When Houses Were Small
November 2, 2011
THE STANDARDS for what constitutes a normal family house have changed dramatically in recent decades. The average home size in the United States was slightly over 2,400 square feet in 2009. This figure, down slightly from the year before, is more than twice that of the ranches and Cape Cods of the 1950s, such as those built in the Levittown developments of New York and Pennsylvania. Ironically, we have smaller families to fit in our houses.
The suburban house has swelled to the detriment of the family. With bigger houses has come more pressure on women to work. More square footage has meant a loss of family intimacy and less ease in supervising children. Our population growth rate has declined, jeopardizing future prosperity, while our lives have gotten lonelier.
The fifties-style ranch house or Cape Cod is often viewed with sneering derision unless it has undergone a fantastic architectural makeover, complete with granite counter tops and cathedral ceilings. And yet it has much to commend it. (I should know. I have raised my children in one of these houses.) Peter Bacon Hales, of the University of Illinois, wrote of the Levittown Cape Cod house:
The basic orientation of the house was a combination of historical precedent, social engineering, and sheer financial pragmatism. Putting the bathroom directly behind the kitchen on one side meant all the major plumbing, including the critical waste stack, could serve double duty. It also meant that the bathroom went in an inconvenient location– far from the master bedroom, and difficult to access from the living room, too. The logical place to put it would have been in between the two bedrooms, but that would have required double plumbing, reorientation of closets and rooms, and a host of other difficulties. Besides, the house was so small that a few steps didn’t really matter, did they? The result, however, was to engender a more open, informal social life within the family, with decreased privacy and increased contact in the most intimate of moments.
