Ticky Tacky

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The idea of ticky-tacky houses are represented on pictures 1-5. They were taken on stevenson road off of Millersport Highway. When comparing one house to another, it seemed that every one looked different from another, until a closer inspection was done. Every house appears to be the same from the fascade back, but the fronts of each house differed (sometimes there were houses with the same front, such as the ones in number 5). So in a sense, the "little box" mentality was preserved but in a different way than pure repetitiveness. The little boxes all had basically the same shape and make up (as seen in picture 2), but the obvious aesthetic differences were noticable from the front. I didn't want to clog up the blog with more photographic evidence, but various houses had red doors on them (two that I noticed). There were also some houses that greatly exceeded the norm or standard of the surrounding neighborhood. House number 6 is one of these houses. Besides number 6 (which looks full-blown roman style, from the arches to the teracotta style roofing tiles), the biggest and best houses on the street were on the corner lots. One even had a pool, while the other had a mudroom to connect the garage and the house.

The idea that these suburbs provide the people with their dream of "house, yard, and neighborhood" from Hayden's ideas is seen in the housing choices that these people made when buying/building these houses. Despite most houses being identical, they definitly showed their own variety of individualism and flair. Some houses had ornamental doorways, brick fascades, different colored shutters, an addition to the back of the house, lawn ornaments, and even one house and boarded up windows (but still inhabited, I'm positive). These neighborhoods fascilitated comraderie and friendliness, as many people were working outside or went for walks, and the street looked overall more active than the sidestreets behind my house. The yards definitly allowed for customization and showing of character, and those that were really interested in doing so put things onto the yard (10+ gnomes sound good to anyone?). Also, the people took steps to make their house their own, whether it was house color variations (picture 3 and 1), or additions to the house, or the door color.

Today's suburbanites have created suburbs of their own concotion, and they all are based off the same housing designs (or limited varieties of housing designs) just like the "little box" houses were off of Millersport. The suburbs behind my house tend to put more emphasis on the yard and space, since everyone tends to have more space infront of, behind, and inbetween the houses. There also tends to be less lawn ornamation (unless you are in an area that is known for it and really likes to do it). Also, house colors tend to be more muted or less noticable. Community tends to be less noticable, and people seem to pay attention to the social groups they meet outside their neighborhood, instead of creating a social group with the neighborhood.

Cape Cods, Ranches, and Split Levels, Oh My!

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The pictures above show the different housing styles for the second blog assignment: Split level, cape cod, and ranch. Pictures 1-3 Show Split level, 4 and 5 show ranches, and 6 and 7 show Cape Cods. I took these houses from my neighborhood, and many of you have probably passed these to and from school. The two ranches and two cap cods are on North Forest Road near West Klein, and one of them is my family's (can you guess which one?)!

The split level house is recongizeable because of the two rows of windows next to the front door, and it looks like the front door is on neither level. I have grown up visitng friends in these houses, and I have been in and out of split levels for my entire life. These houses do have a basement, but they are usually lower or only on the half of the house that is higher up. Usually the bed rooms are on the upper part of the house (above the garage usually) and have many small and compact staircases.

The ranch house is the style of house that I have lived in and grown up in for my entire life. I do not know if they are all normally made out of brick, but both houses I have here are made all out of brick. The yellow house was built in the late 1950's (property bought 1952, built before 1960). The brown ranch was built in 1982. They are characteristic for only having one floor and having an attached garage. They usually have simple floor plans and valted ceilings (the room I am in now has a ceiling that goes up to the top of the house, and looks like it should have a second floor). The roofs of these houses usually overhang the edge of the walls further than most normal houses.

Cape cod houses (6 and 7) are characteristic for their very simplistic housing plan, usually only consisting of a one floor or one and a half floor design. From what I can tell, the houses are usually sided like number 6. I believe number 7 is a cape cod, but I do not know why it has brick. Many examples that I found online also had the same windows for the upstairs that number 6 had. The floorplan usually centered around the hall and the parlor.

Dempsey's Liquor Store and Bloch Bro's Mail Pouch!

I unfortunately did not do anything over spring break, and unless anyone would like to see a picture of my basement or living room (or a car I helped fix up) my break was pretty uneventful. But, on tuesday of this week I went down to Waterloo, NY to visit a family friend. We went to Connie's Diner (which has excellent food if you ever want to get something to eat in Waterloo, its on the main road in town, and the food is consistently good as I've eaten there a few times over the past 3 years or so and its always been the same), then he showed us the house he grew up in. When he was bringing us back to our car, we passed a building that recently had an outer layer of brick torn off of it, and this is what was under that outer layer of brick:

He had already pulled away from the corner before I could tell him I wanted to take a picture of it, so I had him drive around the block so I could grab a few snapshots of it. I forgot my camera (which was a mistake, as there was some other stuff I wanted to take a picture of) and I had to rely on my phone to take these pictures, so sorry about the quality.