Posted on 08/03/2008 10:15:04 AM PDT by Lorianne
It looks almost like an average-size house that's been sliced in half. At 12 feet wide, the neat, new single-family home is squeezed onto the slenderest of strips of land on a Brooklyn Park street of modest, post-World War II houses.
The home joins an 18-foot-wide one built in the past year in the community that spans Anne Arundel County and Baltimore City. A similar house is planned for another of the 25-foot-wide empty lots in the area.
While building on these infill lots in mature, developed communities with established roads, sidewalks and other infrastructure is considered "smart growth," residents of Brooklyn Park say the skinny houses threaten the community's identity and decrease property values. While there's nothing neighbors can do about the homes already built - which are legal under zoning law and, local real estate agents say, examples of affordable new housing in the county - the community is fighting the construction of the third narrow home.
"What used to be somebody's yard is now turning into a building lot," said Gary O'Neil, a member of the board of governors of the Arundel Neighborhoods Association.
A 12-foot-wide house, he said, "is without a doubt the most ridiculous-looking thing we've ever seen."
The tiny infill-lot houses in Brooklyn Park seem to be isolated in Anne Arundel County, though neighboring counties approach small lots and infill lots in different ways. The 18-foot-wide house on Orchard Avenue is over the city line in Baltimore, where the minimum width for a free-standing house is 16 feet. The city has not seen a similar trend toward narrow houses, said Laurie Feinberg, division chief for comprehensive planning.
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
The house on the right is butt ugly, but the cute house is 'lowering property values'? Yeah right.
If the guy didn't want a skinny house next to his ugly house, he should have boutht the property himself.
Also how can "somebody's yard" turn into a buidling lot. The 'somebody' must have sold it.
I wondered if it was ‘his’ yard at one time, from the picture I would say so ;)
For an amusing historical perspective, google “shotgun shack.”
The one on the right looks like a garage with an attached two-story house.
The house on the right reminds me alot of the houses my grandfather and great grandfather built in Newark, NJ back in the 1920s-1940s. Amazing that the one my GGF built for his own family was the size of the "skinny house" even though he had 12 children.
I’d buy the one on the left. It has a welcoming front porch and character..
Mr Disgruntled Garage Owner is just jealous. Who would choose his boring garage over the cute house next door?
In general, building smaller is a good thing. It's just a return to America's roots, where everyone didn't expect to own a McMansion straight out of high school. ;)
I live in a duplex and the lay-out of my apartment is pretty much like a skinny house. My landlady has the other side, and hers is the same. From the front it just looks like a house with two doors, but... nothing wrong with this layout. In fact, I love my place.
Looks like a shotgun house to me.
The wide brown house on the right looks like it has two white eyes, a white nose and the garage looks like a HUGE white mouth just waiting to gobble up the skinny house on the left. (Hint: I think just painting the big garage door the same color brown as the rest of the house would make a big difference in the way it looks.
I can see how shotgun houses (that’s what we call them down here, because they can be cleared with one shotgun blast) would lower the value of houses in the neighborhood. First who wants to buy a house with one of those in the view, and second because they’re so cheap they bring a lower income bracket into the area which tends to lower the overall value.
Shirley U meen DAVIRCITY,doncha?..LOL...
Skinny houses in Baltimore is no big deal. My rowhouse couldn’t have been much wider. They’re all thin and long.
What goes unsaid about articles like this one is the role of government in driving up the costs of building a simple home. Indeed, in many parts of the US, it would be illegal to build the home that my grandfather built in 1920.
Worse, any parent who moved into such a home would find their children could be seized for “abuse” if the home lacked even one feature that government demanded was “essential”.
I will never for the life of me understand how people can be angry at what people who buy property does with it. Move to 100 acres and you won’t have to see anything but what you put out.
I grew up in a 16 foot wide, shotgun rowhouse in Pittsburgh..alot of neighboods like that in the rustbelt. Three rooms on the first floor, three and one bath on the second. No ‘special’ media rooms; dining rooms; breakfast rooms; home office; etc. No guest room..kids shared the same room (bunk and trundle beds were common) and closet space was nonexistant (our house was built in the early 1900s.)
Good example of the typical Chicago bungalow also popular in older suburbs like Oak Park, Riverside and East Chicago. Somer nicer restored examples of the genre are in Beverly.
Many of the shotgun style buildings are on the North Side in neighborhoods like Lakeview. I remember visiting an apartment that was only 14 feet wide from wall to wall on the interior.
History, heck, I just moved into a Shotgun house here on “The Hill” in St. Louis. I love it!! It’s just me and two wienie dogs so we don’t need a lot of room and I’m ready to get rid of all the “crap” I’ve collected thru the years.
That brown house is truly ugly - I’d buy the cute little one on the left before I’d ever buy the utly one.
Just looks like an old “shotgun” house. Only a bit more attractive.
16 feet and they’re complaining? Where I was raised, thats called a ‘double wide.’
Like was previously mentioned, the only legitimate beef is if its some kind of section 8 type deal. Otherwise, you should have never sold the lot/or you should have bought it first, if you wanted control over it.
Of course, even modest households own more “stuff” today. Even our 1500 square foot townhome style condo is pretty full with just my wife and I.
I hate those houses that really just look like a 2 car garage with a couple rooms attached to it.
When the impact of BRAC hits the Baltimore area around 2010, those “skinny houses” will be looking might attractive to single and DINK professionals. This will probably be a good thing for the neighborhood in the long run.
Diversity, one of those things everybody loves in somebody else’s neighborhood.
We have seen the same in other cities back then and now. Given the exhorbitant housing prices such small houses could be again starter homes for a lot of people -- high school grads, veterans, service workers, and college grads until they can afford to move up; and also for people like me who would prefer one of these two-story small houses (with an attic and basement too) -- a real house -- rather than a 12 ft wide "manufactured home" relegated to a trailer park.
I bet you the brown ugly house is worth less than the cute new house. I’d love to see an appraisal of both.
Probably not. The brown house has at least 3 times the square footage, plus more yard, and frankly shotgun houses are ugly. They’re hallways with delusions of grandeur.
First thought “Why did the owner of the white house build such a bigass garage?
I was amazed when we (Tri-State chapter) went to see Frank Sinatra’s boyhood home in Hoboken. The brownstones there are extremely narrow. When you are used to New York City brownstones, which are not exactly capacious, the Hoboken houses look like somebody has photoshopped them.
Strangely or not so strangely, my first apartment in New York was a somewhat more modern version of that. The kitchen was the biggest room in the apartment. It did not have a bathtub in the kitchen, though. I saw some of those on the Lower East Side when I was apartment-hunting. It was a five-flight walkup. That building is gone now too, along with the $85-a-month rent.
The brownstones near Van Vorst Park in Jersey City, OTOH, were built for lawyers, bankers, and other white collar folk during the boom of the 1910s-1920s. By the time my mother was growing up there, however, they had been subdivided for poor people. Now they are once again popular with white collar commuters and Goldman Sachs employees (who can walk or bike to work).
Makes me chuckle. That house on the right would have been illegal in Olympia, WA. Some years ago (and I don’t know if it’s been repealed since) the city of Olympia banned any new construction with a two-or-more garage that faced the street. One was OK. Not two or three.
Honest... the code-Nazi’s said that large garage doors were a “blight” and the only way to build a garage was to have it offset from the road at a 90-degree angle. Sure, it looks just swell until you want to back a boat into it.
[sigh] If you wanna control it: Buy it. Until then leave me the %@#% alone.
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