Out Front and Friendly
Neighbors Leave the Back Yard to Socialize by the Street

By Annie Groer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 28, 2007; H01

From her childhood in Cartagena, Colombia, Gala Rodriguez remembers "rocking chairs on front porches and doors that didn't lock." She smiles while recalling racing with her playmates from one porch to another as neighbors and relatives sat outside and savored the coastal air.

Now Rodriguez has recaptured that cherished sense of community. Three years ago she and her husband, Alfredo, bought a Capitol Hill rowhouse in a neighborhood long on street-side socializing. Following the lead of neighbors up and down the tree-lined block, the couple bought two benches to set on the sidewalk just outside their front door near a pair of potted hydrangeas and two stone lions. In the mornings, after work and on weekends, people stop and chat while walking the dog or pushing a stroller. Weather permitting, they sit a spell.

"In the morning I will drink my coffee here," says Rodriguez, office manager for the chief administrator of the House of Representatives. "And on nice nights, we are out here. The front is more open than the back yard; you can see the neighbors, say hello."

More typically, Americans seclude themselves behind their homes: on patches of grass, on decks or patios, often protected by fences, hedges and trees to ensure their privacy.

Some, however, have bucked that tide and oriented themselves streetward. From verdant suburbs to gritty urban enclaves, they socialize in plain view, observing and greeting the passing parade.

That makes sense to Vermont-based garden designer Julie Moir Messervy, co-author of "Outside the Not So Big House."

"Anywhere you can get a space, especially when you are just starting out, you use. This was true for the old tenement neighborhoods, the walk-ups, and even Capitol Hill and [Boston's] Beacon Hill. As space gets to be more of a premium, especially in cities, and as people learn to value the little bit of space they have, more of this will happen."

Even people with back yards have good reason to switch, Messervy says. "Doing something with the front yard is showing off who you really are, your sense of fun, if you are a plant person, a statuary person."

Or a dog person.

Last year, Andrew and Ginny McBride spent $30,000 having their American University Park lawn paved in stone, landscaped and furnished, the better to host casual Friday night gatherings for friends, neighbors and pets.

"We were always out there. We have neighbors who have dogs and we have a dog" -- Benny the Labradoodle -- "and we found ourselves standing out front throwing Frisbees," says Ginny McBride, a public health analyst with the Department of Health and Human Services.

For much of the year, guests start drifting in at 7:30 p.m. and begin "the ritual reading of the takeout menus" from nearby eateries, says Andrew McBride. Everyone splits the cost of dinner. One neighbor might bring over a pitcher of cocktails or some wine; another could show up with fresh berries or a cake. Every now and again, someone will actually cook dinner for anywhere from six to 20 adults and kids.

"I grew up in the front-stoop culture of Philadelphia's rowhouses, so this resonates with me. It's far more social than the back yard because you get traffic passing by," says neighbor Stuart Evans, who always brings Sugar Belle, a mutt of indeterminate parentage. Passing strangers and their pooches are occasionally invited to join the party.

When heat becomes unbearable, the McBrides set out fans and bug-repelling torches; on cool evenings, they light a blaze in the fire pit. Other neighbors also take on hosting duties throughout the year.

John Morton and his buddies don't wait for Fridays to meet on the front porch of a Northwest Washington rowhouse. They are there almost every weeknight after work, drinking beer and shooting the breeze. "I will speak to anybody. I don't care who comes by -- kids, old people," says Morton, who works for a pest control company, as he perches on the steps not far from busy Georgia Avenue.

"This is like a clubhouse," adds Terry Smith, a sales manager for a different pest control firm, who lives in Hyattsville but occasionally drops by Morton's front stoop before heading home. "We talk about what happened bad during the day, about Iraq, women. We laugh, we tell fish stories till about 7 or 8 o'clock."

For some, the view is what matters.

"Who would want to sit out back and look at the alley or my neighbors' garbage cans?" asks Jeanette Thornton, who works for a health trade association and lives in a Northwest Washington rowhouse. "I'm out front almost every morning in my pj's, with coffee, or messing around with my flowers."

As newcomers to Herndon last year, Joanna Wilbur says she and her husband, Chris, found that sitting outside was "a way to make friends and connect ourselves more with the people living on our cul-de-sac. After work, people would come up to the porch and introduce themselves, or we'd say hi to them as they walked down the street. One couple would bring their daughter over to play on the porch swing."

The porch sealed the deal for the couple -- she's a credit union retirement specialist, he's an Army translator -- because it strongly evoked her Midwestern childhood. "I was a big-time porch monkey in St. Louis. Everyone was outside on the stoop until long after the streetlights came on."