8 Old American Front Porch Features That Vanished From Every Neighborhood

In 1955, a Cleveland mother could sit on her front porch on a Tuesday afternoon and within one hour speak to four neighbors, sign for a milk delivery, watch six children walk past on their way home from school, and hear three different radios playing through three different screen doors. None of that happens anymore. Between 1880 and 1975, eight specific front porch features built the social geography of American neighborhoods — and every one of them vanished within a single generation. From the wrap-around porch of the Queen Anne Victorian, to the haint-blue ceiling the Gullah Geechee mixed from lime and indigo to keep wandering spirits away, to the milk box that solved package theft a hundred years before Amazon, to the Bunting Steel glider painted mint green that sat on every middle-class porch from 1948 through 1975 — each one tells a piece of how American neighborhoods used to be designed for people, not for cars. If your grandfather had a porch swing, if your old house still has the hooks in the ceiling where one used to hang, if you remember the metallic twang of a screen door spring on a summer evening — you'll remember every one of these. 00:00 Hook — A Cleveland Tuesday afternoon in 1955 01:08 #8 The wrap-around porch ($140 in the 1908 Sears catalog) 02:19 #7 The porch swing with chain hooks 03:33 #6 The screened sleeping porch (and the myth of the 200 bans, debunked) 05:07 #5 The front porch glider (Bunting Steel's 1934 patent) 06:44 #4 The screen door spring with brass handle 07:43 #3 The haint blue ceiling (and the Gullah Geechee origin) 09:16 #2 The milk box and paper box (vs $12 billion in stolen packages today) 10:59 #1 The front porch itself, as the neighborhood's living room 12:56 What we lost when air conditioning came indoors QUESTION FOR YOU: Did your grandmother have a wrap-around porch? Does your old house still have the hooks in the ceiling where the swing used to hang? What color was the porch ceiling painted? Tell me below — I read every comment. This is video 3 in the Vanished American room-by-room series. Already published: Old Kitchen Features, Old Bathroom Features. Coming next Sunday: Old Hallway Features (vestibules, transoms, phone nooks). Subscribe to Vanished American for more lost features of the American home — every Sunday a new room, a new generation of vanished American family life. As one Gullah elder said: "We painted the sky right over our heads, to keep trouble from coming in." What we gained in privacy, we lost in neighbors. #vanishedamerican #frontporch #americana #1950s #1960s #vintageamerica #midcentury #oldhouses #americanhomes #nostalgia #wraparoundporch #porchswing #haintblue #milkbox #americanhistory #neighborhood #suburbs #lostamerica #forgottenamerica #midcenturymodern