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Their origins are quite
Their origins are quite simple. 3 stories was the tallest one could build with balloon framing. Lumber dimensions were also limited to what could be carried in horse drawn carriage or early truck.
Love the idea of three family
Love the idea of three family housing. The tenants pay for the owner's mortgage and in return the building is well cared for. Plus the money stays in neighborhood as opposed to going to some faceless 'developers' looking for quick profit.
I hate wooden triple deckers though. Really, wooden construction has no place in a developed country.
You're righ
We should switch over to mud like the Middle East.
How about bricks? Or steel
How about bricks? Or steel and concrete?
ME builds almost exclusively
ME builds almost exclusively with concrete. They have lots of sand, not so much on the mining, smelting, and milling infrastructure required for producing steel.
Steel whut
Yeah all them skyscrapers in Dubai don't involve any steel.
That's right they are are
That's right they are are concrete framed.
Steel Shipping Containers!
They are only 8' wide, but can be bolted together in many different configurations.
Puma City visited Boston for a while and it was most excellent: http://www.lot-ek.com/PUMA-CITY
They are also hurricane resistant, can be raised above flood tides, and outfit as people see fit.
Something like this could be stacked three-deep for a low maintenance three or six apartment building. Viola! A steel triple-decker: http://staugustine.com/news/local-news/2013-03-26#...
Here's some larger examples of workshops, dorm rooms, and other residential "cargotecture": http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environm...
And, someday, for my minimalist oceanside retreat (swoon!): http://www.leedcabins.com/Home.html
Those containers were made
Those containers were made for ocean shipping ,check out the paint ,probably lead based primer, nasty stuff.
And most triple deckers ...
... likely have a lot more hazardous lead in them since deleading only takes place when somebody gets poisoned.
Not to mention asbestos insulation, shingles, roofing, and heating system containment.
Not to mention the high amounts of heavy metals in preserved lumber used for replacement decks and porches.
It is still cheaper to remove any bad paint and flooring from containers than from a triple decker. It is also more ecologically sustainable to do so and reuse a container to create a new building in areas where there are surplus containers than to stick build.
http://www.mekaworld.com/new/2011/07/05_meka-stutt...
'' . likely have a lot more
'' . likely have a lot more hazardous lead in them since deleading only takes place when somebody gets poisoned.''
Nay ,nay , Swirls , ever hear of a section 8 house inspection ? Must be de-leaded before occupancy. Plus , if you know your onions , before you buy any real estate , make it a condition for a lead paint inspection and negotiate who pays for removal. Your containers would still be subject to inspection , and believe me , having hooked a bunch of them ,they are heavily leaded prime paint , and probably the finish paint too . Altho they have nice wood floors , nicely shellacked if they havent been through the mill. Stay away from used rail boxes though , they are beat to shit. I believe there is a yard in Mansfield loaded with them , but i may be wrong.
Shipping containers
are not cost effective. A used 40 footer will cost you $3-4k and square foot costs to build it out is more money than to stick build a structure with the same cubic footage.
Stick build a hurricane and quake resistant structure?
That will cost a lot more than using a shipping crate.
Also, cost is a matter of location. In California they can't give them away.
Wood is good.
I live in wood frame/fieldstone foundation triple decker built in 1910. Given that this thing has withstood the hurricane of '38 and every hurricane, blizzard and other storm since then, I am feeling ok about wood. We try not to play with matches, however.
Wood Jerry, wood.
Trees are for butts
There is only one thing wood should still be used for: high quality, multi-ply toilet paper. Paper use for writing and reading is obsolete - buy a Kindle already. And wood construction just doesn't stand up to age, fire, weather, or noise. As someone who lives under several elephants I can attest that wooden floors are a fucking sin. Concrete and steel is what every building should be made of, with mandatory retrofitting of all existing buildings at an accelerated schedule. And if you're lucky enough to have a yard, now a days you can even get a nice deck made entirely from recycled plastic that looks just like wood, but holds up forever with no painting or staining.
Steel?
Because housing prices in most of Boston are already affordable. Steel would also then require houses to be built by Unions, further inflating the cost of construction. The only Steel structure home i see being built are $10,000,000 houses near "The Country Club".
Yeah, there are many many
Yeah, there are many many reasons why the houses are built the way they are. There's unions, 'throwaway' culture, historical precedent etc. But I'm thinking more of a 'better world' scenario. I definitely agree with the original article's point - three family buildings are great for urban housing in US. More individualistic than high rises, but much more dense and efficient than single families. They could be built to last for centuries, but that will never happen here.
Many (most?) wooden homes in Boston are already > century old
(incuding mine) - and as isaacg pointed out above, there's no evidence of imminent widespread collapse. I don't think that just because a structure is built of wood means it can't last centuries - there's a wooden home just over on Poplar that was built in early 18th century, and all those lovely big Victorians in JP date from the early-mid 19th. Also, I think you might want to do a comparative analysis of the full-cycle costs of steel/concrete/brick/wood production/transport/construction before you make conclusions re:"better world" solutions (by which I assume you mean sustainability & equity).
I will probably be somewhat
I will probably be somewhat complex to compare as there's a lot variables. But from the engineering standpoint, wooden multi-family construction just doesn't make sense. There are many deficiencies in wood frame buildings that we have grown to accept that just don't exist in solid masonry buildings. Like a fire in one apartment will probably be contained in that apartment. Sound insulation is just way better. There's no cavities in which mice and mold can flourish.
I would also like to point out that those older buildings were built out of much higher quality old growth solid wood. I see a lot of new construction that is all soft new wood and engineered products. Will it last even 50 years?
Yes
Of course a wooden building will last 'even 50 years'. If the exterior is well designed and installed, then the internal wooden structures will last a very long time provided they stay dry and free of insect damage. Go tour a colonial house sometimes and you'll see the roof rafters were often complete young tree trunks @ 9" in diameter. Nothing old growth about that.
If you want to argue that masonry construction has advantages, fine but engineered wood isn't a bad product.
It's not the age of the trees
It's not the age of the trees when cut, but how quickly they grow - how many rings per inch - that indicates strength in pine. A tree growing in the shade of a natural New England forest will be a lot denser and stronger (and older when it reaches a similar diameter) than a tree grown in a modern southern plantation.
i am not sure you can even
i am not sure you can even use metal studs in residential construction , by code .
Must depend on where. My
Must depend on where. My parents out of state have a house that uses metal studs. It was originally built by a contractor for himself.
Local Variations based on Available Materials
Triple deckers being wood has nothing to do with developed country/not. After all, there are an awful lot of stone houses in Western Ireland ...
What it has to do with are two things: locally available materials and the advent of effective firefighting.
Notice that Chicago had strict "no wood exterior" building codes for obvious reasons, yet still had "two flats" and "three flats" built from brick. My niece lived in a "three flat" which was so very much like the Boston triple deckers she spent part of her childhood in that certain items were all kept in the same exact places. The only difference was a brick exterior to prevent flames from jumping house to house so easily.
But timber was also more expensive in the Midwest/Plains areas than it was in Boston. One reason that Boston has so many wood three-story buildings is the availability of rail-shipped cheap lumber from Maine and Maritime Canada at the time of the big building boom. Same reason that building booms and city expansions at the same time in Seattle and Portland were mostly wood-frame buildings - cost.
Finally, Boston's tripledeckers rarely firestorm beyond three or four buildings because firefighting became mechanized, professionalized, and highly effective around the time that they were built.
Why not wood
Rather than join in with the ridiculous snark, let me ask a legitimately innocent question: What's the objection to wood?
I prefer concrete.
Prior to Boston I lived in Europe and in Florida. Both places primarily build out of concrete. In most of Europe (except scandinavia), even interior walls and floors are concrete.
What I like about concrete construction: Silence! When walking up concrete stairs or floors, it is very silent and steady and I never heard neighbors flush their toilet, like here in Boston. Floors do not sag, walls do not warp, sills do not rot. I also like that concrete houses are safer from fires, safe from termites and other insects. Very solid feeling. It was more costly to heat up in the winter though.
What I like about wood construction: Ease and cheapness of remodeling, "warm feeling" especially in the winter, feels more personal. Easy to attach/hang things on walls. Cheaper to heat up and insulate. Less moldy, since it is more breathable.
All in all I think if I have a choice, I prefer concrete. But I really like my small wooden house here in Brigthon. It was made 100 years ago and is still very solid.
Fire safety less clear
Most of the danger from fire is not from the structure itself burning; it's from interior materials burning and producing toxic gas. Concrete buildings have insulation, rugs, paint, furniture, etc. just like wood buildings. But I agree with you about the noise; wood structures really carry it.
Just one question, however:
How safe are concrete buildings in the events of a full-blown earthquake? From what I've heard, they're not. I realize that (full-blown) earthquakes are rare in this part of the country, but...
The same thing regarding tornadoes.
Why stop at three stories?
http://mg-architecture.ca/wooden-skyscrapers/
But, seriously, fire is a consideration ... as is insect/water damage.
Economies of scale
While it might be somewhat profitable for developers to cobble together a 45-story steel, concrete and glass termite hill and sell "luxury" shoeboxes to suckers at $1000+ a square foot, a three-family structure built using similar construction techniques would simply be too expensive for anyone to afford.
What happened to rooming houses?
They are an even more affordable and dense ("smart") housing option to solve the shortage!
Shared bathrooms probably a dealbreaker
if by rooming houses you mean the same thing as what my grandparents lived in, tenements....then I'd say either the common bathroom, or the lack of bathroom altogether may have largely contributed to their demise.
Nope - Snob Zoning
The belief that poorer people were a source of evil led to them being zoned out. Shared bathrooms? Every 10 person family had one.
Right
What do you think would happen to Boston's violent crime rate if all poor non-working people on government assistance suddenly vanished into thin air? It will stay the same because all murders, shootings, stabbings, drug deals, armed robberies, violent assaults, etc are perpetrated by the rich Back Bay yuppies and their Wellesley suburbanite minions, right? If that's the case, why are you raising your kids in a ridiculously expensive lily-white suburb or equally expensive fully yuppified, oppresively segregated part of Boston, not in a huge, beautiful yet so affordable Victorian on the wonderfully diverse Geneva Ave?
oh, hey, I just reread my
oh, hey, I just reread my post and it turns out I'm an idiot, sorry.
Good one
Oh wow, how very mature of you. This is a serious question for all the do as I say liberals - if public housing does not harm its surrounding neighborhoods and nonworking poor are, on average, as law-abiding as a typical Westwood soccer mom, why are you paying top dollars to ensure your town/neighborhood has neither public housing nor nonworking poor? Why pay $2 million for a modest house in Weston when you can have a 3000 sqft mansion on Geneva Ave for under 350k? Does any of you have the balls to put your money where your mouth is? Everyone here is screaming about the evil righties demonizing the poor, but I highly doubt anyone is living next to a housing project or a fully section 8 triple-decker.
Well, I think there are many
Well, I think there are many people who would benefit from well-managed SROs.
Some more information from the BRA
I believe this was originally posted on Uhub a long while back, but after a quick google search i was able to find it again:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/63829802/The-Three-Deckers-of-Dorchester
It's a BRA publication from the 1977 about them.
3-families are still common
article says this: the last triple-decker building permit was issued in Boston in 1928
except I know for a fact that several modern 3-families have been built within the past decade because I helped design them.
Where? And what's name of your firm?
n/t
Washington Street at Archdale for one
No, I'm not the architect, but I do remember that one going up. It's a classical triple, too. I want to say it went up in the late 1990s or early aughts. I was heartened to see that go up.
Thanks
Yes Waquiot, early aughts because we were already here in Rosi when those were built (should have jumped to my mind directly, as I drive by there every single day).
There's been so much teardown/rebuild in Mission Hill over the last couple decades, I wonder if there new 3Ds in that mix?
They are now allowed again
They are now allowed again since sprinklers make them a little more safe during a fire. Only now they are built much uglier then back in the day. At least the triple deckers of the past featured beautiful wooden trim, run in place plaster moldings, solid wooden doors and correct proportions. Nowadays it's 'contractor grade' trim and sheetrock throughout. Plus they are as architecturally exciting as a wooden box.
No 3 families
built in Southie in years, unless you consider 3 condo units in one building as being a 3 family.
new three-family on W 2nd
rental or no rental - it's three dwelling units in a single building. Many older triple deckers have been converted to condos too.
Besides the wood part..
The only other thing wrong with triple deckers is that they forgot about sound proofing. All you need are college students or toddlers upstairs and you can forget about sleep, or if you're on the top floor, get used to tip-toeing. All these years, and they never added sound abatement to the design. I think it should be built into building code, and if it is, the code isn't enough.
I used to live in a double-wide triple decker. It was six units.
But where I live now, I've made the error of only checking if the floors were solid 8-|.
I like multi-family housing, but you need more than fiberglass insulation between those walls and floors, especially with modern dry wall. Or, in the case of triple deckers, it's those beautiful pine floors and nothing else..
Hardly 3 families
more like "3 Yuppies and a couple of Hipsters". We can only hope the next Administration does a little more to keep families and the middle class in this City.
Zzzzzzz.
Boston extends further south than you think it does. There are pretty much nothing but families on my street.
Like what? Bring back rent
Like what? Bring back rent control?
Yeah cause RC brought working
Yeah cause RC brought working families into Boston in droves and didn't result in arson and massive neglect of residential properties in deferred maintenance.
Want families back in Boston? fix the damn schools.
Fix the schools
then you have to build housing with more than 1 bedroom. Then you need restaurants that has family style dining, not just serving arugula pizza. Then you need to support children's sports and activities, not pub crawls. Then you have to support car ownership, not discourage it. Have you tried bringing your kid to soccer practice on the back of a Hubway bike? etc. etc, now you get the picture?
The difference between the suburbs and the city
In the suburbs, everything is sprawled miles apart, requiring parents to chauffeur their kids everywhere.
In the city, most things are relatively close, making it possible to walk your kids to their activities. Better yet, you can teach your kids how to walk themselves to soccer practice, and other places. Good exercise too.
You might also want to remember that people did manage to raise children prior to the invention of the automobile. It is possible, we are living proof.
Now you get the picture?
Some "suburbs" have got this one down
But I personally don't consider Somerville, Medford, Cambridge, Brookline, etc. to be suburbs as they are more densely populated than most US cities.
Somerville only ran school buses for a short time when one of their elementary schools burned down. Otherwise, the kids walk or bike, just like they do in Europe.
Places like Medford and Malden did have a lot of driving kids around for a while ... but $4 a gallon gas and rising housing prices, as well as changing attitudes mean that era has ended.
I agree that Somerville, Brookline and Cambridge aren't suburbs,
but I can't say the same about Medford, Malden or Everett. Somerville, Cambridge and Brookline, however (with the exception of the part South of Route 9) imo, feel much more urban and give the feeling of actually being in Boston, even though you're technically not, if you reside in any of the latter 3 places.
Even in most of the towns/cities that're right near Boston, unless one lives right near the MBTA station or the bus depot, they really are better off with a car for driving into the city. This is especially true further out in the so-called bedroom communities, if one gets the drift.
Have you tried bringing your
STRAWMAN ALERT!
Not a hubway bike, but our own bikes. Hint: It isn't any big deal.
Go see what they do in places like Amsterdam and Berlin, where a lot of families don't have cars. Plenty of football practice there.
Exactly
I used to strap a bigarse camp chair to my bike, toss all my coaching bag stuff in panniers or in a duffle that I'd strap to my rack, and then my son would ride his bike with his ball and cleats and drink in his backpack.
He was still playing U8 ... and it was a five mile round trip.
It was also no big deal.
When I was a kid
We lived in a triple decker - Old World style. My Nana and Papa lived on the first floor. My aunt, uncle and cousin lived on the second floor and we lived on the third floor. My Dad owned the house and his parents lived there for free. It was all kinds of awesome.
It was in Neponset in the very early '70s and I wish kids today could have a childhood like that. The older kids played kick the can until it was too dark to see, there were always grownups around keeping kids off their lawn, there was a corner store with penny candy and every house and tiny little yard was immaculate.
Puritan Donut?
Did you hang out at puritan donut?
Puritan Donut
I have to admit that one stumped me. I remember Sunbeam and Bradlees but not Puritan Donuts. I called my Dad and he got all excited at the mention of donuts. He said I was in the right area and that it was where the Citizen's Bank is now near Lambert's.
We should build with HEMP!
All this talk about wood, steel, and concrete. Mannnnn, it's all about the HEMP! Ya'll need to just, like, mellow out and toke the reefer, mannnn. I'm talkin' 'bout hempcrete housing. Or even just hemplastic. Man, shiiiiit, you could even use straight up herb, bro.
Now that's what I call
GREEN BUILDING!
Of course it would have to be certified GREEN by the Buildings Of Natural Grass Foundation.
Already done
Here...you...go.
Turns out hemp is a very attractive building material with similar properties to bamboo. It's a domestic, easy to grow, easy to process, high cellulose crop.