Porches, a Summertime Window of the World
Jim McKee, Lincoln Journal Star

For those of a certain age summertime and porches are almost synonymous.  The porch itself has been around since Roman times when it was described as a covered shelter for a building entrance usually to offer protection from sun or weather for the brief time while one was waiting for the door to be opened.  When porches found their way to England they were often first associated with public buildings and churches.

Porches came to America with the first settlers but were not immediately commonplace.  By the 1840s porches became a common addition to homes and one observer noted in 1841 that “what differentiates a house from a barn is a chimney and a porch.”  Popularity grew decade-by-decade allowing people to move from lawns to the shade and rainproof porch epitomized by the Victorian wrap-around porch.

Most early hotels in Nebraska were of a period when porches were commonplace.  The wide hotel porches served as not only an advertisement which drew people, but provided a merging of the hotel into the community where one might see as well as be seen.  On August 19, 1859 Abraham Lincoln approached General Grenville Dodge who was seated on the porch of Council Bluffs’ Pacific House hotel.  There the two conversed for several hours about the potential route of the proposed transcontinental railroad route.

About 1895 S.W. “Dad” Perin became Superintendent of the University Agriculture Farm northeast of Lincoln.  The 1875 dormitory on the grounds was converted into a 12-room residence for the Perin family with the front porch becoming “the focal point of the farm campus.”  It was on this porch that his family, the faculty and students relaxed and socialized.  The house was razed in 1923 but near the end of the twentieth century the porch was recreated in a flower and shrub setting as part of the East Campus arboretum.

During the decades bracketing the start of the twentieth century the vast wrap-around porch was thought of as more of a verandah.  These large open-aired, roofed, sometimes two-story expanses may have had more decorative pillars and evidences of Victorian or carpenter gothic decorations.  Porches had reached the height of their beauty and use.  By the early twentieth century most houses had large front porches and usually featured suspended swings and wicker furniture.  The lawns flowed unfenced and seamlessly between houses with the porches becoming connections to the public streetscape.  The backyard meantime was hidden from the common view and contained stables, chicken houses, clotheslines, trash, gardens and alleys.  The back porch was sometimes used for summer sleeping but often was relegated to storage, a washing machine and sometimes a refrigerator.

In the 1920s and 30s movies, books and memories bring back the evenings when girlfriends were elegantly entertained with lemonade, homemade ice cream and iced tea with the girl’s parents in obvious attendance.  The evening’s entertainment was conversation, watching the passers-by and generally letting the community into your outdoor living room.

In the 1940s my father and I sometimes sat on our South Cotner Blvd. Front porch steps and waited for cars to drive by on the slow, curving street.  When a car did come by it became a game to identify the manufacturer and model year.  Obviously there were few cars, fewer models and each company produced cars with distinctive markings like Buick’s portholes, Pontiac’s hood stripes and Plymouth’s Mayflower symbol.

During the 1950s and 60s life and with it the porch changed and perhaps accelerated.  With television, clothes dryers and air conditioning, people were drawn inside.  At the same time street traffic with attendant noise and smells displaced the strollers.  Porches, which had been open, were first screened then fitted with combination windows and ultimately the walls were insulated.  The former porch had been converted into a room whose only consolation was perhaps more windows.

Then something interesting happened.  As clotheslines, stables, alley traffic and vegetable gardens disappeared in backyards, patios and decks began to sprout.  As front porches faded, vast back porches became the norm.  A friend who moved to Seattle about 10 years ago remembered his parents’ large open front porch and realized one could easily be added to his older house there.  The contractor couldn’t grasp the concept.  Greg asked if he had ever built a deck.  The answer was, of course, affirmative.  Just build one on the front-what an imaginative concept.

Now television commercials tell us of deck awnings, which allow covering the deck to protect us from sun and rain.  We can even, we are told, enclose them as sun rooms or solariums and have year-round decks.  Does this sound somehow familiar?