Terraced Houses

In architecture and city planning, a terrace(d) or row house or townhouse (though the latter term can also refer to patio houses) is a style of medium-density housing that originated in Europe in the late 17th century, where a row of identical or mirror-i

In architecture and city planning, a terrace(d) or row house or townhouse (though the latter term can also refer to patio houses) is a style of medium-density housing that originated in Europe in the late 17th century, where a row of identical or mirror-image houses share side walls. The first and last of these houses is called an end terrace, and is often larger than those houses in the middle.

The terrace house has housed different parts of the social spectrum in western society. Originally associated with the working class, in modern times, historical and reproduction terraces have been widely associated with the process of gentrification.

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Some History

The terrace as a building style originated in Europe. In many cities terraced housing was favoured over the apartment building.

The practice of homes built uniformly to the property line began in the 16th Century and became known as "row" houses. "Yarmouth Rows" in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk is an example where applied to a narrow street where the building fronts uniformly ran right to the property line.

Row housing became the popular style in Paris, France. The Place des Vosges (1605 1612) was one of the earliest examples of the style. In Parisian squares, central blocks were given discreet prominence, to relieve the façade.

Nomenclature

The term terrace was borrowed from garden terraces by English architects of the late Georgian period to describe streets of houses whose uniform fronts and uniform height created an ensemble that was more stylish than a "row".

In the United Kingdom

In England, the first streets of houses with uniform fronts were built by the Huguenot entrepreneur Nicholas Barbon in the rebuilding after the Great Fire of London. The Georgian idea of treating a row of houses as if it were a palace front, giving the central houses columned fronts under a shared pediment, appeared first in London's Grosvenor Square (1727 onwards; rebuilt) and in Bath's Queen Square (1729 onwards) (Summerson 1947).

Early terraces were also built by the two John Woods in Bath and under the direction of John Nash in Regent's Park, London, and the name was picked up by speculative builders like Thomas Cubitt and soon became commonplace. It is far from being the case that terraced houses were only built for people of limited means, and this is especially true in London, where some of the wealthiest people in the country owned terraced houses in locations such as Belgrave Square and Carlton House Terrace.

By the early Victorian period, a terrace had come to designate any style of housing where individual houses repeating one design are joined together into rows. The style was used for workers' housing in industrial districts during the great industrial boom following the industrial revolution, particularly in the houses built for workers of the expanding textile industry. The terrace style spread widely in the UK, and was the usual form of high density residential housing up to World War II, though the 19th century need for expressive individuality inspired variation of facade details and floor-plans reversed with those of each neighboring pair, to offer variety within the standardized format. Post-World War II, housing redevelopment has led to many outdated or dilapidated terraces being cleared to make room for tower blocks, which occupy a much lower area of land. Because of this land use in the inner city areas could in theory have been used to create greater accessibility, employment or recreational or leisure centres. However botched implementation meant that in many areas (like Manchester or the London estates) the towerblocks offering no real improvement for rehoused residents over their prior terraced houses.

In 2005 the English Heritage report Low Demand Housing and the Historic Environment found that repairing a standard Victorian terraced house over thirty years is around sixty-percent cheaper than building and maintaining a newly-built house. In a 2003 survey for Heritage Counts a team of experts contrasted a Victorian terrace with a house built after 1980, and found that:

"The research demonstrated that, contrary to earlier thinking, older housing actually costs less to maintain and occupy over the long-term life of the dwelling than more modern housing. Largely due to the quality and life-span of the materials used, the Victorian terrace house proved almost £1,000 per 100 m2 cheaper to maintain and inhabit on average each year."