I want you to picture a box, a tall, rectangular
and usually a fairly expensive box. It's maybe
the architectural equivalent of a paradox. Yeah.
In one part of the world, if you own one, it
means you're a struggling millennial who got
priced out of the detached housing market. Right.
And this is the only way you get a front door
that's actually your own. Yeah, that feels familiar.
But then in another part of the world, specifically
on a certain hill in Hong Kong. Owning the exact
same structure almost down to the square footage
means you are, well, billionaire. We're looking
at the townhouse. It has to be the most, I don't
know, schizophrenic building type in our entire
data set. I was going through the history logs
last night just preparing for this deep dive.
And it is absolutely wild how this term has been
hijacked over the centuries. Hijacked is a strong
word. I think it's the right one. I mean, it
started as this massive power move for the British
aristocracy. We're talking literally a palace
in the city. And somehow, over 300 years, it
morphed into the default suburban compromise.
And that's exactly the mission today. We aren't
just looking at floor plans and, you know, real
estate listings. We are going to try to unpack
the sociology of density. And the economics.
The economics, for sure. We've got legal journals
here on air rights, which is a... concept that's
just fascinating in itself. We have historical
records on the London social season, and we have
some truly depressing real estate data that explains
why a shared wall in New York costs more than
a mansion in Ohio. And we are definitely going
to tear apart the legal fiction that allows you
to own a house that is physically glued to your
neighbor's house. The freehold paradox. I flagged
that in the notes. It just it feels like it shouldn't
be legally possible. But here we are. Here we
are. And on top of that, we're going to look
at the term itself, because if I asked you right
now to define townhouse, I mean, really define
it, you'd probably hesitate. Oh, absolutely.
Is it a style? Is it legal status? Is it just
a marketing buzzword that realistic? agents use?
I have literally had this argument with friends.
One says they bought a townhouse, but they pay
condo fees. Another one says, no, no, I own the
land. It's a freehold townhouse. And then you
go to London or New York and the word means something
completely different than it does in, say, a
suburb of Calgary or Phoenix. It's incredibly
confusing. It is. It's deceptively simple. Most
people hear townhouse and they have this vague
image of a tall, skinny building. Yeah, attached
to another one. Exactly. But when you actually
start digging into the sources, as we have for
this, you realize it is a term that is suffering
from a massive identity crisis. Okay, so let's
set a baseline before we get too deep into the
weeds. What is the sort of dictionary definition
we're working with from the source material?
The broad definition provided by our sources
is fairly straightforward on the surface. A townhouse
or townhome is a type of terraced housing. In
the modern context, it is often a unit with multiple
floors sitting on a very small footprint. And
terrace just means they are stuck together in
a row. Typically, yes. But here is the aha moment
that we are going to build toward throughout
this whole discussion. The definition shifts
radically depending on whether you are looking
at it through a historical lens. Or a legal one.
Or a legal one. Absolutely. We are going to talk
about the shocking difference between a condo
and an apartment. Because, yes, there is a big
difference. And later on, we are absolutely going
to get into those eye -watering price tags in
Asia I mentioned earlier. I saw those numbers
in the notes. I am still recovering. $37 million
for a townhouse? That's not a house. That's a
small country's GDP. It's staggering. But let's
start at the beginning. Let's go way back to
the word itself, townhouse. It seems obvious.
It's a house in a town. But historically, it
meant something much, much more specific, didn't
it? It absolutely did. If we go back to the British
roots of the term, townhouse wasn't just a simple
description of location. It was a description
of status. I mean, we're talking about the 18th
century and even before then. If you use the
word townhouse, you were referring specifically
to the city residents of a noble or a very wealthy
family. The key phrase there being city residents,
which implies they had another, probably bigger
residence somewhere else. Precisely. That is
the critical distinction that's been lost over
time. These families usually owned a main, much
larger residence out in the country, a country
house or an estate. The townhouse was effectively
their secondary home. It was the pianotere for
the aristocracy. That completely flips the modern
narrative on its head. Today, so many of us think
of a townhouse as a starter home or a compromise
because you can't quite afford a big detached
house with a yard. Right. But originally owning
a townhouse meant you were so incredibly wealthy
that you needed a place to stay just for part
of the year. For the social season, yes, that's
exactly right. The source material really highlights
this concept of the social season. Now, when
most people hear that, they might think of, you
know, Bridgerton or fancy dances, which isn't
wrong. Jane Austen novels come to mind. Of course.
But we need to look at the mechanics of it. Why
did these incredibly wealthy landowners need
a whole secondary house in London? Why not just
stay in their massive castle? Well, I assume
a lot of it has to do with politics, right? Being
close to power. Power required proximity. You
have to remember, Parliament sat during specific
months of the year. If you were a peer of the
realm, a lord, you had to be in London to vote,
to lobby, to network, and most importantly, to
be seen. So it was performance? It was absolutely
a performance. But there was a secondary economic
engine driving all of this. The marriage market.
Ah. So the townhouse was essentially a showroom.
Crucially, yes. It was a stage. You brought your
marriageable daughters to town and you needed
a backdrop that screamed, we are powerful and
wealthy. And this specific purpose directly dictated
the architecture of the building. How so? Well,
if you look at the blueprints of a classic Georgian
townhouse. The layout is very hierarchical. The
ground floor, that's for business. Waiting rooms,
maybe the men's study, the entrance hall, it's
public facing. Okay. But the first floor, one
flight up from the street, that was the piano
nobile. Which translates to the noble floor.
Exactly. The most important floor of the house.
It had the highest ceilings, massive windows
that let in all the light. This is where the
drawing room was. This is where you hosted the
balls. You were literally elevating your social
status above the street noise and, frankly, the
muck. And the servants are where in this picture?
Squeezed into the attic. attic and basement.
It was a vertical class system right there in
the building. The ground floor was business.
The first floor was for show. The second floor
for the family's private bedrooms. And then the
higher you went up the stairs, the lower your
status until you hit the servants' small quarters
right under the roof. It's all about efficiency,
but it's an efficiency driven by a really strict
social stratification. That's a perfect way to
put it. So you see, it wasn't about efficiency
in terms of land use, not originally. It was
about access and status. The building itself
was a status symbol. It wasn't an efficiency
compromise. It was a luxury convenience for the
absolute elite. And even for the elite, they
were still often attached to their neighbors.
Yes. And because land in the city, especially
in areas of London like Mayfair or St. James's,
was at a premium even back then, these houses
were built vertically and attached. But we should
not underestimate their scale. I was reading
about the Duke of Norfolk in the notes. This
part blew my mind. So he has a Rundle Castle
in the country, which is, you know, a literal
castle. White Bar Castle, yeah. But his townhouse
in London, Norfolk House in St. James's Square,
it wasn't exactly a shoebox apartment. No, not
at all. The source notes that Norfolk House was
a terraced house, meaning it was attached to
its neighbors, but it was over 100 feet wide.
100 feet. That is massive. That is wider than
most large suburban lots today. And he's sharing
a wall. He is. And that's a crucial point about
British architecture that often gets misunderstood.
Most British townhouses, even the grandest ones,
are terraced. We tend to associate terraced with
smaller working class housing, like the Coronation
Street vibe. Right. The little brick houses all
in a row. But in this context, even the super
rich lived in attached homes in the city. There
were exceptions, of course. A very small minority
of the largest townhouses were detached. But
the norm, even for a duke. was the terrace it's
just so interesting to visualize that you have
these incredibly wealthy aristocrats people who
own thousands and thousands of acres in the country
and yet when they come to london they are technically
living in a row house it really speaks to the
density and the social fabric of the city at
that time but the interiors That's where the
townhouse legacy really begins. Despite the shared
walls, these were incredibly grand residences
with ballrooms, drawing rooms, multiple dining
rooms, and of course extensive quarters for a
whole army of servants. So the definition of
townhouse here is just inextricably linked to
the town being the capital city, the center of
the empire. That's it. It's a house for being
in town. Okay, so that's the aristocratic origin.
The town in townhouse really meant London. Now,
let's cross the ocean. Let's bring this whole
concept to North America. The notes mention that
in the U .S. and Canada, the term townhouse actually
splits into two very, very different connotations.
Right. And the big dividing line, the historical
marker, is the automobile. You have the old townhouse
and you have the new townhouse. Let's unpack
the old townhouse first. This is the pre -automobile
era. So I'm picturing places like New York, Boston,
maybe Montreal or Philadelphia. Exactly. New
York City's famous brownstones are the classic
example here. These buildings follow that original
European model. They have a very small urban
footprint, meaning they don't take up much land,
but they are built vertically, sometimes six
or even more floors. Six floors of stairs. That
is a daily workout right there. Let's talk about
the word brownstone for a second. Is that just
a poetic name or is it an actual geological classification?
It's Triassic Jurassic sandstone. It's a real
type of rock. And here is the great iron. It
was originally considered a cheap substitute
for better materials. Yeah. In the early 19th
century, if you were really rich, you built with
marble or limestone. Brownstone was soft. It
was easy to quarry in the region. It was abundant.
It was, and I'm not kidding, basically the vinyl
siding of the 1850s. And now people pay $10 million
for it. Scarcity completely flips the script.
But the design logic in New York was a bit different
from London. In London, you had the aristocracy.
In New York, you had this rising merchant class.
They needed density because Manhattan is an island.
You physically cannot sprawl. There's nowhere
to go. Nowhere to go. So the stoop culture was
born. The high staircase leading up to the front
door. I see those in movies all the time. It's
such an iconic New York image. Right. But that
stoop wasn't just aesthetic. It was deeply practical.
It was sanitary. In the horse and carriage era,
the streets were... Well, let's just say they
were biologically active. Manure. You mean manure.
And mud and trash and whatever else. By raising
the main living floor, the parlor floor, up a
massive flight of stairs, you were lifting your
living room out of the smell zone. Oh, that's
brilliant. And the garden level underneath, which
everyone fights for now because it has backyard
access, that was originally the service entrance.
That's where deliveries came in, where the kitchen
often was. That is fascinating. So the most desirable
part of a modern brownstone was basically the
delivery entrance. Exactly. But historically,
this whole design served a very specific purpose.
Before cars, you needed to be within walking
distance or later mass transit distance of the
business and industrial areas. But if you were
wealthy, you didn't want to in a tenement. You
wanted space. So the solution was to stack the
space vertically. And because they are in these
incredibly dense cities like New York, Philadelphia,
Montreal and San Francisco, these old townhouses
are incredibly scarce today. And scarcity drives
value. In these specific dense urban cores, the
detached single family home is almost non -existent
or just astronomically expensive. So the historic
townhouse becomes the premier residential asset.
It is the closest thing to a house you can get
in the city center. Okay, so that's the romantic,
historic, pre -car townhouse. Now let's talk
about the one that most of us are probably more
familiar with, the new townhouse, the post -automobile
version. This is a different beast entirely,
a whole other species. Over time, the term townhouse
in North America evolved. It came to describe
these often non -uniform living units that are
specifically designed to mimic a detached home,
but usually in a suburban setting. Mimic is a
very interesting word choice there. It suggests
they are trying to be something they aren't.
Well, in a way they are. They are trying to offer
the feeling of a house. The private entrance,
the multiple floors, maybe a tiny patch of grass
without the land cost of a truly detached home.
And the sources make a very important distinction
here. How do you tell a new townhouse from an
apartment? I feel like this is where people,
including me, get tripped up constantly. The
door distinction is the easiest rule of thumb.
A townhouse almost always has its own outside
door. You walk off the street or the sidewalk
or a path directly into your unit. No shared
hallway. Exactly. An apartment, on the other
hand, is typically accessed via an interior hallway
or maybe an exterior balcony walkway that you
share with other residents. So if I have to walk
through a lobby, wave at a concierge, and take
an elevator to get to my front door, I'm in an
apartment building. Generally, yes, that's a
very clear sign. And there is another layer to
it, verticality. Townhouses are typically multi
-floor units. You have your living room downstairs,
bedrooms upstairs. Apartments are usually single
-floor flats. That makes a lot of sense. But
then there's the ownership piece, which gets
muddy in the U .S., especially outside the big
old cities. Townhouse implies you own it. Apartment
implies you rent it. That is a very common linguistic
shortcut in the U .S. It's a cultural convention.
If you say I live in a townhouse, people will
assume you bought it. If you say I live in an
apartment, they assume you pay rent. But that's
not actually a legal rule. Not at all. It's just
a cultural habit. You can absolutely rent a townhouse.
And as we'll get into, you can absolutely own
an apartment. Before we get to the legal stuff,
which I know is where the real complexity lies,
I want to clarify another term that pops up in
the notes. The row house. I have to admit, I
always thought row house and townhouse were basically
synonyms. Are they not? They are very close cousins,
but they're not twins. The source material provides
some really fascinating nuance here. A row house
consists of several adjacent uniform units. Think
of those pictures of Bala Pamor or Philadelphia
where you see block after block of identical
brick facades. Right, the continuous roof line.
It looks like someone just used the copy -paste
tool in real life. That's a great way to describe
it. Continuous roof, continuous foundation. Visually,
it is a single long structure that has just been
sliced into individual units. Historically, row
houses were found in those older urban areas,
Baltimore, Philly, New Orleans. But the distinction
is often about perceived luxury in size. The
expert analysis in our sources suggests that
a row house is generally considered to be smaller
and less luxurious than what is traditionally
called a townhouse. A townhouse implies a bit
more architectural variation between units, maybe
a bit more square footage. different setbacks.
A row house implies utility and uniformity. It
was often housing for the industrial workforce,
whereas the townhouse might have been for the
manager or the owner. Is there a construction
difference or is it just vibes? Oh, there is
a huge construction difference and it gets right
to the heart of the ownership question later.
This brings us to the physics of the thing. We
need to talk about the party wall. The party
wall. Which sounds fun, but I assume it probably
isn't. Not unless you really, really like hearing
your neighbor's party know. In a traditional
1920s row house, you often have a single wall
dividing the units. You are literally sharing
the bricks. So my wall is their wall. Exactly.
A double brick thickness acts as a structural
load -bearer for the floor joists on both sides
of the wall. Your floor beams are inserted into
the same row of bricks as your neighbor's floor
beams. So, strictly speaking, the buildings are
structurally codependent. If I decide to bulldoze
my house, my neighbor's house might actually
fall down. It would certainly be very unstable.
That's the interdependence of the classic row
house. But modern building codes, well, they
hate that. I can imagine. Fire hazard, noise.
Huge fire separation issues. Terrible acoustic
isolation. So in modern townhouses, you see a
major shift toward what's called the double -leaf
wall. Two separate walls with a gap in between.
Ideally, yes. It might only be a one inch air
gap. It might be filled with fire resistant insulation.
But legally and more importantly, physically,
the structures are decoupled. That one inch of
air is the difference between I can hear your
TV and I can hear you thinking. And that one
inch of air must drive the cost up significantly.
You're building four walls for two houses instead
of three walls. Precisely. And this leads to
some very confusing terminology in the modern
real estate market. We have to talk about stacked
townhouses. This is where you have a townhouse,
on top of another townhouse. Yes. The sources
describe these as homes with multiple units stacked
vertically. Typically two. But here is the key
that makes them townhouse -like. Normally, each
one has its own private entrance from the street
or the outside. OK, so the bottom unit walks
in at ground level and the top unit maybe has
a staircase on the side of the building that
goes up to their door on the second floor. Exactly.
And this is where the terminology just goes completely
into flux. If you have these stacked units side
by side in a row of three or more, they're often
called row houses. But if you just have a group
of two left and right or up and down, the U .S.
and Canada have a dozen different names for them.
Semi -detached, duplex, half duplex. Half duplex.
That definitely sounds... Sounds like a Western
Canadian slang term. It is. In Western Canada,
a half duplex is just one side of a two -unit
building. But the point is the townhouse category
is broad enough to include these stacked configurations
as long as they maintain that private street
entrance and usually have multiple levels within
the unit itself. Okay, let's pivot to the topic
that I think causes the most arguments at dinner
parties. Condo versus freehold. This is the part
that trips up every single first -time homebuyer.
You see a building that looks like a townhouse.
You assume I own it. But the legal wrapper can
be completely different. This is such a crucial
distinction and we need to just debunk the myth
right now. Condo refers to the type of ownership,
not the type of dwelling. Say that again because
I think that's the key. Condo is a form of ownership,
not a style of building. A townhouse can be a
condo. A detached house can be a condo. A boat
slip in a marina can be a condo. So condo is
just a legal wrapper you put around a piece of
property. Correct. The Canadian model, which
applies broadly to how this works in many common
law jurisdictions around the world, breaks it
down very nicely. You have condominium, which
is often called strata title in other places
like Australia. In this model, you own the interior
of your unit, the paint to paint, as they sometimes
say, the airspace inside. Right. From the drywall
in. from the drywall in. But you also own a specified
share of the common elements. That means you
co -own a tiny percentage of the roof, the exterior
walls, the land underneath the parking lot, the
swimming pool. You are effectively a shareholder
in the physical structure of the entire complex.
Which is why you pay condo fees. You're paying
to a collective pot to maintain all those things
you own collectively with your neighbors. Exactly.
You have to look at the cadastral map. That's
the legal survey of the land. In a condo or strata
title, your legal property line is effectively
a 3D cloud of air floating inside the building.
You own the air volume inside the drywall, the
drywall itself, the studs behind it, the wood
on the outside. That all belongs to the condominium
corporation. So if I want to punch a hole in
my wall to run a new HDMI cable... In a pure
condo model, you are technically vandalizing
corporate property. In practice, there are rules,
but technically you need permission for major
alterations. And this is why the fees are so
important. In a condo, you're paying a monthly
fee into a reserve fund because eventually that
shared roof will need replacing and the corporation
has to have the money saved up to pay for it.
Okay, so that's the condo model. Now contrast
that with freehold. Freehold is what most people
think of when they think of owning a house. In
a freehold setup, You own the land and the dwelling
on it exclusively. You own the dirt, you own
the roof, you own the bricks. The property line
is a tight rectangle that goes around your house's
perimeter on the ground, and legally it extends
from the center of the earth up to the sky. But
wait, this is what I'm still struggling with.
If I own a townhouse and it's physically attached
to my neighbor's townhouse, how can I possibly
be freehold? If my roof leaks, it might affect
his roof. If my foundation cracks, it could pull
his down with it. And this is the freehold townhouse
paradox. It seems impossible, but it exists.
Remember that construction detail we talked about
just a minute ago? The double wall with the airspace?
The famous inch of air. That inch of air is legally
significant. It's everything. In a modern freehold
townhouse, the legal property line literally
runs right through that gap. Technically, your
building does not touch your neighbor's building.
They just happen to sit incredibly close together,
often on the same continuous foundation strip.
That is just wild. So it's basically an optical
illusion of attachment. In a legal sense, yes.
And that tiny gap is what allows you to own the
property free and clear of a condo board or mandatory
monthly maintenance fees. But it also means if
your roof needs replacing, you are the one climbing
the ladder or writing the check entirely on your
own. And what happens if the shared foundation
cracks? That's the nightmare scenario. That's
where it gets messy. Usually, there are easements
or covenants registered on the title of the property
that say something like, if the common foundation
fails, both parties are obligated to cooperate
and share the cost of the repair. But unlike
a condo, there is no pot of money sitting there
waiting. You have to knock on your neighbor's
door and say, hey, we need to come up with $10
,000. I can absolutely see why people get so
confused. You can look at two rows of townhouses.
They look completely identical. But one is a
condo where the lawn is mowed for you, and the
other is a freehold where you're out there pushing
the mower yourself every Saturday. And that ownership
structure dictates not just the cost, but the
entire lifestyle. Freehold townhouses often carry
a price premium because people love the idea
of owning the land and having no monthly fees.
But condo townhouses offer that lock and leave
convenience that a lot of people are looking
for. Speaking of premiums and costs, we have
to talk about what is happening on a global scale.
Because if you think townhouses are just a suburban
middle class thing in North America, you clearly
have not been to Hong Kong. This was, without
a doubt, the most shocking part of the research
for me. In places like Asia, Australia, and South
Africa, the term townhouse follows that modern
North American sense of an attached or semi -detached
home. But it manifests very differently in places
like South Africa and Australia. They are very
often in complexes. You mean like gated communities?
Exactly. Large, sprawling complexes with high
security resort style facilities, pools, gyms,
parks. In these regions, the strata title or
condo model is absolutely dominant. The common
property is owned by a corporation of owners.
It's a very communal way of living, but often
behind high fences. But then you have Hong Kong.
We have to talk about the property. The Hong
Kong case study is just on another level. We
have to remember the context. Hong Kong is a
city completely dominated by high -rise apartment
buildings. Land is arguably the scarcest and
most valuable commodity there is. So the very
idea of living on the ground, of having a front
door that opens to the street, that is the ultimate
unattainable luxury for almost everyone. The
sheer scarcity makes it exclusive. Unbelievably
so. Townhouses in private developments there
are incredibly rare and are populated almost
exclusively by the very wealthy. The sources
point to this specific property, Severn 8 on
Victoria Peak. I have the number here. A 5 ,067
square foot townhouse, which, to be fair, is
a big house anywhere. That's a mansion, yeah.
But in 2008, it sold for 285 million Hong Kong
dollars. That translates to 37 million U .S.
dollars. I did the math. That is... The GDP of
a small island nation. Why? Is it made of solid
gold? It's not the gold. It's the dirt and the
air above the dirt. Hong Kong has some of the
strictest land use policies in the world. The
government owns almost all the land and leases
it out for development. And because the population
density is so extreme, the plot ratio, that's
the amount of floor space you can build per square
foot of land, is almost always maximized for
massive towers. Right. You have to build up to
get your money's worth from the expensive land.
You have to. So to build a townhouse, a low rise
structure on some of the most valuable land on
the planet is an act of pure economic defiance.
You are wasting all that potential vertical space.
You are paying for the absence of neighbors above
you. You're literally paying for the empty air.
That is the ultimate luxury in a city like Hong
Kong. Silence. Privacy. The ability to walk out
your own front door onto the ground. In a city
of over 7 million people living in the sky, having
a ground floor is the ultimate status symbol.
It's the modern equivalent of the Duke of Norfolk's
London Palace. $37 million. That breaks down
to about $7 ,400 U .S. dollars per square foot.
For one square foot of floor. That was an Asian
record at the time. You're paying more for a
square foot of floor than most people pay for
a used car. And it's not just 7 -8. The notes
also mention a development called the Beverly
Hills, a massive complex in the Taipo District
of Hong Kong. Some of those townhouse units are
up to 11 ,000 square feet. 11 ,000 square feet.
That's not a townhouse. That's a department store.
At that scale, the term townhouse is really stretching
all the way back to its aristocratic roots. It's
a palace in the city. But it just shows the incredible
elasticity of the word. It can mean a 900 square
foot starter home in Ohio. Or an 11 ,000 square
foot mansion overlooking Hong Kong. And there's
also a trend mentioned in the sources about suburban
replacement. This is happening in major cities
all over the world. Yes, the infill development
trend. You take an old house on a large block
of land in a desirable suburb, maybe a rambling
1950s bungalow with a huge backyard, and you
demolish it. In its place, you build a short
row of townhouses. I see this all the time in
my neighborhood. They turn them sideways, right?
The notes call it end on to the street. Correct.
They build them perpendicular to the street with
a shared driveway. This dramatically increases
density. You turn one single family home to four
or five separate units. But the end on design
gives them a degree of privacy, so they aren't
all just staring out at the traffic. It's a way
of densifying the suburbs without building towers.
Let's move inside the house for a bit. We talked
about the verticality earlier, but I want to
look at the architectural anatomy a bit more.
I mean, the vertical lifestyle really changes
how you live your day -to -day life. It absolutely
does. When your kitchen is on the second floor
and your bedroom is on the third, you live your
life in layers. It forces a certain level of
fitness, honestly. But what's so interesting
is how the names of the rooms themselves have
evolved over time. The source material lists
a whole bunch of rooms found in townhouses, and
it's this amazing mix of the ancient and the
hypermodern. Yeah, I saw servants' quarters on
the list, which clearly harkens back to the old
aristocratic days. But then right next to it,
you have things like bonus rooms and great rooms.
The great room is a fascinating echo of the past.
In medieval architecture, the great hall was
the center of the house. It's where everyone
ate, slept, and lived. One giant room. One giant
room. Then we moved to the Victorian era with
its separate parlors and drawing rooms and dining
rooms. We compartmentalized our lives. Now, in
the modern open concept townhouse, we are tearing
down all those walls and going right back to
the great room. A single open space for living,
dining, and cooking. Time is a flat circle. It
really is. And look at the evolution of the kitchen.
The source mentions historical rooms like the
Buttery or the Scullery. Buttery wasn't for butter
was it i remember reading that no that's a common
misconception it was originally from the old
french word for bottle boute it was for storing
butts of liquor or casks and the scullery was
where the dirty washing up happened it was a
wet messy room you kept hidden away right today
we have the kitchenette and some smaller townhouses
a tiny efficient cooking space but in larger
ones the function has completely shifted The
kitchen is now the showpiece. It's gone from
a hidden, grimy workspace for servants to the
central display piece for the entire family.
And the drawing room or parlor has now become
the family room or the dim. Or the man cave,
as the source notes, or a bonus room. But the
fundamental design constraint always remains
the footprint. Because the townhouse is, by its
nature, narrow, the biggest challenge for the
architect is always light and flow. You usually
only have windows on the front and the back.
That's a really good point. If you're in the
middle of a long row, you have no side windows
at all. It can feel like a tunnel if it's not
designed well. Which is precisely why you see
architectural features like skylights, open riser
staircases, and extra high ceilings mentioned
in the anatomical breakdown. They are all design
tricks to try and pull natural light into the
dark center of that deep, narrow rectangle. So
we've gone from the Duke of Norfolk's 100 -foot
-wide London Palace to the narrow brownstones
of New York to the condo complexes of Australia
and finally to the multi -million dollar bunkers
of Hong Kong. It really is a massive... journey
for one building type. It is. And I think it
brings us right back to that initial question
we started with. What on earth is a townhouse?
And it seems like the answer is, well, whatever
the city and the economy needs it to be at that
moment in time. Exactly. The townhouse is an
architectural chameleon. It adapts itself perfectly
to the needs of the era. In the 18th century,
the need was proximity to the royal court and
a place to host balls. In the 19th century, the
need was proximity to the factory or the counting
house. And in the 20th and 21st centuries, the
need is for a detached home feel in a crowded
suburb where land has become too expensive for
actual detached homes. It's the ultimate compromise
building. But compromise sounds so negative.
Maybe adaptation is a better word. Adaptation
is much better. It allows for density without
completely losing the human scale. You still
have your own front door. You still have a roof
that's yours. You aren't just a number in a 50
-story elevator bank. It maintains a connection
to the street. But I have to ask. Right. As our
cities get denser and denser and land values
keep skyrocketing, is the freehold townhouse
doomed? Is that model sustainable? That is the
perfect provocative thought to end on. As land
values continue to rise, that legal fiction of
the freehold townhouse, that little one inch
of air, it becomes harder and harder to justify
economically. The condo model, where you share
the cost of the land and the structure among
all the owners, is just so much more efficient
from a development standpoint. So we might be
looking at a future where the physical townhouse
building survives, but the idea of owning it
land and all becomes a quaint relic of the past.
Just like the scullery or the buttery. It's very
possible. The definition of townhouse might eventually
divorce itself completely from the town and just
become a synonym for suburban condo row. Well,
that definitely gives us something to think about.
Next time you're walking down the street and
you see one of these developments, look closely
at that row of houses. Ask yourself, is that
a row house? Is it a townhouse? Is it a condo?
And most importantly, is there an inch of air
between those bricks? It's all in the details.
Thanks for listening to this deep dive. We'll
catch you on the next one.