late 19th century — something that was standardized and built by one or two institutional developers all at once. Instead, building housing was a much more democratic process.
In the first chapter of the book, on the row houses of Philadelphia, Podemski describes how local craftsmen and laypersons contributed to the rise of this form of housing, learning to adapt old European pattern books to house newcomers to the fledgling city. It was this process of incremental development, of trial and error and adaptation, that led to the rowhouses unfolding.
Rowhouses in Philadelphia. (Source: Smallbones, Wikimedia.)
The rowhouse was particularly suited to Philadelphia’s narrow lots, and due to its size and efficiency, it was affordable to build, rent and own. As the style caught on, some critics decried the rapid change, while others applauded the high rate of homeownership across income levels, calling it the “city of homes.”
This democratic, emergent form of development is deeply contextual — the styles and housing types that caught on in each city depended on the place, culture and economic feasibility of the undertaking. It’s why the urban housing of New Orleans is so distinct from that of Philadelphia, despite both being built through the same, incremental process.
New Orleans, that great intersection of Caribbean, French, Spanish, Indigenous and English influences, bred the shotgun house: a long, stand-alone cottage that now typifies the city. The shotgun itself is the culmination of influences brought by Haitian refugees, enslaved people from West Africa who incorporated aspects of the structures from their cultural memory into what they would build in New Orleans. A shotgun stands in stark contrast to Philadelphia’s narrow row homes, with its low-slung, single-story style that often incorporates a porch. And yet, the same incremental, contextual process created it.
Shotgun house in New Orleans. (Source: Infrogmation of New Orleans, Wikimedia Commons.)
As the book progresses, Podemski moves up to Boston, where he chronicles the rise and fall of the triple-decker — a three-story, detached building that gave a foothold to many immigrants, who could rent out a floor or two to family members or another household to help pay the mortgage. Though now recognized as icons, triple-deckers were disliked in their time, with many surrounding towns implementing harsh zoning restrictions to contain their spread. The classist intentions of such zoning remain in full force today.
Triple-decker in Boston. (Source: Pi.1415926535, Wikimedia Commons).
Perhaps, if American society could look past its national aversion to neighbors, past the notion that owning a detached single-family home is the epitome of being an American, it could see the value that small housing has provided — and that the culture and character that create a sense of pride and belonging in a place are not exclusive to one kind of home in one kind of configuration.
It does not seem impossible to recapture the spirit of creativity and community building that would come to define the architecture of New Orleans, Philadelphia and Boston, or the countless other contextual forms of small housing that dot the American landscape.
There are obvious, surmountable obstacles (zoning, building, fire and accessibility codes come to mind, as well as financing and NIMBYs), but the driving catalyst that could unlock it all seems to be culture.
When people are excited and engaged about something, there is little that they cannot do.
The United State’s rich heritage of urban housing proves that the affordability crisis can be solved in a way that is not reliant on new subdivisions and five-over-ones. Communities have the opportunity to come together and create new housing types that are contextual and more naturally affordable like the rowhouses of Philadelphia, the shotguns of New Orleans and the triple-deckers of Boston. They can reflect local needs and character because they are built by local people. They can create culture and meaning for generations to come.
As "A Paradise of Small Houses" shows, we’ve done it before, and we can do it again.
Want to learn more about incremental housing and how to create thriving communities? Get your ticket to the Local-Motive 2024 session "Investing in Housing Development that Strengthens Neighborhoods Without Pushing People Out.”
Noah Harper is a writer, planner, urbanist and Strong Towns member focused on kickstarting incremental growth in communities. He writes regularly at powerandplace.substack.com.
