A snout house is a
house
A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air condi ...
with a protruding
garage
A garage is a covered structure built for the purpose of parking, storing, protecting, maintaining, and/or repairing vehicles. Specific applications include:
*Garage (residential), a building or part of a building for storing one or more vehicle ...
that takes up most of the street frontage. This layout is worked into many styles of houses, including single-family houses,
duplexes and other multifamily structures.
Architectural features
Such design is typically employed in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
and
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
to make a dwelling
affordable for a family of modest income by combining a narrow lot (sometimes as small as 35 feet (10.6 metres) in width) with a minimum 5 feet setback from each side line, which results in a 25 foot (7.5 metre) wide house. When a two car garage is added, typically of up to 20 feet (6 metres) or better in width, with no back of lot access, the garage dominates the frontage.
This design can be contrasted with older developments in which a single detached garage is placed at the back corner of the lot, typically added on after the original construction, and which is built with
zero lot line
0 (zero) is a number representing an empty quantity. In place-value notation such as the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, 0 also serves as a placeholder numerical digit, which works by multiplying digits to the left of 0 by the radix, usual ...
clearance and is accessible since the house is not centered on the lot, but rather offset to one side. Such layouts do not meet setback standards contained in many zoning codes, however.
One means to address this is to place an attached single car garage, set back from the house frontage, on one side, perhaps with zero lot line clearance which requires more fire resistant construction and special development permitting. Where investment is made in a
Planned Unit Development ("PUD"), the storage of vehicles for several residences can be grouped and placed out of the way, although this tends to not be favored by buyers owing to the inconvenience and reduced security of the arrangement.
Image:Snouthouses.jpg, Front of snout houses in
Schererville, Indiana
Schererville is a town in St. John Township, Lake County, Indiana, United States. The population was 29,646 at the 2020 census It is a suburb of Chicago located just 30 miles south of the city
History
Long before Indiana became a state ...
Image:Olthof homes rear view.jpg, Rear view of a tract of snout houses
Image:Markham-suburbs aerial-edit2.jpg, Two-story snout houses in Markham, Ontario
Markham () is a city in the Regional Municipality of York, Ontario, Canada. It is approximately northeast of Downtown Toronto. In the 2021 Census, Markham had a population of 338,503, which ranked it the largest in York Region, fourth largest ...
See also
*
Neo-eclectic architecture
Neo-eclectic architecture is a name for an architectural style that has influenced residential building construction in North America in the latter part of the 20th century and early part of the 21st. It is a contemporary version of Revivalism ...
*
Tract housing
Tract housing is a type of housing development in which multiple similar houses are built on a tract (area) of land that is subdivided into smaller lots. Tract housing developments are found in suburb developments that were modeled on the "Levitt ...
References
*
Hayden, Dolores (2004) A field guide to sprawl; with aerial photographs by Jim Wark, New York : W.W. Norton, ({{ISBN, 0393731251)
External links
definition from ''The Boston Globe''''City ponders discouraging, possibly banning, garage-dominant snout houses - Windsor Star''
(archived version)
House types
Suburbs