Witold Rybczynski is one of those ubiquitous writers whose magazine work I always enjoy, but whose books I've never bothered to read. Judging by excerpts from his new book, Last Harvest: How a Cornfield Became New Daleville, in Slate, I'll have to read his new one. Today's excerpt is a thumbnail history of the ranch house, a.k.a. the rambler or California. They're common as trees, even in Minnesota where they're rather impractical to heat and cool, and Rybczynski helps show why. Even - or especially - if you loathe the way ramblers look, read the excerpt: it's wonderful.
I liked yesterday's excerpt even more. Purporting to be Rybczynski's explanation of nothing less than "why we live in houses," it's not far from it. What I found most interesting is how he places the lowly townhouse as the center of the history of Western house-living. Invented in the Netherlands in the 17th century, where it served as an expression of middle-classness, and spread in the 18th century to England, where it did the same thing and became the "rowhouse" that spread to the great colonial cities like New York and Philadelphia, the townhouse is still a common form of single-family housing, though not the preferred form of it here in the United States. Living as I do in an nondescript townhouse on a nondescript street in a nondescript subdivision east of town, I like to think that maybe I nonetheless have something in common with Vermeer. Beyond superb painting skills and an irresistible hauteur, I mean.