Row Houses: Everything You Need to Know About the Distinctly Urban Home

There are many different kinds of houses, but when it comes to city living, row houses are a shining example of how creative and efficient design can make the most out of a minimal amount of space. But what exactly is a row house? We spoke to two architects (who also happen to be row house residents) about what exactly the architectural style is; why you see them in places like Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Chicago; their pros and cons; and how these classic American architectural structures have stood the test of time.

What is a row house?

Though the exact definition can vary from person to person and region to region, a row house (or sometimes spelled rowhouse) is, at its essence, a building that is connected on one or both sides to its neighboring homes.

“A row house is a multilevel, [often] single-family house attached to an adjacent house,” says architect Ming Thompson of Atelier Cho Thompson in New Haven, Connecticut. “By definition, it forms a ‘row’ with its adjacent neighbors, which are uniform in size and general appearance and share a roofline and foundation.”

In New York City, for example, a typical row house is between two and six stories tall, with each floor between 600 and 800 square feet. They can be single-family or multifamily homes, depending on how they’re designed.

What is the difference between row houses, town houses, and brownstones?

If you’ve been using the term “row house” interchangeably with the word “town house,” you’re not necessarily wrong. Both refer to urban residential buildings with relatively small footprints. Many town houses, like row houses, have common walls with their neighbors, and many of the features you see in row houses are identical to the ones you see in town houses.

“There is no consensus on this topic, and the difference in opinion is often regional,” says architect Jordan Rogove, a partner at DXB Studio in Manhattan. “In New York City, where a majority of my projects are located, I would say they are quite different. A row house tends to be more narrow, with a shared, often identical façade with a continuous, consistent roofline. A town house tends to be wider and more spacious, and features more variation in their independent façades, ranging from different materiality to different heights.”

Adding to the confusion is the fact that the meaning of the phrases, especially “town house,” has evolved over time. Originally, a “townhome” was just a house (often a second home) that wealthier families had in the city, as opposed to their country estates.

“Historically, the term ‘town house’ implied the building was a city home for someone having a country home elsewhere, while ‘row house’ implied a more humble urban dwelling,” Thompson says. “Today, though, ‘town house’ is a term also used in suburban areas and may refer to non-uniform single-family homes within a larger multifamily housing complex. A ‘town house’ has become part of multifamily-developer parlance and suggests a large housing complex, while ‘row house’ implies a historic structure in an older neighborhood.”

Brownstones, however, are a different case. Generally, neither “row house” nor “townhouse” is synonymous with “brownstone,” one of the signature architectural styles of Brooklyn in New York City. A brownstone is called that because it refers to the particular reddish-brown sandstone that was quarried in New England and New Jersey and used to build many homes in New York City in the 1800s, mostly row houses and town houses. A row house (or town house) can be a brownstone, but not all of them are (even those in Brooklyn). In short, brownstone refers to a building made with a unique material, not an architectural style. That said, the brownstones in New York City are typically of the Italianate style, though many brownstones were razed to make way for new developments.

History of Row Houses

In America, row houses were an answer to the need for decent housing in rapidly growing cities in places like New York City or Boston. They allowed one or more families to have a place big enough to live in but, by using common walls between the buildings, didn’t waste any land. Their uniform structure and appearance also made it more efficient and economical for the builders and drove down their price.

“Row houses have small footprints but a great number of floors (from two to six) and were traditionally found close to the business areas in dense cities where single-family detached homes were uncommon,” Thompson says.

Not surprisingly, many row houses in the US date to the 19th century and early 20th century, when these cities grew explosively, and are often associated with Victorian styles of architecture. As the cities and people who lived in row houses changed, so did the row houses themselves, going from an economical choice, to almost synonymous with urban blight, to now being a status symbol in the 21st century.

“I live in a row house in a small college city, and its fate has paralleled the state of urban housing,” Thompson says. “The home was built just after the Civil War and first housed young men studying at the university; each had a bedroom and small dressing room. After World War II, a young family moved in and raised their children in the city, but by the ’70s, the urban core had been gutted by urban renewal, the loss of factory jobs, and an increase in crime. Property values decreased, as row houses became less desirable and large new suburban homes more desirable.” Later in the ’90s and 2000s, young professionals began moving closer to urban cores again, often seeking easier access to culture and amenities as well as a walkable lifestyle. “Row houses, by definition an urban housing type, rose in price and desirability, making them increasingly unattainable in our current challenging housing market,” Thompson adds.

To Rogove, the arc of row houses is a fascinating study in urban history. “They started as charming single-family homes, then got parsed up into middle-class rooming houses after laws changed in 1919 allowing them to become multifamily, then devolving into run-down slums that the city actively demolished in the name of progress, and now back to chic,” he says.

Advantages of Row Houses

Whether living in a row house is a pro or con often has to do with a homeowner’s personality and preferences. You’re living shoulder to shoulder with your neighbors, which may be appealing for someone looking for a sense of community that can be missing in detached homes or in suburban or rural areas with spaced-out homes.

“The pros are affordability, sense of community, minimal maintenance expense, and a sense of charm and intimacy that is lost in bigger-footprint buildings,” Rogove says. “I am a proud owner of a town house, and I love it!”

Thompson says that row houses can also be great for people who have just transitioned from rentals to becoming homeowners.

“The unique configuration of the row house can be ideal in some ways for first-time homebuyer: [Having] only two exterior walls offers less opportunity for leaks or envelope issues, a smaller footprint means less roof upkeep and foundation repair, and smaller floor plates ensures costly renovations can be undertaken gradually, floor by floor,” she says.

Rogove adds the row homes can also be an effective way to maximize your square feet while avoiding zoning issues that new construction often runs into.

“They remain an attractive option for housing in areas with high land values,” he says. “They’re spec housing, so buyers need not purchase land, hire professionals, and build their own homes. That process is arduous and expensive and unnecessarily fraught with outdated municipal processes and communities that oppose growth.”

Further, many row houses have garden levels or mother-in-law suites that the homeowner can rent out for additional income.

Disadvantages of Row Houses

That pro about neighborliness? It’s a con if you don’t want close neighbors.

“The cons are few and really have to do with being unlucky with bad neighbors,” Rogove says. “There is really nowhere to go in that situation.”

In addition, there can be maintenance and structural issues with the common walls and shared roofline, Thompson points out.

“Shared façades, foundations, and party walls can lead to some unexpected surprises,” she says. “We’ve had a few mice that seem to be scampering from town house to town house, and our neighbors once opened up an old fireplace to discover that all the waste lines for our home ran through their chimneys (built pre-indoor plumbing—the owners in the early 1900s must have thought that the chimneys were no longer needed for fires but instead provided convenient pathways for pipes!).”

They can also be noisy, depending on several factors.

“The wood-frame row houses are much noisier than the masonry ones,” Rogove says. “That has to do both with mass—wood is much lighter and conducts vibrations more—and the fact that wood shrinks as it dries through the years and can create gaps between planks that offer no acoustic resistance.” If you occupy all floors of the row house, this may not be an issue, but could be if you’re in a multifamily one. “I lived under a bartender for a couple of years, and her getting back at 3 A.M. every morning really sucked,” Rogove adds.

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