The Magic of Porches
by April Elliott Kent

Originally appeared in Llewellyn's 2008 Moon Sign book.

I grew up in the country, in a small farmhouse built by my grandfather. It was a fine house, but it’s not what I remember most; to a kid, a house is just a house. All of the really interesting, really magical spaces were outside… the barn, the wheat fields, the playhouse – and the front porch.

I spent hours on our porch when I was small. It was just “outdoors” enough to let me feel independent, yet still connected to the house so I felt safe. For my sister and me, the front porch was a place to exercise our imaginations by acting out complicated plays of our own invention, and to exercise our bodies by taking turns shoving each other off the porch railing. It served, too, as a stage for celebrating the changing of the seasons. Whether it was carving pumpkins for Halloween, standing on tiptoe to knock down icicles from the eaves, or posing for our annual Easter photograph, many of our most cherished memories seem to have been posed against the backdrop of that porch.

We moved to the suburbs when I was ten, first to a house without much of a porch and then to one with no porch at all. It wasn’t until I was a newlywed in my early thirties that I lived in another house with a real front porch, a rented 1920s Craftsman bungalow in San Diego. Its broad porch, half sheltered in colorful bougainvillea, replicated that happy mixture of public and private space that I remembered from childhood. My new husband and I promptly installed a comfortable bench and a little table and spent many long, happy hours lounging on the porch. We ate our breakfasts there and decorated it for every holiday, and on one memorably hot summer evening we actually hauled the dining table out onto the porch and hosted a dinner party there.

When we moved on, I missed that old porch. Our next few rentals hadn’t much more than a front stoop, though one did at least have enough space for a couple of chairs. It was in the heart of a lively, interesting neighborhood, which almost made up for the lack of a proper porch. Almost – but not quite.

A Porch of One’s Own

Finally, in 1997 we bought our first house, a 1927 Craftsman bungalow not far from our first home together. Almost everything about our new place was a mess, including the horrid, shoddily enclosed front porch, complete with an offensive tin awning over an ugly front door and two nasty, uneven steps. It was so ugly that I nearly cried every time we drove up to the curb.

Even so, sitting inside that ugly little porch was magical. Despite its cracked floor, crooked windows, and horrible door, we loved having breakfast there. Looking out over the two large pine trees in the front yard was like sitting in a tree house. We could watch, unobserved, as neighbors came and went, picked up their newspapers, and walked their dogs. On Sunday mornings we dawdled on the porch for hours, drinking endless cups of coffee and littering the floor an inch deep with newspaper.

It was ugly, though, and truthfully it had become a safety hazard as well. So in 2002 we refurbished our porch as part of a whole-house renovation project. Removing those crooked windows and that terrible door and awning was our opening salvo in the renovation battle. What emerged was stunning: the bones of a beautiful Craftsman-style porch, complete with graceful, tapered columns, that showed off the house’s original front door and picture window.

Your House’s Smile

Opening up the porch of our house changed its look as radically as a smile opens up a face; and like a smile, it made the house – and by extension, its inhabitants – seem much friendlier. Today, we know almost all our neighbors by name and consider most of them friends. Just the other evening, enjoying a drink on our porch swing, we caught a glimpse of a neighbor we hadn’t seen for a while and called him over for a glass of wine. Soon another neighbor drifted over to join us. In no time at all, we were having a relaxed, informal party!

That kind of spontaneous gathering never happened on our old, closed-in porch. It certainly never happened when we lived in houses with no porch at all! People in the city tend to respect one another’s privacy, and without a front porch there is no clear signal that we’re home and, in the parlance of a more formal era, “receiving.” And so what begins with the good intention of giving our neighbors “space” often contributes to a sense of isolation from one another.

The Architecture of an Era

Not long ago I was visiting my sister when she excitedly pulled me over to her computer. "I have a picture of our old house! It’s really been fixed up. Let me show you.' She pulled up the picture, and I felt a rush of delighted recognition. It wasn’t just the nostalgia of seeing my childhood home. Painted in three earthy colors that accentuated its decorative features, that little farmhouse house looked just like the Craftsman bungalows I’ve lived in for most of my adult life! In all my years of gravitating toward similar houses, I never noticed that I was simply trying to recreate what had felt comfortable when I was small.

And it’s not just me. For Americans who grew up during a particular era – say, after World War I and before architecture all but abandoned the front porch in favor of the three-car garage, sometime in the 1970s – a gracious front porch is a symbol of many warm memories. It was on porches like these where our grandmothers rocked us to sleep for our afternoon naps, where we gathered with neighbors on hot summer afternoons to share gossip and glasses of iced tea, and where Jack-o’-lanterns greeted us on our annual Halloween trick-or-treat expeditions. The front porch sheltered us from rain and sun and gave us a place to relax, imagine, and dream; it offered a sense of community and coziness, all in one. Was there ever a more comforting sensation than pulling up in front of your house after a long, difficult day and seeing a porch light blazing to welcome you home?

Welcoming the Four Seasons with your Porch »