Everything about Terrace House totally explained
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
housing in use since 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, often larger than those houses in the middle.
In the United Kingdom
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". The "row", as in the sixteenth century "Yarmouth Rows" in
Great Yarmouth,
Norfolk, was a designation for a narrow street where the building fronts uniformly ran right to the property line.
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, but
Paris had led the way in the
Place des Vosges (1605 – 1612). In Parisian squares, central blocks were given discreet prominence, to relieve the façade, but 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 richest 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 conjoined into rows either long or short. 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
inner city areas could theoretically be distributed further to create greater accessibility, employment or recreational or leisure centres. However botched implementation meant in many areas (like Manchester or the London estates) the effects of wind channeling and poor follow up development led to the towerblocks offering no real improvement for rehoused residents over their prior terraced houses .
In the UK terraced
industrial district housing has enjoyed huge price rises since around 2001, with prices in most areas (outside London) having more than tripled by mid-2005. In affluent areas terraced houses are often called 'townhouses'. In the 1960s and 1970s areas of affordable terraced housing were often quickly colonised by artists, gay men and young professionals, this being the early stages of the
gentrification that happened in parts of many British cities.
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 m
2 cheaper to maintain and inhabit on average each year."
Image:Park Crescent at London (B&W).jpg|Park Crescent, Regent's Park, London
Image:RoyalSociety20040420CopyrightKaihsuTai.jpg|Carlton House Terrace, London
Image:bedzed.jpg|BedZED zero energy terraced houses in Beddington, London
Image:Terraced houses at fortuneswell.jpg|Terraced houses in Fortuneswell, Isle of Portland, Dorset, UK
In Australia and New Zealand
In Australia and New Zealand, the term "terrace house" refers almost exclusively to Victorian and Edwardian era terraces or replicas almost always found in the older,
inner city areas of the major cities. Modern suburban versions of this style of housing are referred to as "town houses".
Terraced housing was introduced to
Australia from the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century. Large numbers of terraced houses were built in the inner suburbs of large Australian cities, particularly
Sydney and
Melbourne, mainly between the 1850s and the 1890s. The beginning of this period coincided with a population boom caused by the
Victorian and
New South Wales Gold Rushes of the 1850s and finished with an
economic depression in the early 1890s.
Detached housing became the popular style of housing in Australia following
Federation in 1900.
Terraced housing in Australia ranged from expensive middle-class houses of three, four and five-storeys down to single-storey cottages in working-class suburbs. The most common building material used was
brick, often covered with
stucco. Many terraces were built in the "Filigree" style, a style distinguished through heavy use of cast iron ornament, particularly on the balconies and sometimes depicting native Australian flora. Many Melbourne terraces featured a unique style of polychrome brickwork, influenced heavily by the early work of local architect
Joseph Reed.
In the first half of the twentieth-century, terraced housing in Australia fell into disfavour and the inner-city areas where they were found were often considered
slums. In the 1950s, many urban renewal programs were aimed at eradicating them entirely in favour of high-rise development. In recent decades these inner-city areas and their terraced houses have been
gentrified. With their increasing rarity, they're now highly sought after in Australia, and often due to their proximity to the
CBD of the major cities, also highly expensive.
With artificial urban boundaries, new townhouse type developments often nostalgically evoking old style terraces in a post-modern style returned to the favour of local planning offices in many suburban areas.
Melbourne
Melbourne's flat terrain has produced regular terraced house patterns, and the wealth of the gold rush fuelled speculative housing development and also ensured that many terraces were built with ornate and elaborate details in a plethora of different styles, often collectively referred to as "boom" style. Melbourne has more decorative cast iron than any other city in the world and much of this was used to decorate its terrace houses in the
filigree style with decorative cast iron balconies, material which was first imported before local foundries began due to high demand.
The earliest surviving terrace house in Melbourne is
Glass Terrace, 72-74 Gertrude Street,
Fitzroy (1853-54).
Royal Terrace at 50-68 Nicholson Street Fitzroy, completed three years later is only slightly younger and is the oldest surviving complete row.
Multi-storey terraced housing became prevalent in the Melbourne suburbs of
Middle Park,
Albert Park,
East Melbourne,
South Melbourne,
Carlton,
Collingwood,
St Kilda,
Balaclava,
Richmond,
South Yarra,
Cremorne,
North Melbourne,
Fitzroy,
Port Melbourne,
West Melbourne,
Footscray,
Hawthorn,
Abbortsford,
Burnley,
Brunswick,
Parkville,
Flemington,
Kensington and
Elsternwick. Freestanding terraces and single storey terraces can be found elsewhere within 10 kilometres of the
Melbourne city centre.
Although Melbourne retains a large number of heritage registered terraces, many rows were substantially affected by widescale slum reclamation programs for
public housing during the 1950s and 60s. Later private development of walk-up flats and in-fill development has further reduced the number of complete rows. As a result, streets and suburbs which contain large intact rows of terrace housing are now fairly rare. Suburbs such as Albert Park, Fitzroy, Carlton, Parkville and East Melbourne are now subject to strict heritage overlays to preserve what is left of these streetscapes.
Some of the more notable examples of terrace housing in Melbourne include the
heritage registered Tasma Terrace,
Canterbury,
Clarendon Terrace,
Burlington Terrace,
Cypress Terrace,
Dorset Terrace,
Nepean Terrace and
Annerly Terrace (East Melbourne),
Blanche Terrace,
Cobden Terrace,
Holyrood Terrace (Fitzroy),
Rochester Terrace and the
St Vincent Gardens precinct (Albert Park),
Royal Terrace,
Holcombe Terrace,
Denver Terrace,
Dalmeny House &
Cramond House, and
Benvenuta (Carlton),
Marion Terrace (St Kilda) and
Finn Barr (South Melbourne).
Image:Royal terrace carlton.jpg|Royal Terrace in Fitzroy, Victoria is Melbourne's oldest complete row
Image:Marion terrace.jpg|Marion Terrace in St Kilda, Victoria
Image:Inkerman street terrace housing.jpg|Row Housing in Balaclava
Image:Three storey terraces in drummond street carlton.jpg|Elaborate three storey Victorian terraces in Drummond Street Carlton, Victoria.
Image:Montrose terrace drummond street carlton.jpg|Holcombe Terrace. One of Melbourne's best examples of the filligree style in polychrome brick. Drummond Street Carlton, Victoria
Image:Rochester_terrace_albert_park_main_pavillion.jpg|Rochester Terrace in St Vincent Gardens, Albert Park
Image:Denver terrace drummond street carlton.jpg|Denver Terrace. Drummond Street Carlton, Victoria
Image:Terrace_houses_in_south_melbourne.jpg|Victorian terraces in South Melbourne, Victoria
Image:Middle_park_terraces.jpg|A mix of styles in Middle Park, Victoria
Image:Terrace housing in elm place windsor victoria.jpg|Victorian filigree style housing in Windsor, Victoria
Image:Timber terraces in madden street albert park.jpg|Timber decorated terrace houses in Middle Park, Victoria
Image:Three storey terrace houses on lonsdale street melbourne.jpg|Three storey early Victorian terraces in Lonsdale Street, Melbourne CBD.
Image:Tasma terrace parliament place.jpg|Tasma Terrace at Parliament Place, East Melbourne, Victoria. Considered Melbourne's finest terraces.
Image:Cremornevictoria2.jpg|Dilapidated terrace housing in Cremorne, Victoria
Image:Terrace houses in park street south yarra.jpg|A variety of terrace styles in Park Street, South Yarra, Victoria
Image:Terrace houses in park street south yarra with english style basements.jpg|A row of three storey terrace houses in Park Street, South Yarra, Victoria. Notable for downstairs basement levels and faceted bay windows.
Sydney
Like Melbourne, Sydney also is home to a large amount of terraced housing.
Suburbs where terrace housing is highly prevalent includes
The Rocks,
Paddington,
Bondi Junction,
Glebe,
Surry Hills,
Darlinghurst and
Balmain.
Due to the city's higher density, it isn't unusual to find terrace houses of up to three storeys and the undulating topography of the city means that many of the terraces are typically staggered up hills rather than level or uniform. Some of the more notable examples include the heritage registered
Cliff Terrace (Glebe).
In contrast to the British practice of the day, where dozens or even hundreds of houses were constructed by a developer as a single housing estate, Sydney practice was normally to build a short run of houses, an interesting example being the "Castle Terrace" in Paddington. Consisting of five houses, the middle one has been given a distinctive treatment.
Most Sydney terraces are firmly anchored into solid sandstone, which provided an opportunity to follow the British practice of constructing a basement storey below street level, reached by a flight of stairs down from the street. Many examples of this are to be found in Paddington. In the suburb of Balmain, there are examples of houses actually constructed from local sandstone, rather than bricks covered with stucco.
Image:SydneyTheRocks5 gobeirne.jpg|Terrace Houses, The Rocks, Sydney
Image:Rocks2_terrace.jpg|Very old cottages The Rocks, Sydney
Image:Earlier_Victorian_Terrace_in_the_Rocks.jpg|Earlier Victorian stone-built Terrace The Rocks, Sydney
Image:Paddington2_terrace.jpg|Typical Paddington Terrace marching downhill, Sydney
Image:Paddington_castle_terrace.jpg|Castle Terrace in Paddington, Sydney
Image:Darlinghurst3_terrace.jpg|A derelict row in Darlinghurst, Sydney
Image:Paddington_basement.jpg|A British-style basement in Paddington, Sydney
Image:Balmain_sandstone.jpg|Sandstone-fronted terrace in Balmain, Sydney
Image:Balmain_fullbay.jpg|A full bay-windowed end of terrace in Balmain, Sydney
Image:Surry_Hills_Working_Class_Homes.jpg|Basic houses typical of Surry Hills, Sydney
Image:Surry_Hills_Gentrified_Home.jpg|'Gentrified' property in Surry Hills, Sydney
Brisbane
In
Brisbane,
Queensland, stone and attached building was disfavoured outside of government buildings, and in fact legislated against by the
Undue Subdivision of Land Prevention Act 1885. Enacted as a public health and anti-slum measure, this act set a minimum frontage of about 10 metres for each residential block, thus effectively ending the building of terraces, although a few terraces were built as a single rental project, were not subdivided, and managed to bypass the legislation. However only a handful of elaborate heritage listed examples remain, mostly clustered in the Central Business District (
The Mansions and
Harris Terrace on George Street and
Petrie Terrace on Petrie Terrace), and a handful of singular rows in the inner suburbs (
Cook's Terrace on Coronation Drive,
Milton and Edmonstone Street in
West End). Nostalgic replicas, however, are popular in Brisbane, with some notable examples, built in the 1980s and 1990s in mock Victorian style along Gregory Terrace.
Image:The Mansions.jpg|The Mansions, Brisbane CBD
Image:Harris_Terrace_Brisbane.jpg|Harris Terrace, George Street
Image:Normanby_terrace.jpg|A mixed row in Normanby, Inner Brisbane
Image:Cook_terrace.jpg|Cook's Terrace overlooking the river in Milton
Image:Petrie Terrace.jpg|O'Keefe's Buildings Petrie Terrace
Image:Petrie Terrace 2.jpg|Petrie Terrace - on Petrie Terrace
Image:Gregory Terrace Replicas 1988.jpg|Gregory Terrace Replicas 1988, Brisbane
Image:Musgraveterrace.jpg|Musgrave terraces, West End
Other cities
Examples of terrace housing outside of Sydney and Melbourne are less common.
For reasons given above, terraces are extremely rare in Brisbane.
The planned city of
Adelaide,
South Australia has perhaps the most terrace houses of any other capital city,
Marine Apartments in the suburb of
Grange, is particularly notable, as it's a large three storey filigree terrace.
In
Perth,
Western Australia there are a handful of examples in the inner city and
Fremantle's Point Street.
Tasmania, being one of the oldest European settlements has a number of good examples despite the relative size of its major cities in comparison to mainland cities. Inner
Hobart has some good examples of terrace housing.
Launceston has some great examples as well (mostly in the Central Business District and East Launceston), including
Alpha Terrace, which has striking similarities to many of the terraces in Sydney's hilly suburbs.
Outside of Melbourne in Victoria,
Ballarat has some scattered existing terrace houses and semi-detached houses, as do the older cities of
Geelong,
Queenscliff,
Portland and
Port Fairy.
Outside of Sydney in New South Wales,
Newcastle has a fine collection of 1890s terraces. Almost all of them be found in a conservation area just east of the Central Business District on The Terrace, Wolfe Street, Tyrell Street, Bull Street and Watts Street, including
Buchanans Terrace (c1890). Surprisingly, the Western New South Wales city of
Dubbo has examples of Victorian terraces and semi-detached houses close to the city centre, mostly in the Darling Street area.
Terrace houses are much rarer in
New Zealand. Some examples can be found in the older suburbs of
Auckland, such as
Parnell and occasional one off examples such as
Hyland House in
Dunedin.
Some other smaller provincial Australian cities also have rare pockets of terrace housing.
Image:South-geelong-austin-terraces.jpg|Single storey terraces in suburban Geelong
Image:Quiet Queenscliff Street.jpg|Victorian filligree terraces in Queenscliff
Image:Newcastle Street.jpg|Streetscape in Newcastle, New South Wales
Image:Northern Rivers Houses.jpg|Unique Edwardian pair in Maclean, Northern Rivers, New South Wales
Image:Terrace_in_Dubbo_New_South_Wales.jpg|Terrace in Dubbo, Western New South Wales
In the United States
The first row houses in the
United States, were
Carstairs Row in
Philadelphia, designed by builder and architect Thomas Carstairs circa 1799 through 1820, for developer William Sansom, as part of the first speculative
housing developments in the
United States. Carstairs Row was built on the southern part of the site occupied by "Morris' Folly" –
Robert Morris’ unfinished mansion designed by
L'Enfant. Prior to this time houses had been built not in rows, but individually. It can be contrasted with
Elfreth's Alley, the oldest continuously occupied road in America, where all the house are of varying heights and widths, with different street lines, doorways and brickwork.
Terrace housing in American usage generally continued to be called
townhouses in the
United States, with a distinctive type found in
New York City, among other cities, called a
brownstone. Some newer row houses, which are especially prominent in neighborhoods like
Middle Village,
Woodhaven and
Jackson Heights in
Queens and
Bensonhurst,
Bay Ridge,
Canarsie and
Marine Park in
Brooklyn are commonly referred to locally as "attached houses"
In
Boston,
Philadelphia,
Baltimore,
San Francisco, and
Washington DC, they're simply called row houses or row homes, and are very common. Despite the narrow lots, many row houses are relatively large.
In historic Philadelphia, almost the entire city is populated with various types of row houses. Many of Philadelphia's row houses date back to colonial times. The style and type of material used in constructing Philadelphia's row houses vary throughout the city. Most homes are primarily red brick in construction, with stone and marble accent. There are some communities in the city where the homes are built of solid granite, such as
Mayfair in
Northeast Philadelphia and
Mt. Airy in
Northwest Philadelphia.
In much of the
Southern United States, they're referred to as
row homes. In the United States the term commonly describes a two story, owner-occupied housing unit that shares a wall with one or more neighboring units. The term also carries a more upscale cachet than the term "condo."
In the
Midwest and
Great Plains (and often in
Georgia), they're referred to as "townhomes." The term isn't terribly specific, a townhome sometimes implies one side of a
duplex that's owned.
Image:Guilford.jpg|Row houses in Baltimore's Charles Village neighborhood
Image:Painted Ladies.jpg|San Francisco's "Painted Ladies" on Steiner Street, Alamo Park, not strictly "terraced", but similar
Image:Italianate1.png|"Terraced" homes in San Francisco
Image:Warren and Dartmouth.jpg|Row houses along Dartmouth Street in Boston's South End
Image:Phila-elfrethsalley.jpg|Elfreth's Alley, Philadelphia
Image:Midtown_Townhomes.jpg|Townhome Condominiums, Midtown Atlanta
Image:Midtown Excursion 067.jpg|Colorful Townhomes, Midtown Atlanta
Image:R St NE.jpg|Row houses in Washington, DC's Eckington neighborhood
Image:Lawrenceville.jpg|Lawrenceville neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Image:BristolBayTownhomes.jpg|Bristol Bay townhomes in Bristol, WI
Image:Baltimoreformstone.jpg|Formstone-faced rowhomes in Baltimore
In Malaysia and Singapore
Introduced around the beginning of the twentieth century, terraced houses (also known as linear linkhouses) have been adopted in both
Malaysia and
Singapore since the countries'
early British colonial rule. Based on British terraced home designs, the Southeast Asian variations are similar to their British counterparts (in which the living quarters are located on the front and top floor and the kitchen at the back) and were adapted to accommodate the area's tropical weather, which is primarily warm throughout the year and receives heavy rainfall. Earlier versions were more open, designed to better circulate air and features inner courtyards, with a frontal yard, rear yard, or both. A typical Malaysian and Singaporean terraced house is usually one or two floors high, but a handful of three or four storey terraced homes exist, especially newer terraced houses. Earlier variations followed traditional Western, Malay, India and Chinese architecture, as well as
Art Deco and
International stylings between the 1930s and 1950s.
The manner in which the buildings were designed varies by their location in an urban area. Derivatives located within city centres may also utilize their space for both commercial on the ground floor and residential use on the first floor and above (accurately known as
shophouses, also similar to
Lingnan buildings). Inner city terrace house design tended to lack any frontal yard at all, with narrow street frontages, hence the building's structure directly erected in front of the road. One of the reasons behind this was the taxing according to street frontage rather than total area, thereby creating an economic motivation to build narrow and deeply. A
five foot way porch was usually laid out at the ground floor for use by both the residents and pedestrians. Alternatively, the porch may be sealed from the rest of the walkway to serve as personal space. Such designs became less common after the 1960s.
Terrace houses located on the outskirts of city centres were less restrictive, although the design of the building itself wasn't unlike those in the city. Certain homes tend to feature longer front yards, enough to accommodate cars. Others strictly serve as a small garden. This design remained in demand throughout the twentieth century, and a construction boom of the house design occurred in Malaysia since the 1940s, with numerous housing estates consisting of terrace homes sprouting in and around cities and towns. In the process, the design of the building began to diversify, with various refinements and style changes. Generally, the building's floor space and yards become larger and more elaborate through time, as is the modernisation of exterior construction and facade.
Certain older terrace houses tend to be converted for various new roles; some are converted into shophouses or business premises (including clubs, hotels and boarding homes–especially pre-independence houses–and kindergartens). Others have remained in use as residential units, are abandoned, neglected, or razed. Significant expansions are also common on all terrace homes; roofs and additional rooms may be added within the floorspace of the house's lot. Concerns are also raised with the limited maintenance and monitoring of deserted terrace homes, which potentially become hiding places for rodents and snakes (in yards with overgrown grass), and drug addicts.
Earlier variations of the terrace house were constructed with wood, later replaced with a masonry shell holding wooden beams to form foundations for the upper floors and tiled roof. Contemporary variations are primarily held together with reinforced concrete beams, which are later completed with concrete slabs, brick walls and tiled roofs.
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