In conversation with Steve Edwins, a local Architect and Assistant Professor of Art at St. Olaf College, we discussed the importance of considerations for both community and privacy in architecture.  In architecture there is the idea of multiple buffering layers or zones starting at the street and progressing towards the house, going from a public realm to a zone of privacy within the house.  Within these zones the porch offers a space between public and private (Edwins Interview).  Jocelyn Hazelwood Donlon, in her book concerning southern porch culture, discusses this concept of “in-betweeness” as limnality.  A limnal space is a space where persons are released from conventional demands by being ambiguously positioned between social systems (Donlon13-14).  These spaces do not necessarily have to be porches they can be stoops, steps, lawns, etc.  So what is it about these “in-between” spaces that are so important to community life?  Edwins pointed out that a porch creates an area of comfort that allows an individual to participate in the public realm of street life while being positioned in semi-private location. 

Larger porch in older Northfield neighborhood

This allows for spontaneous social interaction in an informal setting, that creates forum for relaxed interchanges between people (Mugerauer 111).  Donlon provides us with illustration of such spontaneous social interaction, “But what my grandmother’s house taught me was that by merely occupying a porch, an individual acknowledges her connection to the community at large.  At the very least, porch-dwellers are compelled to greet passerby, familiar or strange (Donlon 2).”  This suggests that porches play an important role in institutionalizing the cultural norm of greetings.  Donlon makes the observation that people in the Midwest (with a less prominent porch culture than the South) seem to have a local convention of averting their eyes, rather than the southern norm of eye contact and a greeting (Donlon 1).

A seemingly well used porch in Northfield

 The front porch is also sited as an important element in storytelling.  As it provides a comfortable in-between space in which to casually and voluntarily sit and linger.  This atmosphere lends itself to the practices of both storytelling and listening.  Donlon recalls her grandma’s porch as a place for the sharing of knowledge. “When aunts, uncles, adult cousins, friends, and acquaintances claimed the porch, children either fled to another place or became ‘story listeners’ on the fringes of the porch while the adults occupied the swing . . . (Donlon 7)”  It seems as though the porch provides a perfect place for Wendel Berry’s institution of “sitting till bedtime."

Example of porch architecture in Northfield

There is certainly a difference in porch use among different regions as culture and climate vary (Donlon 18).  However, porches can be found in all parts of the U.S. and the community benefits of a porch can be enjoyed at some point throughout the year if the residents so desire.  Unfortunately the porch culture has begun to dwindle in modern American neighborhoods as the lure of technology such as air conditioning and televisions beckon people further into the privacy of their homes (Mugerauger 108-109).