Use common sense, over-design with city gem: the Chicago porch

There’s a cherished half-century-old photo on my wall at home in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood.

In the 8-by-10-inch sepia-tone photo, a cocky, bare-chested 9-year-old boy stands in the foreground. A leather-faced 49-year-old man in a white tee shirt is smiling and sitting in the background.

The man, my father, a veteran Chicago cab driver, is clutching a cup of coffee and sitting on the steps of the back porch of our clapboard-sided three-flat at 1649 N. Halsted on a hot summer evening in 1953.

Ah, the porch. What an architectural heirloom and an institution it has been in Chicago’s neighborhoods from the turn of the century through today. People from New York City do not understand the importance of the historic Chicago porch. They may know about fire escapes and rooftop pigeon aviaries, but they do not understand the Chicago porch.

Back in the 1950s, the Chicago porch was the only air conditioner in the city’s ethnic, working-class homes.
The porch was the box seat of life. We sat on the front porch and watched neighborhood kids frolic in the spray of a fire hydrant, and play softball in the parking lot across the street.

In the 1950s, this writer often slept on the front porch on Halsted hoping to catch a breeze once the sun set on those sinfully hot July and August evenings.

But more often than not, the southern breeze wafted across the Union Stock Yards on its way north and carried the pungent aroma of the slaughter house to Lincoln Park. Then there was the deafening screech of the nearby Ravenswood elevated train crossing Halsted just north of North Avenue.

Enough nostalgia.

Today, porches, decks, balconies and terraces are in great demand in the city and suburbs as house, townhome and condominium owners yearn for a breath of fresh air on a hot summer night, or just the convenience of an outdoor space they can call their own for entertaining, dining or a barbecue in the cramped downtown condo belt.

However, the Chicago porch is under fire today. After the porch collapse disaster that recently killed 13 young people at 713 W. Wrightwood in Lincoln Park, everyone from apartment renters to landlords and developers to Mayor Daley and the Chicago Building Department is scrutinizing the multi-family porch as if it was public enemy No. One.

Despite the witch-hunt that is going on in the city to find unsafe porches, it is unlikely that Mayor Daley will declare the Chicago porch extinct; it’s too much a part of Chicago’s history. After all, porch-sitting probably still is the major pass-time in Bridgeport, Mayor Daley’s real neighborhood.

So what can apartment landlords and condo developers do to make sure their porches are safe? According to master carpenter John Lamperis, the best policy when it comes to building a porch is always over-design.

“Make it stronger, build it better than you have to under the building code, and don’t cheat on the quality,” said an out-spoken Lamperis, who heads Prodek, Inc., a North Side company that for nearly two decades has specialized in building solid wood decks and porches.

In Lamperis’ opinion, it is unlikely that wood – typically pressure-treated Southern pine, which can prevent rot for decades – is the culprit in the kind of porch disaster we recently experienced.

The more typical problem is “undersized and wrongly positioned anchor bolts that sheer off,” causing the collapse of the porch. Typically, Lamperis installs hefty anchor bolts drilled through the brick – not in the mortar joints – to attach the key ledger board to the building.

Lamperis also recommends setting 2-by-10-inch and 2-by-12-inch support joists into metal hangers bolted to ledger boards. He says he never uses 2-by-8-inch floor joists. “Always sink 6-by-6-inch vertical support posts into a footing set in concrete, and do not set the post on a concrete block,” he said.

All handrails should be screwed in place, not nailed. Beware of handrails that sway for more than one inch in either direction.

However, Lamperis said the residents of the building also have an obligation to use some common sense when it comes to partying on the porch.

“When you think of 50 to 80 people standing on a back porch, that’s more than 10,000 pounds of weight,” Lamperis said. “That’s more than an automobile. It’s like jamming too many people in an elevator. Maybe common sense would tell you to take the next car.”

Real estate columnist and media consultant Don DeBat has written about Chicago-area housing and mortgage markets since 1968. He is president of Don DeBat and Associates, www.dondebat.net.