Portions of your city that look like other cities?

eschaton · #1 Posted **Feb 22, 2018, 3:20 PM**

I thought this would be a fun streetview game. Obviously every city has its own prototypical built vernacular. But in every city there are individual pockets and streets which are much more reminiscent of somewhere else.

I'll go first - I live in Pittsburgh.

Chicago
Philadelphia (South)
Philadelphia (West)
Detroit
An outer neighborhood in New Orleans? Some southern city anyway.

If I were to include generic streetcar suburban neighborhoods, the list would be a lot wider, but places like this look like so many parts of the country,

Pittsburgh's most distinctive vernacular is probably the wood-framed rowhouse/semi-rowhouse neighborhoods, which outside of Atlantic Canada and some of the coal region towns of Eastern PA don't really have an analogue.

Steely Dan · #2 Posted **Feb 22, 2018, 3:41 PM**

the most obvious example in chicago is Alta Vista Terrace.

it consists of 40 rowhouses that were built by a developer who was inspired to build them after a trip to london.

i don't know enough about london to know if these rowhouses would fit in there, but they are definitely outside the bounds of normal chicago vernacular architecture.

source: http://www.connectingthewindycity.co...rrace-and.html

McBane · #3 Posted **Feb 22, 2018, 4:24 PM**

Philadelphia:

Manayunk (Pittsburgh)

JManc · #4 Posted **Feb 22, 2018, 4:36 PM**

That Chicago pic reminds me of parts of Center City in Philly or Manhattan. Not so much really of London.

eschaton · #5 Posted **Feb 22, 2018, 4:49 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by McBane

Philadelphia:

Manayunk (Pittsburgh)

The topography does make it look more Pittsburgh-like. The roof lines are a bit off for Pittsburgh though - Pittsburgh rowhouses, when they don't have mansards, almost always have a pretty steep roof with a dormer window third floor.

The thing which really makes it not look Pittsburgh though is all of the stucco. I have never seen a Pittsburgh rowhouse with a stucco finish. Pittsburgh rowhouses are either brick, stone (if made for rich people) or originally wood clad (these days largely covered in aluminum siding).

There are scores of different streets - hell entire neighborhoods - in Pittsburgh which could pass for Philly. Pittsburgh didn't really develop the industrial-level rowhouse construction that Philly did however, where you'd have blocks and blocks built out by a single developer. There were bits of that in California-Kirkbride, but it was heavily affected by blight, so you don't see it so much now. This section of Bloomfield is a mini-development from the early 20th century, so it has a bit of an outer Philly vibe too.

PHL10 · #6 Posted **Feb 22, 2018, 5:23 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by eschaton

The topography does make it look more Pittsburgh-like. The roof lines are a bit off for Pittsburgh though - Pittsburgh rowhouses, when they don't have mansards, almost always have a pretty steep roof with a dormer window third floor.

The thing which really makes it not look Pittsburgh though is all of the stucco. I have never seen a Pittsburgh rowhouse with a stucco finish. Pittsburgh rowhouses are either brick, stone (if made for rich people) or originally wood clad (these days largely covered in aluminum siding).

There are scores of different streets - hell entire neighborhoods - in Pittsburgh which could pass for Philly. Pittsburgh didn't really develop the industrial-level rowhouse construction that Philly did however, where you'd have blocks and blocks built out by a single developer. There were bits of that in California-Kirkbride, but it was heavily affected by blight, so you don't see it so much now. This section of Bloomfield is a mini-development from the early 20th century, so it has a bit of an outer Philly vibe too.

You realize for all the little nitpicky things that you focused on for McBane's example, we could do the same for yours.

McBane · #7 Posted **Feb 22, 2018, 5:32 PM**

Ya, kind takes the fun out of this game - we all know every city is unique can't be duplicated to a T.

eschaton · #8 Posted **Feb 22, 2018, 5:53 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by PHL10

You realize for all the little nitpicky things that you focused on for McBane's example, we could do the same for yours.

Of course. But the fun of these threads is the back and forth. Threads where everyone replies with their own thing and no one responds to those replies don't garner any real discussion.

PHL10 · #9 Posted **Feb 22, 2018, 6:26 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by eschaton

Of course. But the fun of these threads is the back and forth. Threads where everyone replies with their own thing and no one responds to those replies don't garner any real discussion.

Well good luck in getting a good back and forth when your response was basically – "all my pictures look very much like Philadelphia and none of your examples look anything like Pittsburgh." Yea, that's fun.

eschaton · #10 Posted **Feb 22, 2018, 7:24 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by PHL10

Well good luck in getting a good back and forth when your response was basically – "all my pictures look very much like Philadelphia and none of your examples look anything like Pittsburgh." Yea, that's fun.

I dunno. I wouldn't feel hurt if people cut up my examples with nitpicking. I'd be glad to learn more about the built vernacular of other cities.

YMMV, of course.

muppet · #11 Posted **Feb 23, 2018, 11:51 AM**

London

Canary Wharf is meant to resemble Toronto (originally built by Olympia & York, a Canadian company)

https://canarywharf.com

https://depositphotos.com/83138614/s...mber-2015.html

Regent Street/ Piccadilly districts looks like Paris

https://imranjaafar.files.wordpress.com, http://hauteliving.com

Thamesmead looks like Volgograd

http://hidden-london.com

http://douglasmccarthy.me

large parts of Notting Hill, Chelsea, Belgravia and Kensington look like Brighton

www.joelix.com, http://www.thecloister.co.uk/news/ar...on-104483.aspx

https://media.gettyimages.com

Clerkenwell looks like Manchester (red brick Victorian industry converted)

www.timothysoararchive.co.uk, http://24-removals-london.co.uk

www.robertgrahamcommercial.co.uk

http://www.collierslondon.com

kool maudit · #12 Posted **Feb 23, 2018, 1:29 PM**

King Christian IV built the Christianshavn district in 1612 in admiring emulation of Amsterdam with its canal network.

muppet · #13 Posted **Feb 23, 2018, 1:36 PM**

LDN ctd:

Vauxhall riverside is fast morphing into 'Vancouver-on-Thames'

https://static.dezeen.com

https://www.marble-mosaic.co.uk/sing...T-GEORGE-WHARF

Hampstead is the little village of Rye

www.thelocationguide.com

www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk

http://openemptyspaces.co.uk

While Bishopsgate will start to resemble Manhattan, with it's first canyons (everything hemmed in by protected viewing corridors from the nearby cathedral, not unlike an elongated island with high office demands)

https://static.dezeen.com

rodoheart, http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showth...28916&page=117, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...iews-city.html

Chelsea tries to look like Murano

www.aylesford.com

https://assets.londonist.com

While Slough is jokingly referred to locally as 'California' for its 'resemblance to car loving LA (but without the sun, palm trees or beautiful people)

www.insidermedia.com

Oh and Hackney looks a bit like Baghdad, for its timeless medieval alleys

https://cdn.lrb.co.uk

Everywhere else just looks like well, London

eschaton · #14 Posted **Feb 23, 2018, 2:15 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by muppet

Everywhere else just looks like well, London

Pretty sure there are London neighborhoods that look like Philadelphia.

Or is it the other way around?

muppet · #15 Posted **Feb 23, 2018, 2:19 PM**

show me, I'd love to see

JManc · #16 Posted **Feb 23, 2018, 2:37 PM**

I visited London before I visited Philly...there was a lot about Philly that reminded me of London. Which isn't a stretch since a bunch of blokes from England founded Philly.

eschaton · #17 Posted **Feb 23, 2018, 3:03 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by muppet

show me, I'd love to see

The actual Philly folks would be able to better answer this, but lots of Society Hill and Old City for sure.

proghousehead · #18 Posted **Feb 23, 2018, 3:20 PM**

muppet · #19 Posted **Feb 23, 2018, 7:02 PM**

Gorgeous. The Philly ones remind me of the post fire architecture of the late 1600s, the brick Queen Anne architecture that replaced the banned timber buildings following the Great Fire of London.

Surprisingly there isn't a great deal left in London, so age aside, if Philly has more of that than I'd have to concede London resembles Philadelphia.

eschaton · #20 Posted **Feb 23, 2018, 9:09 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by muppet

Gorgeous. The Philly ones remind me of the post fire architecture of the late 1600s, the brick Queen Anne architecture that replaced the banned timber buildings following the Great Fire of London.

Surprisingly there isn't a great deal left in London, so age aside, if Philly has more of that than I'd have to concede London resembles Philadelphia.

Those are probably the oldest neighborhoods in Philly, with a fair amount of late 18th and very early 19th century homes - done either in Georgian style (which was identical to the UK at the time) or later Federalist style (which was very similar on rowhouses).

The two did diverge later (here's a Victorian-era block), but since Philly continued to build attached or semi-attached houses all the way up through the 1950s, the built vernacular is more British looking in broad form than anywhere else in the U.S.