By the Book

Throughout the historic coastal city of Norfolk, VA, one taupe-and-periwinkle booklet can be found well-thumbed on the desks of architects, contractors, building-materials suppliers and homeowners. The government of this midsize city (population 241,000) has so far given out 15,000 tabloid-size copies of A Pattern Book for Norfolk Neighborhoods, authored by the Pittsburgh, PA-based planning and architecture firm Urban Design Associates (UDA). The guide, also available for download on the City of Norfolk’s web site, is subtitled “Details and techniques for renovating and building Norfolk houses.” (For a copy, go to www.norfolk.gov/planning/comehome/norfolk_pattern_book.)

Few other American communities have managed to broadcast so widely a cohesive message about design. The booklet communicates, in plain language and friendly graphics, what to save on existing structures and how to respectfully build anew along every variety of Norfolk streetscape. Hundreds of homeowners have executed UDA-inspired plans, and many more have adjusted construction in progress or just learned to ask their builders more historically and aesthetically informed questions.

No previous Palladio Award has gone to a pattern book. The jury especially praised UDA’s work for its breadth and depth – its documented impact throughout a city, down to the muntins and mailboxes. The publication’s built results also bode well, the jury noted, for UDA’s 2006 A Pattern book for Gulf Coast Neighborhoods, a guide to rebuilding areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina (40,000 copies of that study were in print as of April 2006).

Norfolk hired UDA to produce the guidelines in 2002, partly because the firm has been rejuvenating local neighborhoods since the mid-1980s. UDA has transformed acres of ruined public housing in Norfolk into kempt communities and, based on a master plan by Miami, FL-based Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company, UDA created two pattern books for a new waterfront neighborhood called East Beach. Fast-selling townhouses and freestanding homes at East Beach now mingle with restaurants and stores, all with porches capturing Chesapeake breezes.

UDA’s private and public-sector clients have understood that design codes make New Urbanist properties popular and profitable, and that consistent aesthetics are good for the bottom line. Individual homeowners, though, may require more time and persuasion to see the light. Most cities can’t simply declare themselves giant historic districts and try to tightly control what every resident chooses to build. The administrative costs alone would be prohibitive, not to mention the expense and effort of calming voters who think that widespread landmarking will restrict their style. Cities can more readily inform the populace about the benefits of traditional design, and offer irresistible incentives.

“We can’t completely regulate every design and every choice of materials, much as we’d like to,” says Acquanetta Ellis, the assistant director of Norfolk’s neighborhood preservation department. “What we can do is help educate residents about the historical value of what they have and what’s around them, and bring them along.”

Norfolk, like most American cities, is battling against the neighborhood-rending forces of unsightliness: teardowns, McMansions and disastrously inappropriate additions. The UDA pattern book helps boost real estate values and community spirit while saving historic architectural resources, reducing the tonnage of demolition rubble in the waste stream, and fostering the tourist-friendly “look” of Norfolk.

There’s no one citywide “look.” UDA’s team – led by partners Raymond L. Gindroz and Rob Robinson – scoured blocks built between 1850 and 1950. As UDA always does, the staff measured and analyzed different sectors’ recurring motifs: the sidewalk widths and porch depths, the typical materials for the likes of foundations, roofs and cladding.

“We always pull a place apart by its layers,” Robinson explains. “We talk to everyone we can about which places in town they love best and why. We look at the settlement history, cultural influences, street plans and topographic structure, we study the setbacks, lot sizes, roof pitches, eave overhangs – everything down to the street pavers. That’s how you unlock the potential of a place, and figure the right ways to re-stitch it.”

The Norfolk pattern book lays out six principal traditions for residential architecture: Classical Revival, Colonial Revival, European Romantic, Arts and Crafts, Victorian and Coastal Cottage. Bright-colored renderings mix with well-reproduced vintage and recent local photographs. Builder-friendly measured drawings outline detail sections and elevations. Restorers can grasp what they own, how not to spoil it, what the house might have lost over the years and how to put it back. And homeowners commissioning new construction can learn how to combine precedents without pastiche.

UDA dissects each style’s components in well-organized paragraphs – where the chimneys usually nestle, how wide the Ionic volutes flare – and gives a sense of the endless possible variations on every theme. A Classical Revival porch can cover a fifth of a façade or stretch the length of the house, below windows with 6/6, 6/9 or 9/9 sash. A roof can still be considered Classical Revival whether it’s laid in “slate (including manufactured slate products), laminated asphalt or composition shingles with a slate pattern, flat clay tile, or painted metal standing seam or 5-V crimp panels.”

The permissible-materials palette is equally varied for soffits, windows, doors, siding, columns, trim and porch ceilings. Fiber-cement, composite, PVC, polyurethane and fiberglass are allowed, as long as the parts are well-constructed and properly proportioned. (At the back of the book, UDA kindly provides a list of recommended suppliers and their best product lines, along with a glossary of trade terms like stiles, jack arches and fascias.) The tone of the pattern book’s text is always gentle and affable, never scolding or patronizing.

“It is best to locate garages at the back of your lot if possible, though it is also possible to build tasteful, attached garages,” reads one suggestion. “A common problem with current construction is that the garage additions often overwhelm the scale and character of the house.” Around windows on Colonial Revival houses or Coastal Cottages, “shutters are encouraged,” and if you don’t mind, please, “they should be sized and mounted as if operable.” On a Victorian, “archway bracketing can be used to form portals over key entry locations.” Try if you like to have some asymmetrical fun on European Romantic houses. “Small decorative accent windows are encouraged, especially in powder rooms, closets and halls,” while porches “should feature post-and-beam construction, shed roofs and rough-sawn clapboard siding.” But you may not want to get too carried away in a European Romantic vein: don’t hang shutters on any half-timbered areas, and “only durable materials like brick, stone, and stucco may come into direct contact with the soil.”

But what if you’re starting from a mass-produced 1950s ranch that lacks any original style to honor? The pattern book, the authors reassuringly say, “will help you select an appropriate, distinctly Norfolk architectural character” worth adding to bland existing designs. Pages of images demonstrate how generic ranches’ slightly hipped roofs, pedimented porches or deep eaves could inspire Colonial Revival, Victorian, Arts and Crafts or European Romantic makeovers. UDA also pragmatically took into account the widespread American craving for home offices, big kitchens, bonus rooms and master suites. The book explains how to raise a ranch roof, push out the front or stretch to the side, without swallowing the original main body or front yard and risk making the neighbors wince every time they drive past.

“The postwar houses haven’t been considered very desirable on the market, and they’re the most vulnerable to teardowns,” Robinson says. “We set out to demonstrate with simple drawings how these buildings actually fit into the local architectural vocabulary, and how they can be adapted into one of the moniker Norfolk styles.”

Norfolk hands out the pattern books at its Neighborhood Design and Resource Center, on a downtown main street not far from City Hall. Eight staff experts (including architects, renovation professionals and architecture students) are also on hand at the center to give free advice. The city doesn’t require anyone to follow the pattern book’s proposals, but the staff does carefully explain the advantages. “It’s presented as an option, not a policy; it’s a carrot approach and not a stick,” says Robinson.

The center’s users report immediate results: discernible leaps in the appearances and market prices of their properties. “Our house was a prime example of a house with no curb appeal that decreased the value of the block,” Mary Carter Fiveash, the owner of a Craftsman-style house, recently told The Washington Post. She and her husband Bill spent $15,000 replacing a long-vanished front porch; the center’s architects gave the Fiveashes a UDA-inspired porch sketch, which the couple handed to their builder. “I used to be embarrassed walking up to our house,” Mary Fiveash told The Post. “Now I love it, and there’s a resurgence of interest in front porches all around here.”

Robinson has also noticed that locals are increasingly aware of architectural history. “People are more attuned now to the character of the city, and are prouder of it,” he says. “They also realize that what was built there long ago was better suited to the coastal climate, and they want to build like that again, to capture the breezes instead of putting up something standardized that could be anywhere. The pattern book has spread our message in a format that people can easily digest, that they can show to the sales guy at the local Home Depot. What we do is not some elitist pursuit. We can track how it really reshapes the built environment and has a wide resonance.”

A few Norfolkians have not yet jumped on the architectural bandwagon, Ellis reports: “We still get some teardowns, and some inappropriately huge houses. We’re not reaching everyone quite yet. But every day we can see we’re making progress. People like the tone of the pattern book, the advice instead of rules. People realize that they’re adding value by remaining in character with their neighborhood, and they’re recommending the pattern book to their neighbors. That helps build value, too; it’s reassuring to know that everyone on your block is working towards some of the same goals.” – Eve M. Kahn

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Last Updated February 15, 2008