Porch Culture

This past weekend, I coined a term: Porch Culture.

It was my first time in New Orleans, but I’m no stranger to the south. I generally know what to expect; the good, the bad and the ugly. The smell of Jasmine and humidity as soon as I stepped out of the airport. Strangers keen to strike up a conversation. On the other hand, relics of confederate nostalgia up on the walls of a mom-and-pop restaurant now run by people of color. A Trump sign on one lawn and a Love Thy Neighbor sign on the other. The ironies are never-ending, the tensions between those who want to move back in time and those who want to move forward always ripe, though seldom spoken about in social settings focused on propriety and getting along.

It’s not all peaches and King Cake, but I can tell you the southern charm got me this time— it got me good. Why? The porches.

My friends and I were in town for the New Orleans Book Festival (shoutout Book Club!!) and we stayed in an Airbnb on Antonine street. I learned that Airbnbs are sort of overrunning the city, and so our block hosted a mix of visitors and full-time residents. As soon as we pulled into the driveway, my spirit lifted at what I saw: a couple houses across the street, each with porches. And rocking chairs, and folks chatting away.

Wow, I thought, this is… porch culture! It’s foreign to me now as I dwell in a New York City apartment, but seeing it brought to memory a slice of my small-town childhood I yearn for as an adult.

I grew up in Nyack, a town outside of NYC. My family had a porch and a couple of rocking chairs, and there we would amble some time away on the weekends. I enjoyed rocking on my child-sized chair, seeing familiar faces as they walked by, and watching the birds. Many of the other houses on our block and in surrounding towns didn’t have porches. At my friends’ homes in Westchester, NY, porches were practically nonexistent; the cookie-cutter, cul-de-sac neighborhoods didn’t exactly encourage neighborly interaction.

Houses in New Orleans are informed by a combination of Creole, Caribbean, British, and Italian architecture styles, to name a view. There are Creole cottages, double gallery townhouses (porches on multiple levels!), center hall cottages, and bungalows. Many of these have porches. Deep ones, shallow ones, fenced ones, open ones, screened ones, plain ones, ornate ones.

Danielle Shubert, author of the 2017 book “The Porch Project: Porch Portraits of New Orleans,” said in 2020 that “New Orleans' porches are the epicenter of the city’s communication, invitation, and leisure.” A California transplant, Shubert kept her social life alive on her bright orange porch during covid. Another New Orleans long-time resident interviewed in Country Roads Magazine said of their porch, “Everybody comes here Sundays and holidays. We sit out here every day ‘til, like, midnight! We see the sights. We just see everybody who lives here.”

Due to restrictive zoning laws, few cities are built to prioritize pedestrians nowadays. Porch-filled streets, often parallel with sidewalks, are rare and precious.

In New York City, I tend to feel I’m missing something cozy and communal. New Orleans porches were especially beloved to me because they made that void ache. Is the porch culture in New Orleans enticing enough to convince settled, set-in-their-ways New Yorkers like me to move there? Probably not. Strong enough to get me pining for that porch-y, warm feeling, and to have me fantasizing about an effortlessly community-oriented life? Most definitely.

A few New Orleans houses with porches