I'm sure he meant the early 1900s. I've usually heard these called "streetcar suburbs" for obvious reasons. They tend to have a good mix of urban and suburban vibes. Unlike the car-focused developments after the war, these neighborhoods are super walkable with local retail or other spots just a stroll away, or a short streetcar hop. The design is all about pedestrians, with narrow streets, plenty of sidewalks, and often tree-lined avenues. The houses, seem to have been more often built by skilled craftsmen, and have unique architectural details, unlike the cookie-cutter homes you see in later post-war suburbs.
Crappy? I'm not so sure about that. I've lived at maybe 15 Southern New England addresses in my life and the three built after 1920 were the cheapest quality. And it's not like they were one in a dozen, or even 1 in 3: from cheap triple deckers to mansions, the area I live is packed full of buildings from that era. The knob and tube electricity has mostly been replaced, but most places I've lived still had gas lamp pipe nipples sticking out of the walls in the common hallways. The entire area is jam packed with buildings from that era.
In what sense? I think people conflate "big brick building" with "quality". Sure, it's nice, as is some of the labour-intensive finishing work from that era. But nearly every bit of a modern house is "higher quality" than a home built 100+ ago, thanks mostly to the building code.
(please don't link me some story of a shoddy builder)
but all those buildings are up to code now too right? And the fact that people keep them occupied for so long and renovate speaks to their intrinsic quality I'd think.
but tbh - quality is somewhat a red herring. Today, quality is all because there is caulk (greatest invention), plumbing, and longer lasting paint. Yesteryear, quality was because they used all natural materials which are unaffordable now. Either way, keep a house dry and occupied, and it will stand for centuries, regardless of when it was built.
Homes in greater Boston are definitely not all or even mostly up to code now. My old ~1900 greater Boston apartment still had live knob-and-tube wiring. Fortunately the 1880 home I own now was thoroughly rewired and now more or less in line with the electric code, although it’s still far from modern building code in other domains (plumbing, rafter spacing, insulation, stair rise/run, list goes on).
In some important ways quality was due to the availability of materials, but cheap labor played a big role too. Many building practices before WWII were extremely labor-intensive compared to today. Lathe and plaster walls, knob and tube, board sheathing, fieldstone/rubble foundations, mortise door hardware, etc.
My 1850 triple-decker has code compliant electrical and plumbing, egresses, common area lighting and dual exits. Definitely not accessible and the stairs are typical for the era— the last big brick building I lived in that was built around 1900 was super solid but the stairs were murder— like 7" treads and it was a 4th floor walkup.
> In what sense? I think people conflate "big brick building" with "quality". Sure, it's nice, as is some of the labour-intensive finishing work from that era. But nearly every bit of a modern house is "higher quality" than a home built 100+ ago,
> (please don't link me some story of a shoddy builder)
I don't need to link you to anything because I'm talking about places I've lived and as of thus, I've presented exactly as much empirical evidence as you have. And few of the building were brick— almost all of the places I've lived were timber framed. Look up pictures of Southern New England neighborhoods if you want to see what I'm talking about. The television show "This Old House" is entirely based on renovating New England homes from that supposedly poor quality era and it's been on since 1979.
It's clearly different where you live. I know about a half dozen carpenters, including my best friend of thirty years, and every single one of them deliberately sought a house from this era because they are excellent quality.
> thanks mostly to the building code.
The building code will reduce the risk of fires and reduce the risk of dying in them if they occur, it will ensure that people looking to make a quick buck flipping a shoddy will have a harder time doing so, it will ensure your plumbing will probably work for a while— but better building materials were much cheaper, as was skilled labor, and there were quite a number of known good designs for the areas quirks with weather, etc. They were generally just plain-old good?
Is this really true? Unless urban renewal demolished them wholesale, all late 19th century neighborhoods exist virtually fully intact. There was no filtering of low quality vs high quality.
Beyond that, in the area I refer to, Southern New England, the vast majority of those buildings are still in everyday regular use, and with the exception of obsolete institutional or industrial buildings, very few have been demolished. Of course, some got leveled to build bigger buildings, but not that many. I would say 95% of residential buildings within a mile of me are from 1915 or earlier, most of them timber framed, and my neighborhood has about 15k people per square mile, so it's a decent sample size.
This is a depressingly good question. I hadn't ever considered we'd be far enough into this one to refer back to the 90's and early aughts as "turn of the century"
That's why I use the French term "fin-de-siècle" which is well understood by educated English speakers and yet always refers to the end of the 19th century without additional qualifications.
Define “educated” and cite the survey showing how well understood it is among “English speakers” (British English? Commonwealth Nations Generally? N.A. English Speakers? Non-native/ESL?)
I use “fortnightly” to mean “in 2 weeks” because bi-weekly is ambiguous, and while the game is hugely popular I still assume at least 1 person on any email chain with me reads that and is thinking “the fuck does he talk like a Victorian English Dandy for?”
> the French term "fin-de-siècle" which is well understood by educated English speakers
This may not be as well understood as you believe. I am an educated English speaker, who has many educated English speaking friends and family, I have never heard this phrase.
I agree with the other commenters that this is obscure. I coincidentally heard the term for the first time about 3 days ago (in the context of "socialism by fin-de-siècle" - the expectation that communism was inevitable among the left wing at that time.
