From a Porch in the Palisades
Renovating the Space Was the First Step
in Writing a Book
By Deborah K. Dietsch
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, October 10, 2002; Page H01

Enclosed by grimy jalousie windows and cheap paneling, the porch served as a warehouse while Dolan and his wife, Eileen O'Toole, a school psychologist, spent eight years renovating other parts of their 1920s bungalow. "Whatever old sofa was being demoted from use was put out here," he says.

Dolan decided to remodel the porch only after son Marty, now 12, convinced him to buy a glider at an estate sale. "The glider looked so great after we had it repainted," he recalls, "that we had to fix up the porch."

Out went the jalousies, paneling and sagging floorboards. In came four wooden pillars, joists, railings and ceiling. Two years and $10,000 later, the new porch looked as if it had always belonged to the house.

That successful renovation, completed in 1995, eventually led Dolan, 52, to write The American Porch: An Informal History of an Informal Place, due out from the Lyons Press in November. Though it offers few photos, the book colorfully chronicles the rise and fall -- and rise again -- of one of the home's most enduring features. It traces the porch from ancient Greek and Roman structures to its disappearance in modern postwar houses and recent revival in New Urbanist communities, such as Kentlands in Gaithersburg. "I wanted to know why, when I sit on a porch, I feel so good," says Dolan. “Why neighborhoods full of porches seem so American. Why, after being discarded for so long, the porch came back into fashion."

Inspiration for the book was all around him. "Washington is a city of porches. We have every possible style, from the Capitol's loggias to Victorian verandas," says Dolan, a freelance writer and producer of television shows on snakes, crocodiles and other wild creatures for National Geographic Explorer and the Discovery Channel.

The best passages in his book relate personal experiences on porches, including his own, and quick-witted observations on topics as wide-ranging as Venetian palazzos and "The Simpsons." Along the way, the author unearths some surprising connections among American designs and their antecedents.

The first porch, Dolan speculates, might have been a stone slab projecting over the opening to a cave. Those primitive overhangs led to more deliberate constructions, such as the row of columns holding up the roof of an ancient Greek temple or marketplace, called a stoa. In one of several etymological asides, Dolan explains that the word "stoic" comes from the contemplative space of the stoa.

From Roman porticos came the loggias of Renaissance Italy. These stout stone porches were first developed for the grand homes of landowners outside Venice. One of the most engaging sections of Dolan's book describes his visits to several villas near Venice designed by Italian architect Andrea Palladio in the 1500s. The counts and contessas who now own these Renaissance mansions still use their loggias as places to read, eat and watch a thunderstorm. "We don't use any part of the house as much," recalls one modern-day contessa. "This is my refuge, my nest. . . . Everything starts from here."

That loving attachment to porches as sheltering spaces between indoors and outdoors, Dolan argues, is part of their universal appeal. In addition to obvious Western examples, Dolan includes barandas from India and roofed platforms from Africa. "The biggest surprise of the book," he says, "was finding that the porch came to America from Africa through Brazil and the Caribbean. It quickly acquired a European look that disguised its African roots."

When African slaves were brought to the New World, the author explains, they built houses with the gabled porch designs of their native dwellings. This tradition took root in the Caribbean, spread to the American South and traveled northward. Even George Washington, in creating Mount Vernon, may have been inspired by the deep, broad porches of Barbados, which he visited in 1751.

By the mid-1800s, porches were well on their way to becoming familiar fixtures of the American home. Pattern books and builder guides spread their acceptance by supplying carpenters with the latest revival-style designs to copy. Mass-produced lithographs by Currier & Ives also popularized images of houses with porches.

Many late-19th-century houses, whether cottages or mansions, were built with both front and back porches. The porch had become so ubiquitous that politicians soon began using it as a homespun backdrop from which to spin their message.

In 1880, GOP presidential candidate James Garfield ran his campaign from the front porch of his Queen Anne-style home in Ohio and won the election. Fellow Republicans William McKinley and Warren G. Harding followed suit, leaving their Ohio porches for the porticos of the White House. Dolan uses these political examples to underscore continuing public affection for the porch, which assumed a new informality at the turn-of-the-century in Craftsman-style bungalows.

By the time Harding was elected in 1920, the porch was on its way out. The wooden appendage was frowned upon by leading architects as frumpy and outdated. (Outgoing President Woodrow Wilson underscored the point when he called Harding "bungalow-minded.") Eventually, the porch was moved to the side of the house or reduced to an open-air deck. After World War II, the suburban building boom killed the porch altogether, as space-efficient Cape Cods and ranchers were churned out like cars on a production line.

In recent decades, the porch has made a comeback. Dolan attributes the resurrection to the preservation movement, which catapulted historic styles back into vogue during the 1970s and '80s. This revival intensified in the 1990s, when the porch became an essential component of pedestrian-oriented neo-traditional communities such as Seaside in the Florida Panhandle and Disney's Celebration in Orlando.

The most successful porches, Dolan says, maintain a connection to the street. "It can't be set back too far or too high off the ground," he says. And it should be deep enough for a few pieces of furniture. "You've got to spend time hanging out on a porch with company to really enjoy it."

In remodeling his own porch three feet off the ground, the writer extended the floor to nine feet deep to accommodate the refurbished glider, wicker chairs and table. Stretching along one side is a life-size wooden coffin – a Halloween decoration made by his brother-in-law a few years ago, that is used to store sports equipment.

But even the most well-designed porch is unlikely to return to its once exalted place in the home, laments Dolan. "Now that we have too little leisure time and competing entertainments like television, we probably won't ever spend as much time on porches as we once did."

But the front porch continues to be valued as a symbol of home and neighborliness. "The possibility of human encounter implicit in a porch makes it attractive," says Dolan. "Homes with porches still sell."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company