The Revival of the Classic American Front Porch

When you think about summer memories, many of us will think about blue skies, neverending summer days spent with friends and loved ones on the front porch – sipping ice cold beer and relaxing as the world go by. We all love to hold tight to our past, and those times and places in our lifetime that are very important to us; for many Americans, that includes massive front porch with its hospitable staircase, hand worn railing and battered spindles and newel posts.

Certain architectural home design styles would be nothing without the use of a front porch – Arts and Crafts, Georgian, the traditional wood clad farmstead and yes, even, the grand Victorian are a few of the most famous.

A porch must be big enough for at least a small group to gather on – that is the bare minimum definition. However, in America a front porch is often large enough for outdoor furniture, a porch swing and potted plants. A lot of porches are front and center under the main entrance, others span the entire front of the house, and still others wrap around 3 or 4 sides of the building.

No matter the design style or period it was built, a front porch has many common design and construction components. Any porch is made of up four main components:

1.    Newel Posts – Box newels, over the post newels, and ornate newels. There are so many varieties of newel posts available if you are remodeling solid wood balusters on your old porch or building a new one. Oak and cherry wood newels are well liked because of the wood’s loveliness, natural beauty and durability.

2.    Balusters – The balustrade are most often made of quality woods, but in more recent times have been replaced with cast iron or tempered glass. Solid wood porch decorative balusters still remain popular as they give that warm, familiar feel and can be very cost effective. A cast iron baluster in a decorative design can be attractive and interesting on a contemporary house.

3.    Railings – Top and bottom hand rails are frequently made of solid wood. These are the components of your porch that regularly take the most ‘human’ abuse. You will touch the railings, hang flowering plants from them and paint them. Guests will lean against them and your children and grandchildren will sit on the railing tops. Railings need to be strong and hard wearing to ensure your porch lasts for decades.

4.    Floor or Base – Fundamentally the section of your porch that handles the foot traffic, there are many new to the market options for a porch floor. older porches have wood or concrete floors and these options are still available today. There are also several new materials on the market such as non slip outdoor purposed granite that would also be aesthetically pleasing and hard wearing.

Although not listed in the list of four (4) above, porch stairs would be a close fifth. Not all porches, especially if the porch structure is constructed at the ground level or on a second floor off an upstairs sitting room, for example, will not have stairs. Otherwise, most traditional porches that lead to the front door of a house do include a small staircase.
Although the front porch did fall out of favor in house architecture after WWII, it is experiencing a marked comeback. Maybe this is because people want to return to a simpler time when it was okay to take time for yourself and those that you care about without having to race off to our work. Perhaps the front porch signifies a stronger family unit when families did things together – a less stressful time before video consoles, personal computers and blackberry smart phones.