TERRACED HOUSE

Origins and nomenclature

The practice of homes built uniformly to the property line began in the 16th century and became known as "row" houses. "Yarmouth Rows" in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk is an example where the building fronts uniformly ran right to the property line.

The term terrace was borrowed from garden terraces by British architects of the late Georgian period to describe streets of houses whose uniform fronts and uniform height created an ensemble that was more stylish than a "row". Townhouses or townhomes are generally two– to three-storey structures that share a wall with a neighbouring unit. As opposed to an apartment building, townhouses do not have neighbouring units above or below them. They are similar in concept to row houses or terraced houses, except they are usually divided into smaller groupings of homes.

Australia and New Zealand

Royal terraces in Toorak, Victoria which have been repainted and renovated.

Terraces in Paddington, New South Wales exemplify the local variation found in Sydney. Large rows with taller dormer windows often appear to march up and down hills.

Main article: Terraced houses in Australia

See also: Australian residential architectural styles

In Australia and New Zealand, the term "terrace house" refers almost exclusively to Victorian and Edwardian era terraces or replicas almost always found in the older, inner city areas of the major cities.[citation needed] Modern suburban versions of this style of housing are referred to as "town houses".citation needed

Terraced housing was introduced to Australia from the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century. Large numbers of terraced houses were built in the inner suburbs of large Australian cities, particularly Sydney and Melbourne, mainly between the 1850s and the 1890s terraced housing is rare outside of these cities. The beginning of this period coincided with a population boom caused by the Victorian and New South Wales Gold Rushes of the 1850s and finished with an economic depression in the early 1890s. Detached housing became the popular style of housing in Australia following Federation in 1901.

Terraced housing in Australia ranged from expensive middle-class houses of three, four and five-storeys down to single-storey cottages in working-class suburbs. The most common building material used was brick, often covered with stucco. Many terraces were built in the "Filigree" style, a style distinguished through heavy use of cast iron ornament, particularly on the balconies and sometimes depicting native Australian flora. As some terraces were built speculatively, there are examples of "freestanding" and "semi-detached" terraces which were either intended to have adjoin terraces or the neighbouring buildings were later demolished.

In the first half of the twentieth-century, terraced housing in Australia fell into disfavour and the inner-city areas where they were found were often considered slums. In the 1950s, many urban renewal programs were aimed at eradicating them entirely in favour of high-rise development. In recent decades these inner-city areas and their terraced houses have been gentrified. Terrace

houses are now highly sought after in Australia, and due to their proximity to the CBD of the major cities, are often expensive.

With artificial urban boundaries, new townhouse type developments—often nostalgically evoking old style terraces in a post-modern style—returned to the favour of local planning offices in many suburban areas.

Europe

See also: Housing in Europe

France

East side of the Place des Vosges, Paris. One of the earliest examples of terraced housing

Row housing became the popular style in Paris, France. The Place des Vosges (1605 – 1612) was one of the earliest examples of the style. In Parisian squares, central blocks were given discreet prominence, to relieve the façade. Terraced building including housing was also used primarily during Haussmann's renovation of Paris between 1852 and 1870 creating whole streetscapes consisting of terraced rows.

United Kingdom and Ireland

Grosvenor Square, one of the earliest terraces in Britain

Park Crescent, Regent's Park, London

Royal Crescent, Bath 1767-1777

In Great Britain, the first streets of houses with uniform fronts were built by the Huguenot entrepreneur Nicholas Barbon in the rebuilding after the Great Fire of London. The Georgian idea of treating a row of houses as if it were a palace front, giving the central houses columned fronts under a shared pediment, appeared first in London's Grosvenor Square 1727 onwards; rebuilt and in Bath's Queen Square 1729 onwards Summerson 1947. The Scottish architect Robert Adam is credited with the development of the house itself.

Early terraces were also built by the two John Woods in Bath and under the direction of John Nash in Regent's Park, London, and the name was picked up by speculative builders like Thomas Cubitt and soon became commonplace. It is far from being the case that terraced houses were only built for people of limited means, and this is especially true in London, where some of the wealthiest people in the country owned terraced houses in locations such as Belgrave Square and Carlton House Terrace. They are hallmarks of Georgian architecture.

By the early Victorian period, a terrace had come to designate any style of housing where individual houses repeating one design are joined together into rows. The style was used for workers' housing in industrial districts during the great industrial boom following the industrial revolution, particularly in the houses built for workers of the expanding textile industry. The terrace style spread widely in the United Kingdom, and was the usual form of high density residential housing up to World War II, though the 19th century need for expressive individuality inspired variation of facade details and floor-plans reversed with those of each neighbouring pair, to offer variety within the standardised format.

Working-class terraced houses in Pakenham Street, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1981, with windows and doors of unoccupied houses bricked-up to deter vandals. The houses have since been fully restored.

A major distinction is between through terraces, whose houses have both a front and a back door, and back-to-backs, which are bricked in on three sides. Since the Second World War, housing redevelopment has led to many outdated or dilapidated terraces being cleared to make room for tower blocks, which occupy a much smaller area of land. Because of this land use in the inner city areas could in theory have been used to create greater accessibility, employment or recreational or leisure centres. However botched implementation meant that in many areas like Manchester or the London estates the tower blocks offered no real improvement for rehoused residents over their prior terraced houses.

In 2005 the English Heritage report Low Demand Housing and the Historic Environment found that repairing a standard Victorian terraced house over 30 years is around 60% cheaper than building and maintaining a newly built house. In a 2003 survey for Heritage Counts a team of experts contrasted a Victorian terrace with a house built after 1980, and found that:

The research demonstrated that, contrary to earlier thinking, older housing actually costs less to maintain and occupy over the long-term life of the dwelling than more modern housing. Largely due to the quality and life-span of the materials used, the Victorian terraced house proved almost £1,000 per 100 m2 cheaper to maintain and inhabit on average each year.