Front doors of suburban houses

glennmagusharvey

In a typical United States suburban community, where houses have garages (especially if they're attached), front doors have only four uses:

1. Passing out Halloween candy.

2. Welcoming guests and bidding them farewell.

3. Receiving packages (and other special mail delivery).

4. Door-to-door campaigns, typically for political candidates or issues.

Kraken

I spit on your doors.

Fuschlatz

So? The only reason you couldn't spit on our front windows or our gardens instead is because we don't want you to, and that doesn't seem to stop you from spitting on our doors in the first place.

Naas_Human

In a typical United States suburban community, where houses have garages (especially if they're attached), front doors have only four uses:

Uh, what's the issue here? Four uses is still enough to justify them existing, unless other parts of the house can somehow help perform these functions better.

Ponicalica

I've walked in and out of the front door all the time when I lived in a suburban house.

glennmagusharvey

Did it have a garage?  If so, did you regularly use a vehicle parked in it?

On the other hand, did you regularly walk to places nearby, such as grocery stores?

Ponicalica

Yes, it did; yes, I frequently rode in the vehicle parked in it, though I usually drove in a vehicle that did not fit into it.

As for walking, the main place I would walk was the park.

Central Avenue

People in my neighborhood tend to walk through their front doors frequently, even though every house here has a garage.

Why? Because a lot of us don't park in the garages.

Why? Because our garages are filled with shit that properly belongs in a shed.

Why? Because our homeowners association doesn't allow sheds in this subdivision.

Why? Hell if I know. Just let the record show that I despise suburbia.

glennmagusharvey

So does that mean that Americans accumulating too much junk is a justification for front doors, in a roundabout way?

 

...I guess I'll take that.  It's roundabout enough to amuse me.

Formaldehyde

Houses have front doors because people tend to use them.

Hookah_Hashish

Fuck it. This shithole isn't worth making fun of.

Earthlight_Ray

Toilets have only one use but they're all over the place!

glennmagusharvey

Fun fact: an aunt and uncle of mine live in a flat (a.k.a. apartment) on the first floor of a building.  They have a patio and a little fenced space outside of it.  Their unit also has a formal "front door" that actually faces into this alleyway next to the unit, between their unit's building and the next one over.  (These buildings are only about three stories tall.)  To get to that door, you have to walk from the parking lot, right past their patio area, into said alley.

They never use their "front door".  Their patio door serves as their de facto front door.

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Also, there's a stunning number of houses here in South Florida (where I am at the moment) that have sunken front doors.  The front-most "door" of the house is technically the garage door, mostly because there's just no other place to put the garage if you want the house to have one attached.  You can park your car on the driveway, of course, but then you'll have to walk this long (and in some cases winding) path in order to get to the official front door.  Which might be on the side of the house.

Heck, the door between the main house and the garage might be more "front" than the front door itself.

Central Avenue

Having the garage door further "forward" than the front door is fairly common in suburban-style homes with attached garages, I think. At least for those built in the past few decades...often it's just as though the garage were sorta stuck on the front.

For the record, I strongly dislike attached garages that face the front of the house. I find them ugly and unsightly, and perhaps more importantly, they're an unpleasant symptom of the automobile-centric American culture that builds sprawling suburbs where you have to have a car to get anywhere useful.

I much prefer older neighborhoods where the homes have free-standing garages with driveways that face an alley in the rear.

glennmagusharvey

How about putting the garage in the basement, where possible?

Obviously not possible everywhere.  No basements in Florida, for example.

Also, you can't pack houses as close together when you do that, unfortunately.