Marketplace Vernacular Design: The Case of

Downtown Rooming HousesPaul E. Groth

Familiar Question: Qui est Paul Groth?Paul Groth and Chris Wilson, eds.Everyday America: J. B. Jackson and Recent Cultural Landscape Studies. Berkeley:

University of California Press, 2003.

Paul Groth. Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994; paperback edition, 1998; electronic edition, netLibrary, 2001).

Paul Groth. "Guidebooks as Community Service," Association of Pacific Coast Geographers Yearbook 62 (2000): 11-25.

Paul Groth. "Making New Connections in Vernacular Architecture," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 58:3 (1999): 444-451.

Paul Groth. "J. B. Jackson and Geography," The Geographical Review, 88:4 (1998): iii-vi.

Paul Groth and Todd Bressi, eds. Understanding Ordinary Landscapes. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.

Paul Groth and Marta Gutman. "Workers Houses in West Oakland." In Suzanne Stewart and Mary Praetzellis, eds., Sights and Sounds: Essays in Celebration of West Oakland (California Department of Transportation with the Anthropological Studies Center, Sonoma State University, 1997): 31-84.

Paul Groth. "San Francisco's Third and Howard Streets: Skid Row and the Limits of Architecture," in Diane Favro, Zeynip Celik, and Richard Ingersoll, eds., Streets of the World: Critical Perspectives on Public Space (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994): 23-34.

Groth, Paul. Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in the United States. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994.

Groth, Paul. "Tithing for Environmental Education: A Modest Proposal." Places 7, No. 1 (Fall, 1990): 38-41.

Groth, Paul. "Lot, Yard, and Garden: American Distinctions." Landscape 30, No. 3 (1990): 29-36.

Groth, Paul, ed. Vision, Culture, and Landscape: Working Papers from the Berkeley Symposium on Cultural Landscape Interpretation, March, 1990. Berkeley, CA: Department of Landscape Architecture, University of California, 1990.

Groth, Paul. "Generic Buildings and Cultural Landscapes as Sources of Urban History." Journal of Architectural Education 41, No. 3 (Spring, 1988): 41-44.

Paul Groth. "'Marketplace' Vernacular Design: The Case of Downtown Rooming Houses," in Camille Wells, ed., Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, II (University of Missouri Press, 1986).

Groth, Paul Erling. "Forbidden Housing: The Evolution And Exclusion Of Hotels, Boarding Houses, Rooming Houses, And Lodging Houses In American Cities, 1880-1930." Ph.d. Dissertation. University Of California, Berkeley, 1983.

Groth, Paul. "Street Grids as Frameworks for Urban Variety." Harvard Architectural Review 2 (1981): 68-75.

Invisible homes

• What types of residences is Paul talking about?

• What are the social needs?• What are effective sampling strategies?

Goals of research

Four issues of investigation into vernacular buildings.

– Focusing– Sampling– Classifying– Characterizing

Case study of unexamined building type.Same design issues as suburban housing

97 Orchard Street, 1864

1903 Dumb bell apts

Is this vernacular?

Not easily understood as vernacular design.

Better characterized as Market design.

How should we distinguish vernacular and market design?

San Francisco housing

Single room, hotels, and room housesRank by cost/class

– Palace hotels (1:1 bathroom by 1890)– Middle priced hotels (1:1 bathroom by

1920s)– Rooming houses (1:4 or 1:6 bathroom

by 1910)– Lodging houses (1:12 bathroom ratio by

1910)

Market design

Ground floor is commercial.2nd/3rd floors commercial housing1880 to 1910 changes to downtown rooming hotels.

– Not temporary, but lack a lobby.– Sink in every room– Light wells or set backs

Modular (repeatable) units in design

Entrance to Sierra Hotel

Finding class in classless society

Downtown rooming houses speak about class.– They are not place identified.– Not “mere commodities.”– Owners and managers paid attention to

what most reliable tenants wanted.– Design by moving.

How are working class different?

Little of personal identification from living quarters.

Variation in the amount of personalization roomers make.

Social identity from the location and basic conditions of their homes.