Whatever happened to the front porch? I came across that line while cleaning out some old files recently. I had written it nearly two decades ago while embarked on a woebegone campaign for state representative in a district where my party was outnumbered 4-1, and my particular campaign outraised 10-1.
In the course of conducting my door-to-door, “shoe leather” campaign, I noticed that not many of the houses I visited had front porches. Aside from some of the homes in older neighborhoods (many of which dated to the Victorian period), the commodious front porches of an earlier era had all but disappeared, and I wonder now if we’re poorer for that.
The front porch was once an inviting place where neighbors could drop by for informal conversation. It was a vantage point from which to observe the goings-on in the neighborhood, to wave at friends and to speculate about the movements of strangers, a place to enjoy a tall lemonade or a cold beer after a hard day’s work.
But American domestic architecture in the postwar period traded the convivial front porch for the enclosed backyard, the neighborhood for the subdivision. The automobile became indispensable with the move to the suburbs, and garages — not front doors — became the point of entry for homeowners. In some of the worst of suburban architecture (in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, for instance), a visitor on foot literally must walk around the garage to reach the front door.
The mass availability of air conditioning and the ubiquity of television and other forms of electronic entertainment meant that families spent hot summer evenings huddled in the den around the television set rather than conversing on the front porch. Or more recently, in the age of social media, staring at cellular phones. Many of the remaining porches have devolved into storage areas.
As I walked my way around the district, I generally approached front doors, many of which, I’m sure, hadn’t been opened in years. (In some cases, the doorbell and even the door itself were shrouded in cobwebs.) If no one answered, I left a card wedged into the screen door, hoping that it might be discovered before Election Day.
I wonder, is it possible that our democracy is in trouble today because of the disappearance of front porches? That might be stretching the point too far, but maybe, just maybe, the absence of civility in public discourse has something to do with the fact that we no longer interact face-to-face with our neighbors.
We communicate, if at all, by text or email — and often in slogans. Our political opinions, which tend more and more to be entrenched and inflexible, derive less from conversations with fellow citizens than from the shouting on cable television.
National Public Radio recently announced an initiative to match individual citizens with another American from a differing political perspective. The idea is that they will get to know and understand one another and, presumably, engage in a civil conversation. That strikes me as a worthy initiative, albeit a tad contrived. Isn’t that what once happened in natural, organic conversations in the neighborhood or at the grocery store or on the front porch?
Perhaps we’ve lost not only front porches but the art of conversation altogether.
With the return to restaurants following the COVID-19 lockdown, we witness once again families and friends gathered around a common table — all of them silently stabbing at their cellphones.
A return to the front porch, or reclaiming the art of conversation, won’t solve all of society’s problems. By no means.
It won’t magically restore civility in the arena of public discourse. It won’t address climate change or end the scourge of white supremacy. It won’t end the violence associated with Black Lives Matter protests, although it might mitigate the conflict. Substantive and respectful conversation won’t solve the immigration crisis or immediately end the systematic assault on voting rights, although a greater understanding of others might make the prospect of universal suffrage less frightening.
Any attempt to engender real conversation, the kind that once occurred on front porches, would, I suspect, pay dividends over the long term.
The ideal of America, and its beauty, is the unity we have managed to forge amid our diversity — e pluribus unum (out of many, one) — even though it’s an aspiration we may never fully realize.
But if we hope to sustain even a measure of comity, we must find a way to talk one another out of our silos.
Among all my visits to houses during that long-ago campaign, the ones I remember best are those where the homeowner invited me to sit on the front porch, rest my weary feet for a few minutes and maybe cool off with an iced tea. I tried not to stay too long, both because I didn’t want to impose on his hospitality and because I still had a lot of territory to cover before Election Day.
When I left, I was not always certain whether I had the vote, but I was reasonably sure I had a friend or, at the very least, a conversation partner.
Randall Balmer teaches at Dartmouth College. His new book, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right, will be released next week.