Memories of My Stoop

The porch as “An Architecture of Generosity” is being heralded at the U.S. Pavilion at this year’s upcoming design Biennale in Venice, as a bridge between public and private areas that
encourages communal activity.

This is a worthy goal in a divided world, according to its sponsors, (see
Sam Lubell's piece in the NYTimes) and which prompted me to think about
the stoop I experienced growing up in the Flatbush neighborhood of
Brooklyn during the Depression and World War ll.

As I write in “An Urban Odyssey” A Critic’s Search for the Soul of Cities
and Self,” (Academic Studies Press.com) whether the stoop we shared as one of six families in the
two-story, attached row house on East Eighth Street in the Flatbush
section of Brooklyn was a public space or not was never broached when I
grew up there during the Depression and World War ll.

However labeled, the stoop was, technically, a collective private space, used
publicly for the immediate families living there and invited others.
That included what relatives and neighbors might also want to plotz, sit
with a sigh, there, as was the custom in the modest Jewish and Italian
neighborhood; someone living in the ’hood was in effect family, anyone
else from anywhere else, family or not, “landsman” or “familiga,” was
treated with suspicion.

Sitting on the concrete steps or the low sidewalls, or a faded foldout beach chair
taken from an apartment, a grandstand was formed of the exterior steps, a
stage set of sorts, offering views of the interminable gabbing,
lounging residents and the passing parade of characters on the sidewalk
.But first it was my playpen of sorts, where I learned to crawl and
stand, and then a performance area where I took my first steps, and
later a playground where stoop ball dominated.

It was much later as a critic that I became curious to know just how these
prime places in our urban sprawl came to be, and how they were shared
with neighbors and, beyond Brooklyn, with the disparate masses. These
man-made places and spaces included sidewalks and streets, squares,
parks, and playgrounds, as well as the varied vestigial scenes, such as
the iconic local stoops, a remnant of Amsterdam. To me, they were, and
continue to be, the existential life of the city, its “genius loci.”

These are the places that people experience and take pride in. Varying in
form from city to city, layered with local tradition, past, present, and
evolving. These places are what lend a city and its people that
evanescent quality of soul.

And as I ventured beyond Brooklyn and experienced the world, I found this
ill-defined essence fascinating, be it in diverse urban and suburban
neighborhoods and singular settings, including the streets of New York
City and Paris, the commons of Boston, the beaches of Southern
California, the night markets of Thailand, and the piazzas of Italy. And
so have written about them in my book.