Porch cages are less about security and more about ownership | Photo: Theresa Stigale
A Family Tradition
When Marilyn Cruz was growing up in Kensington in the 1980s, Latino families often had lots of kids. Her aunt, who lived nearby her parents’ home on Hancock Street just north of Thompson, had 18 children. The kids often played stick ball in front of the house. Neighbors threw loud, boisterous parties that spilled onto the sidewalk and even over to her aunt’s steps and porch. So when Cruz’s aunt decided to put bars up around the porch she wasn’t exactly thinking about keeping burglars out. Her motivation was protecting her windows from the balls the kids hit in the street and defining for her neighbors, and the community, the outdoor space she considered her own.
For outsiders passing through a neighborhood where bars cover most windows, fences surround rec centers and schools, and bulletproof glass protects clerks in many corner shops, the caged porches might look like just another measure to keep intruders out. But Cruz sees something else. “There was nothing about security when it started,” she says now, about the cage her aunt put up, and those that many others in Kensington installed on their own porches. “It was really more of an extension of family space into the outdoors.” Cruz, who works as a realtor and property manager at Coral Street Arts House, returned to Kensington after college and raised her children in the neighborhood where she grew up.
The porch on the front of the house on Hancock Street appealed to her parents’ desire for outdoor space and the traditional lifestyle of their native Puerto Rico. Her father played guitar on the porch. Neighbors would sit and watch their children as they played outside. It allowed families to use the outdoors in a way they could not have with a stoop or a patch of paved public sidewalk. Many of the row homes in the neighborhood had roof decks, but these appealed less to Latino families because of safety concerns for their children, according to Cruz. Even now, decades after many were installed, the “birdcages”–as the partially enclosed porches are sometimes called–are everywhere in the neighborhood.
European and North African influences viewed through a Latin American lens | Photo: Theresa Stigale
Moor Than Just Security Bars
Ariel Vazquez, an architect living in South Kensington, has studied the origins of these covered porches or cobertizos and traces the style back to the Arabs and Moors who inhabited the Iberian Peninsula beginning in the 8th century. Vazquez, who grew up in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, moved to the United States in 2000 to study architecture at Drexel University. He went to Holland to get his master’s degree and soon found the work of Michel-Jean Bertrand, a French architectural theorist whose writings have not been translated into English. A book by Bertrand called “Urban Residential Architecture: The Home, the Neighborhood, the City” (in the author’s own rough translation) led Vazquez to pursue the European and North African roots of the style he saw on many row houses in Kensington, where he began practicing architecture after he returned from Holland.
In the Andalusian region of southern Spain, in cities like Cordoba and Granada, and also in Lisbon and Belem in Portugal, this Moorish influence can be seen in colonnaded walkways in gardens. These arcaded sidewalks blur the boundaries of public and private space. Particularly in Lisbon, the ornate ironwork enclosing many balconies and window boxes on urban buildings bring to mind the caged porches in Kensington.
But the manifestations of this style in Philadelphia are filtered through Latin American traditions and sensibilities, and the inspiration for Kensington’s cobertizos comes, surprisingly, from a more rural style of built environment. “Particularly in a place like Puerto Rico where there is a lot of farming, the front yard is the gateway to your home,” says Vazquez. In much of the Caribbean and South and Central America, even in large cities like Santo Domingo or San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital, Vazquez point out that residential properties often begin on one street and run all the way back to the next parallel street. “So, when you decide to build your house,” Vazquez says, “you put it right in the middle, so you have a big front yard and a big backyard.” This allows the owners to maximize their views of the city and nature around them, as well as provide a buffer between the home and the street, he says. “The problem is, adapting the row homes to this idea.”
In Philadelphia–particularly at the time when the row homes in Kensington were being built–space has always been at a premium, so buildings often occupy as much of their plot as possible. Many of the neighborhood’s two-story brick houses were built for workers at the steam-powered textile mills that made Kensington the hub of working-class Philadelphia beginning in the 1840s. Those mills haven’t run for more than half a century, but many of the houses remain. So, how does an owner of a Kensington row house, which literally abuts public property on the street side, create a gateway in the Latin American tradition?
Vernacular gateways keep social customs (and small children) alive | Photo: Theresa Stigale
As Vazquez walks through South Kensington on an overcast September day, he nods to neighbors and points out the vernacular gateways they have added, or modified, on their homes. Walking north on Cadwallader Street from Oxford, Vazquez stops on the opposite side of the street from a row house with its own modest gateway. A black iron fence cordons three feet of the sidewalk in front of the house. A wide, waist-high gate leads to three marble steps up to the front door on the left side of the house. Another narrower gate leads to an arched and gated alleyway on the right side of the house. Brown and white-striped aluminum awnings offer shade below each window. Behind the black fence, which features bars shaped in floral designs every four feet, a row of potted plants lines the front of the house, packed tight between the alleyway and the steps.
A Community As Extended Family
Up the block on the other side of the street, a more formal cobertizo fronts another row home. A brown aluminum awning covers an area about the same size as the other house’s gateway. Large, black intricately ornamented iron grates are set into the chin-high concrete wall. The wall is painted yellow. The black bars begin to bulge out at face height as they form a large cage that envelopes the porch. An older man with a thick mustache watches from the doorway behind the black gate as Vazquez passes. A young girl, maybe the man’s granddaughter, reclines in a plastic chair on the porch. The black grates keep her mostly hidden, but her movement shows in flashes as she gets up to talk to the older man as Vazquez walks north up the block. The houses next to this one do not have outdoor spaces that are defined so clearly and there is no other activity on the street other than pedestrians passing through.
These cobertizos on Cadwallader are typical of the neighborhood, but each homeowner uses different flourishes that display the Latin American roots of their style. Up Bodine Street, just west of American, a pair of well-kept row homes stand on an otherwise weedy, fallow block. Every window is caged in white bars that bulge out for potted plants, a way to capture a bit of nature at the threshold of each room. Both sets of concrete steps are caged in white iron. Across American Street and one block up Hancock, a row house abuts a brick warehouse with cinderblocks in place of windows. Black wrought iron balconies reach across the second and third floors of the home, which is painted in bright coral, striking in contrast with the large white windows. The house’s shell is unremarkable, but this facelift has given it outdoor space and provided a sense of identity, if not a literal gateway.
Some homeowners use vertical space for their cobertizos, building covered decks on top of their homes. Though this provides families with outdoor space, both Marilyn Cruz and Ariel Vazquez agree that it does not foster community in the way that a ground-level porch does.
“Birdcages” are both creative, individual expressions and declarations of belonging to a community | Photo: Theresa Stigale
“When you have that outdoor space, they talk to each other,” Cruz says. “Here’s the test of a community–you go into North Philly and any lady you talk is going to know who’s sick on the block, everything everybody is up to.” Without the porches there would be fewer opportunities for neighbors to talk, she says.
“People are social,” says Vazquez. “Different architectural forms, like the cobertizos, allow people to come together.”
The flourishes and ornamentation on the porches represent a tradition of pride in the Latino community in Kensington that stretches back decades. “In our community, and in the Italian community in South Philly too, we always have our windows decorated,” says Cruz. “You have the nice vase and some flowers. People want to show that they have nice stuff.”
But as older members of the community increasingly move out of Kensington, some of the character has diminished, says Cruz. “When I was a kid, you could walk up and down Aramingo, all the way to Port Richmond, and every holiday every house would be decorated. I mean every house. Decorations would be hanging from the porch railings. You don’t see that anymore.”
Cultural Investment And New Development
As a realtor working in the neighborhood, Cruz says she sees how developers are altering the streetscape in order to get the most money out of their investments. In Kensington especially, developers build houses with as much square footage and as many bedrooms as possible, so they can charge higher rents to students from nearby Temple University. For new homeowners, a big house can also look attractive. “I get the draw with the big houses,” says Cruz. “But they [the buyers] don’t think about utilities.” And very few new houses include porches. To maximize indoor square footage developers do not provide outdoor space for new homes.
These new quasi-suburban houses accommodate cobertizos | Photo: Theresa Stigale
As more and more houses are built without porches, the sense of community fostered by these semi-public spaces disappears as well. This works to drive young families who want a strong community out of the neighborhood, says Cruz. Behind her mother’s home, a developer recently built two large houses. People on the block had hoped new families would move in, but now both are filled with students.
In parts of Kensington and nearby Fairhill, also predominantly Latino, empty side lots have provided families with ways to maintain traditions from Latin America. “Some of these side lots become spaces for a shrine with the Virgin,” says Vazquez. “I’ve seen people create gardens with a trellis that creates an outdoor dining room.” For some residents, the cobertizo doesn’t have to be in front of the house.
Sometimes, however, a community’s living living traditions reveal themselves in entirely domestic and unremarkable ways, vinyl siding and all. Back on the block of Hancock where Marilyn Cruz’s parents bought their home with a porch many years ago, there is an unlikely, grassy patch of new development: three sets of twin houses and one single. They stand about 30 feet back from the street, front lawns filled with grass and trees and clipped shrubs. Each house looks bland and suburban, but each has a porch, and each property stretches all the way back to Palethorpe Street, where fences close off the backyards. Behind one house a large sheet of plastic hangs on tent poles. There’s ample space for a family to eat meals and to host get-togethers under the pitched tarp roof. Communities are often lost when new development moves in, but apparently this one rare developer had built with neighborhood tradition in mind.
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To launch the gallery click any of the images below.
Photographs by Teresa Stigale
Sorry- no matter how hard some might want to try, there’s nothing artistic, social or “Latino” (whatever the heck that word means) about caging up your house. These cages are reserved for ghetto neighborhoods where crime, drugs and filth are predominant. The main factor is security, not social or ethnic roots-unless caging up houses is some kind of Puerto Rican tradition now.
I found the vine with leaf accents house-cage intriguing. I wonder, the owner can afford custom work to cage up but not to paint or clean up the facade of his home? I start by making sure I maintain the front of my home clean.
I think that’s a bit more essential to these communities.
I have to agree, the concept of enclosing an open front porch in a cage to promote socialization is just absurd.
This style of home is not unique to Kensington. The open front porch is prevalent in many Philadelphia neighborhoods, from South Philly to the Northeast, and everywhere in between. It is prevalent in the Northwood section where I grew up. These porches were centerpieces of neighborhood interaction and socialization, precisely because they were not enclosed by iron cages.
The practice of “caging” the front porch is not unique to Kensington, or to areas with a predominant Latino or Puerto Rican population, either. You’ll see this throughout North Philly, West Philly, Southwest Philly, etc. You’ll also see the lower-level windows barred on the same homes. That is because there is one common factor uniting those neighborhoods; high crime and need for security.
Sorry, but aldrigkg is correct, and them’s the facts.
RIGHT ON! I was born and raised in Kensington at a time when ‘FAMILIES” truly LIVED in the community , kept their houses CLEAN, swept their sidewalks and the curbs, washed their marble steps and socialized with all who passed from their porches (if you were lucky enough to have one). No ONE had $$, nor an education, nor an ‘in your face ethnicity”. The neighborhood was diversed and took pride and respected who they were as a neighborhood~ AMERICANS. And by the way, we did not have to even lock our front doors because if you did not live there you did not enter(:
The ‘cages’ look terrible and diminish the beauty of what could be a beautiful looking community that looks welcoming and friendly.
You, too, got it right,hasenpfeffer!
But Kriaris, did you not know that only animals are ‘caged’…..the lightness cannot be felt until a potential porch enclosure is done appropriately.
I happen to know this house very well, along with the welder who did the work. It’s a piece of art he did for his mother. Keep your judgements to yourself.
I’m Hispanic, woman and with a 70 yr old mom-I’m not rich and single parent (just because it’s good to clarify my minority criteria and credentials).
The last thing I want for my mom is for her to grow old living in a cage. Plz, there’s nothing considerate, loving or smart about doing otherwise.
If he wants to display his art- then we have these places call “galleries”.
Meanwhile, take that money that would have been used in materials and maybe eventually all the “art” that would sell and get your mom set up for the rest of her life in the best place you can find.
That’s the least you should do for your mom- not use her house as your personally gallery.
So basically it took you all three years to finally find out what I’ve been saying all along about things like vinyl awnings, porches, etc when all you had to do was ask people from the neighborhood. People like to feel like they have a “home” and not just one of the many identical rowhomes on the block. People like to have a place to sit outside and socialize even when it’s raining, and people who are proud of their homes like to give them their own personal touch.
Hmm, is that how we show “pride” in our city and our communities now? -By not maintaining our cleaning up our homes?
Wow!
who are the people designing and making these gates?
Anyone with two brain cells knows that people cage their homes for security reasons. Some do it to keep crime out, some do it to keep the cops out.
Can’t believe some people are trying to romanticize this.
Zero imagination – what a shame.
Please note our rules for commenting here: http://hiddencityphila.org/independent-journalism/. We will not print attacks on other readers, writers, or subjects of stories without a factual basis. We will not publish broad conjecture disguised as hatred, no matter what motivates it. –ed.
I wasn’t aware that in order to post “opinions” on subject, readers and writers “factual basis” is required.
I think (as in my opinion) the romanticizing of these caged up homes in the ghetto is in bad taste and shows a lack of imagination and creativity. You have photos of home sitting next to empty lots and garbage ridden areas, with other homes which are clearly in state of disrepair. To show this as some type of ethnic community social movement is absurd and frankly, quite disturbing. We shouldn’t be glorifying the way the city is falling apart in some areas- Instead, we should be fighting tooth and nail to make them better.
If your site is into censoring critical and alternative views- please be forthright about it instead of attempting to disguise restrict speech under some faux rules for posting given that my posts consist of what are clearly my opinions absent any inappropriate language.
I believe porches, as so well described in this article, are pretty much of a unique architectural feature in the US. I does say something about our feeling about the sense of community. We lived in Cape May for 23 years – talk about porches! In the 19thC it was the place to see and be seen.
I am sorry about the cages, but understand. I think that is better than the complete enclosure, which really eliminates the porch as the community living room.
Can the author tell me where the secopnd picture in the article was taken i.e. the one showing three row houses? Thanks.
Congratulations on an excellently reported and keenly observed story about something I had absolutely no idea existed. By looking at a specific neighborhood and a specific design aspect of its houses, and the cultural connections that design exhibits and hails from, Hidden Cities and Michael Buozis have brought us all the best of urban journalism. I’m jealous 😉 !
I am shocked at the number of negative comments.The reasons for “caging” are numerous. The fact that is a unique alteration to row homes is the subject.So what’s the issue? Here they are a expression of ownership,in a tight urban space. Lighten up will you?
Interesting story.
I am not convinced that the gated porch’s historical cousin, the cobertizo, is a “cause” of the phenomenon documented in this piece, but I would certainly consider the ancestral memory of an ethnic enclave in a discussion of its vernacular building style. As some commenters have pointed out–with more contempt than solidarity, I might add–security is a more satisfactory answer to the “why” of the gates.
It is important to note that in other parts of the city where the rowhouse is the essential building type–in former ethnic enclaves like South Philly, for instance–the gates never caught on. Why is that? Perhaps because a sense of security, like history itself, is subjective, illusory, a product of arbitrary compartmentalizations? In other words, the gates are one response to living in a high crime area and feeling insecure.
The savage irony is that in neighborhoods with gates, one feels less secure, because the gates are constantly reminding one of the crime, mistrust and insecurity endemic to the area.
It was such a relief to scroll to the comments on this story and find I would NOT have to be the first to note what a crock the reasoning here is. If this were a black or white community, etc. about this issue it would never have taken such an angle. To write this as if the porches without the cages are not also extensions of personal family space is nonsense.
There are extensive stretches in Hunting Park, for example, where one can find many Hispanic families out cleaning their streets and porches regularly, and in fact, some blocks there are oddly immaculate in contrast to other nearby blocks that are in disarray; but the one thing that continually seems sad to me is the “caging” of so many porches, in a sense diminishing the extent to which the well-kept homes make a good impression.
Incidentally this article made me think about how I believe North Philadelphia from the alphabet streets in Kensington west to 9th Street from Lehigh to the Boulevard, is rather unlike any other urban setting I have ever seen. It’s amazing how much more cultural diversity is there still than in many other communities of similar income demographics, in the city.
I understand the desire for the cages/cobertizos. I recently purchased a house in Francisville-North Central with big windows on the front of the house at ground level. It’s clear that someone has broken thorugh them before and I don’t want to pay ADT for an alarm system. I am considering installing this on my house. That others think it makes the neighborhood look insecure, the reality is that it is. So is enclosing the porch the better solution or having people break into my house? Getting smaller windows that someone couldn’t get through will cost me 2k. But a cobertizo will secure my home further by adding another lock between me and the crooks. And I will be able to keep outdoor furniture and whatever else I want without having it disappear. To the cultural connection, it is real. In Brazil they have walls surrounding homes in many communities because of rampant petty theft. You can walk down entire blocks and not see almost anything of people’s yards, porches or homes. Not pretty but mostly effective.
I personally always thought those gates were for protection in many ways ..
From violence out side the home and to keep the cops out ..
Im from philly and know a few people who hustled wen i was growing up and have nice stuff lots of us could ever afford in the hood with out a good paying job or collecting like 5 ssi and welfare checks… So tht fence keeps familys safe and keeps burglars out also …
Yes this area is known for being dirty and drugs addiction every where …
But back in the day the Spanish community kept it looking nice ..
But lots of familys were forced to move away to raise there kids better in a better and safer area …
The ones tht cant afford to leAve are stock there with the ones who hustle or use …
I dont think none of this is a joking matter tbh and yall should leave the ignorance behind before you comment.. We as people need to learn to come together as a community like the past n fight to get our neighborhood back … But no one does anything anymore but talk bs.. Move and complain …
Its truly sad and its everywhere and the black on black crime is out of hand … The cops dont truly care Like idc who we are lets do better as people and show this younger generation tht this isnt it … Period
Where can i find a contractor to do this for me?