Can you imagine a sunset, with its warm rays beaming down on your face while you slowly sip your favorite drink? Or reading your favorite book in the summer breeze? How about having "serious" talks with your best friend or blasting your favorite song? Remember running to home base when you played hide-n-seek or moving up levels when you played school? Do you remember the one place that could be your saving grace or your place of imprisonment? These memories and more can be tied to a particularly prominent feature, the porch. * This nostalgic note hailing from both the North and the South brought to you by the letters P-O-R-C and H.

 

By shading the house and allowing faint afternoon breezes the porch became a modifier to hot and humid summer climates. The porch, most often correlated with Southern life has been deemed to play an integral part in connecting the house to the natural world. Not only does the porch allow persons to be close to nature; it prompts sociability and hospitality. By permitting the appropriate circumstances for passers-by to engage in a conversation with the person on the porch, the porch can be seen as a vehicle for building close communities.

 

With the increased importance placed on porches, many housing and neighborhood developments have arisen, with strict policies concerning porches. One such development, I'On, has been initiated in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina. In order to catch the "prevailing breezes and lower rays of the winter sun", the porch should preferably face south or southwest. These porches must be at least eight feet deep to accommodate furniture and give adequate protection from the rain. In addition, these porches are to be "within conversational distance of sidewalks [giving] rise to informal exchanges between strangers, thereby helping to create neighbors and strengthen the bonds of the community" (I'On Property Codes).

 

Seemingly the porch has always been an element of the Southern house. "The heat of the summer demands shady porches and wide verandas; the cold of winter snug corners and sunny rooms- two opposite conditions to be reconciled under one roof… The house must be ample for summer guests and summer hospitality." (Clifford, 1986). This, however, was not always the case. Pierce Lewis writes: "It took gallons of eighteenth century Virginian sweat were spilled before there was grudging admission that the doors and windows of Georgian London provided inadequate ventilation for a Tidewater summer. It was a long time before Southerners could bring themselves to even attach porches to their Georgian townhouse." (Vlach, 1990). The practice of adding porches to American houses extends back to the early eighteenth century. Not until the nineteenth century however, did large porches expand across the entire façade commonly appended to Southern houses. Soon this extension became the height of fashion for houses and a symbol of high status. The origin of the porch is attributed to many, as an adaptation of the chambers around the front doors of British houses; or to the Italianate house with the porch serving as a major focal point leading to its double front doors.

 

More recently, the evidence has shown that the porch was imported from West Africa. Slaves brought from West Africa experienced the same climate in South Carolina, Mississippi and New Orleans as in their native home. The porch, traditionally four to five feet deep, is a feature of architecture in tropical environments and is certainly well known to the Blacks in both Africa and the Caribbean. A familiar house found in Charleston, the Georgian "I" house has its gable facing the street. This house has an open porch along one side, hidden from view by a door, the door emphasizing the importance of the porch as an integral part of the house. These houses were not common until after 1790, when refugees from Haiti arrived in Charleston. The porch, imported from the Caribbean and tropical environments of Africa secures cross-ventilation and reinforces the concept of communal responsibility and togetherness present in African, Caribbean and African-American cultures.

 

The functional and formal difference between the porches of South Carolina and Mississippi can be thought of as an adaptation of West Indian architectural features. Further links to the West Indies suggest the involvement of Afro-American and African peoples. African slaves were more influential in tropical/southern architecture than originally thought, responsible for what was at the height of architectural elegance almost two centuries before its origins were forgotten. The porch can be seen as a piece of the house that incorporates the street or a piece of the street that incorporates the house; nonetheless, it is a piece of architecture that incorporates the African and African-American past with modern-day America. The impact of African communal architecture has been felt beyond the slave community and persisted into the American present. The porch is an example of survival of African architecture incorporated into mainstream American buildings.