I've been thinking about the snout house of late. "Snout house" as in the one-floor ranch house with an ungainly two- or three-car garage overshadowing to its side a more modest porch and door entrance. Needless to say, this efficient, car-centric facade quickly gained detractors. They cared not a whit the design minimized wasting real estate on a long driveway going to a garage somewhere "in back.” The ultimate disparagement was that the design was ugly and off-putting to the neighbors. The NIMBYs were often victorious. I’ve seen municipal planning regulations that did not permit 51% or more of the front elevation of a residence to be a garage.
Yes, I've been thinking of snout houses of late because I see my current attached row house as having some design affinity. To explain, The row house I live in is a type of townhouse, which by definition has a garage. I rejected the idea of living in a condo with designated parking spaces or no off-street parking (where so much new city construction is headed).
The key problem with new building in urban areas like Portland is cost of land. So the profitable developer must sell what he builds for about three times the purchase price of his land and give potential buyers square footage, plus amenities like a garage, at a price that equals affordability.
This gives the developer an interesting problem of design. The controversy about any perceived ugliness of snout houses is a memory from decades ago. No, what the developer needs to make things work is an origami of house design for the standard two-by-four, plywood and Sheetrock (tm) house that maximizes house square footage per square footage of lot.
In round numbers, for example the square footage of my row house is 1,300+ and the square footage of the garage hard by the front door and porch is 240 square foot. A total of about 1,500 square feet. And the platted lot it all sits on is, guess what, not much more than 1,500 square feet. Or a one-to-one ratio achieved by having two stories.
I was out walking today, passing newer condos. Instead of two stories, each had three stories. There might or might not be an off-street parking slot.
So given the price of land, the snout house legacy for my row house is a short driveway that puts the garage door right next to the much smaller porch/front door. Thus, my row house is a handsome grandson of the maligned snout house with a nice 43% of its facade unmistakably garage and a compact driveway for a subcompact car.
Image credit: jackprestonwood.com
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