Looking Around: Some Common House Terms
Hello Friends! Today, we’re going to look at some common house terms, specifically related to roofs, dormers, porches, (and a couple diversions, of course). These terms will give you a foundation for how to talk about everyday houses, and give you an idea of how to classify houses by their basic shapes.
Even a very simple house like the one above can provide us ample opportunity to practice our terminology. This house has elements borrowed from “higher” styles, such as the decorative brackets commonly found in the Craftsman style, but ultimately it’s as common as a common house can get. Still, it gives us an opportunity to relearn terms we might have forgotten, like the different parts of a window.
The easiest starting point for talking about houses is the roof, as roofs are a great way to group similar types of houses without relying on style.
Roofs
Sometimes roof terminology can get tricky. For example, the gambrel roof is a shape of roof, but there can be front-facing and side-facing gambrels (the example above is side-facing.) Center-gabled roofs are often confused for cross-gabled roofs.
Shed roofs, while very common on dormers, porches, and additions, didn’t really come into vogue as a distinct roof shape like the example above until the 1960s. Hipped with Cross-Gable roofs are found usually on large Queen Anne-styled houses, though there are some exceptions (they are, of course, the prototypical nub). Mansard style roofs look different on rowhouses than they do detached houses, and in later houses look almost gambrel-like, such as the example above.
Sometimes it’s difficult to tell what’s going on with a roof, like in the example below:
In this example, while the gable is centered, it’s technically a cross gable because it is attached to a projecting mass from the main body - the two masses “cross” in a T-shape, making it a cross-gable. Were the entire front facade one mass instead of two, with the gable flush rather than attached to a projecting mass, it would be a center-gabled house instead.
Eaves and other Decorations
Some of these are terms you can use to impress your friends (I know I definitely get some looks when I throw down the word ‘fascia’ at parties), but the key terms to remember here are rake and eave. The rake is the part of the roof that overhangs the gabled end, whereas the eave is the part of the roof that overhangs the side walls.
The cornice is commonly referred to as the “trim”. The frieze is kind of like a baseboard but for the roof, and, like the cornice, is omitted on some more plain houses.
When the eaves have a closed soffit (some eaves have open soffits, like on craftsman houses), they are called “boxed” or “closed” eaves. On newer houses, gutters often cover the fascia.
On some common houses, some roofs are more ornamental, for example, on even the plainest of Craftsman bungalows, there are a lot of interesting details:
Dormers
The names of dormers follow the shape of their respective roofs. A dormer with a gabled roof is a gabled dormer, for example. Some dormers earn their names for other reasons, however, hence this handy guide:
A few subtypes of common houses are recognizable by their dormers, such as the adorable twin gabled dormers of so-called “Cape Cod”:
However, it is important to note that the Cape Cod isn’t it’s own style, but rather a specific layout common to Minimal Traditional houses. Houses with gambrel or mansard roofs and split-level colonials (such as the example used for the “wall dormer” above) usually have embedded wall dormers above or through the cornice line.
Some houses are notable for their lack of dormers. The rooflines of ranch houses, for example, are too low-pitched for any significant second story space - ranch houses, rendering dormers pointless:
Porches
Ahh yes, time for @porchrates favorite part of the post. Porches are commonly described by their height and how much of the house they take up:
A portico is another name for a covered entry porch. The gabled part of a portico is called a pediment, because on many classically styled houses (e.g. Greek Revival or Neoclassical), they borrow the proportions and pared-down details of the pediments found in usually Greek (but sometimes Roman) temple architecture.
A wrap porch (a porch that extends around to at least one adjacent side of the house) is often called a veranda, though this usually refers to porches that wrap around at least three sides of the house, such as the porches commonly found on Southern Colonial plantation homes and large, rambling Queen Anne houses. A porch that covers the full facade is called a full-facade porch.
Full-facade porches are in some way integrated into the roofline (they may be interrupted by dormer(s), like in the example above). If there is a gap between the top of the porch and the eaves of the roof, the porch is sometimes referred to as a full-width porch rather than a full-facade porch.
One last thing about porches: houses with very shallow porches (less than 4 feet) have either had the porch put on as an addition, or, more likely, the porch is decorative - a clear sign of a house built in the last 30 years.
(Insert Joke™ about something something new houses something something shallow)
Anyways, folks, that does it for Round One of Common House Terms! Stay tuned for a special Labor Day week of McMansion Hell, with a New Hampshire McMansion tomorrow, a New Jersey (!!!) McMansion on Tuesday, and the next installment of Common House Terms: Materials and Windows on Saturday!!
OH AND ONE MORE THING
Are YOU in the Baltimore metro area?? Do you want to witness me give a live diss on McMansions and talk about my rad as hell politics in one of the 3 coffee shops I write this blog in? Well you’re in luck because Thursday, September 7th, I’ll be doing a McMansion Hell LIVE event at Red Emma’s Bookstore & Coffeehouse. More info here, if you’re up to it.
If you like this post, and want to see more like it, consider supporting me on Patreon! Also JUST A HEADS UP - I’ve started posting a GOOD HOUSE built since 1980 from the area where I picked this week’s McMansion as bonus content on Patreon!
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