Transportation II. The pedestrian environment; frontages C. Dooryard & light court; forecourt; stoop

Of all the types of building frontages, the pattern known as dooryard and light court is the one demonstrating the greatest number of sophisticated variations. It was the model used in many neighborhoods, both elegant and modest, built during the flowering of American cities between the Civil War and WW I. It is an adaptable pattern, and so the neighborhoods and buildings using it have proven more resistant to decline than others, and have often led the way in urban revivals. The dooryard frontage and the light court frontage are the up and down versions, respectively, of the tactic of changing the level of a front setback area from the level of the sidewalk. Different as they are on first appearance their common goal is to provide privacy by de-aligning the eye levels of pedestrians and building occupants. The level change also sharply discourages incursions from the sidewalk into the semiprivate space of the yard, even when there is a minimal setback or a very intense pedestrian stream. The level change also renders untenable the temptation, present in degraded neighborhoods, to park cars within the front setback zone. The dooryard/light court is thus a value-stabilizing element. The dooryard’s raised front garden is often made using material from the house’s cellar excavation, thereby saving haulage costs. In the more visually elegant versions the level change is in the range of three to four feet above the sidewalk, attained via a short run of steps in the sharp earthen slope or retaining wall defining the yard edge. This amount of change still allows the surface of the garden to be presented as a prominent visual offering to passersby. When the dooryard is paved as terrace, used either by a household or a restaurant, the eye level of persons seated there is at or just higher than that of pedestrians — a comfortable relationship. The depressed light court gives access and light to the front rooms of a semibasement. It is usually formed by a sidewalk-edge retaining wall with a metal fence or hedge to protect passersby from falling in. It is a pattern usually encountered a notch farther up the urban Transect than the dooryard, because it indicates a sector in which subgrade space is valuable enough to be made fully habitable. Care must be taken that the light court not be proportioned and detailed like a moat, too far down or too narrow to admit a sense of easy, safe access. In principally residential areas, the leaves of trees planted down in the court will be at the eye level of passersby, affording seasonal privacy screening. Dooryards or light courts must be continuous, and streets using this pattern must usually deploy them along an entire block face. On the other hand, The forecourt should be used intermittently, mixed with other frontages. With a forecourt a portion of the building front is set back from the sidewalk to make space for gardens, vehicular dropoffs, or service loading. It accommodates, for example, the porte-cochère of hotels and can provide a dropoff for other high traffic buildings, such as apartment houses and office buildings. Because it must begin with the adjacent frontage, recede from it to form the court, and then come forward again to deliver continuity to the adjacent frontage, the forecourt is associated with larger buildings and thus is one of the more urban frontage types. One warning; because it promotes vehicles crossing the sidewalk, it is inherently less pedestrian-friendly and should be used judiciously. The stoop frontage is characterized by building facades set at or very close to the sidewalk line, with a raised ground floor reached by a high set of steps known as a stoop. (The term originates from the Dutch settlement of New York.) The height brings the first-floor window sill decisively above the gaze of passersby, ameliorating the incompatibility of very short urban setbacks and ground-floor residential use. The stoop may be within a short front yard or the public right-of-way. Despite the strong popular association of stoop-sitting with working-class neighborhoods, there is no necessary correlation between the stoop frontage and household income level; witness the stoops in Washington DC’s affluent Georgetown neighborhood. The stoop, where it is used with party-wall housing, requires that handicapped accessibility be provided from the rear yard. Thus the stoop, in contemporary development, ought always to be used in conjunction with a lane or alley system. u