Porch people let it all hang out

Therapy for sane living: Relax, observe, muse, chat if you wish. Front porches connect a cloistered world.

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 21, 2003

OLD SEMINOLE HEIGHTS -- Phyllis Gates never misses a chance to sit on her front porch. Late afternoons lure her to her rocker, the one her father, Phil Bourguardez, designed when he built this pagoda-style bungalow and generous front porch in 1918.

Bourguardez, Tampa city clerk for more than two decades, inherently understood the politicking value of a front porch.

"There was no air conditioning or TV in those days," explains Gates, 78. "I remember as a child all the neighbors bringing their chairs over in the late afternoons. They used to sit around and talk for hours."

Tall and rangy with an easygoing old Florida manner, Gates carries on the same tradition as her father, her cheery presence a cue for complete strangers to stop and sit a spell. Many tell her she bears an uncanny resemblance to Julia Child. Coincidentally, when she's not porch sitting, she likes to cook.

Some days, Gates sips a drink and watches the street scene, past and present, unfurl. As a little girl, she sat right on "that very porch swing" and waited for the ice cream man. Those were the days before refrigerated trucks and the vendor arrived on foot, carrying the sweet treats in a pouch slung over his shoulder.

She points to the muscular columns built from the petrified palmetto roots that her father hauled by horse and wagon from Bushnell.

And, see, on the ceiling, she marvels, the hook where her parents hung her baby swing?

Gates was born in this house. But she grew up on this porch.

"I sit out here every day," she says. "It's my peace and quiet. There's something so relaxing about watching people go by. A lot of times they slow down and wave. Sometimes they stop and talk."

Old Seminole Heights boasts block after block of graceful front porches. So do most of Tampa's historic districts, from Hyde Park to Ybor City to Tampa Heights, where neighbors throw front porch parties every other week, spring to fall. Charming front porches in a variety of styles also adorn old houses in Hampton Terrace and West Tampa, says Becky Clarke, executive director of Tampa Preservation Inc.

"There's something so homey and inviting about a front porch as opposed to a front stoop," Clarke says. "We're finally figuring out that what people enjoyed in the past -- things like sitting on the front porch and visiting with their neighbors -- really did work."

Tampa's sleeveless spring climate of balmy days and coolish nights calls for a front porch that family and friends can really live on. Tampa real estate agent Patty Ragland swears by rockers, footstools, ceiling fans and recessed lighting for evening entertaining on Davis Islands. More than anything, she says, a front porch means sipping sweet tea and catching the bay breezes.

"Everybody needs a front porch so they can meet the neighbors," Ragland says. "Front porches are so inviting. You can have a pretty house without a front porch, but if a house has one, you feel like maybe you could be friends with the person who lives there."

Ragland, who bought her Florida-style bungalow on Channel Drive in 1991, began adding an enviable wrap-around front porch almost immediately. The ambitious contractor promised three days, but in reality, it took, well, "all right, it took him two years," she says, laughing.

But the porch was worth the wait. Ragland's view may be one of the best front-porch vistas in all of Tampa. On an ordinary Sunday afternoon, a dinner boat glides by, as do motor boats, water scooters and one of those pirate party ships. A freighter the size of a small neighborhood is parked in the dry dock across the way, sharing the horizon with rows of handsome Harbour Island homes.

Clark picks up a set of binoculars: "Million dollars for a view of my porch," she jokes of a house that sits on a spit of peninsula in the shipping harbor.

Ragland has built or enhanced front porches on four homes she has owned along or near Channel Drive.

"I guess you could say I'm a front porch person," she says.

Homes without front porches cropped up after World War II. Ragland's house, built during that era, had a side porch instead.

Rob Blount, president and CEO of the Tampa Bay History Center, traces the origins of the front porch in Florida to early cabins and shotgun-style houses, many of which were built with simple porches attached. It wasn't until the Victorian period, he says, that front porches became "very embellished" with highly scrolled latticework, filigree and sometimes a second story.

He says front porches started disappearing in the 1950s with the glut of ranch houses built for a new generation.

The disappearance of the porch, he says, coincided with the "impersonalization of America," a lack of "rootedness," and a time when people didn't know their neighbors.

"I have never owned a house without a front porch," says Blount, who lives in Ballast Point. Working in an office all day makes him yearn "for a reconnection to the environment."

And front porch sitting earns points with Blount for another reason.

"It's an observational sport like no other," he says, "and a whole lot better than watching TV."

Patty Ragland's wrap-around porch invites year-round outdoor living, allowing access from both the front and kitchen doors before tapering off into a rear walkway she built herself from old bricks. The path ends at a pretty iron garden fence that leads into a sweet courtyard in the shade of a Chinese elm and "the best royal palm in Tampa."

Ragland's porch is so big that it allows room for a gardening bench and a fountain that she strategically placed just outside the kitchen door. When she's cooking, she can hear the soothing trickle of water. The feeling is both European and tropical, allowing room for guests to linger over a meal or for her pets to roam. Her 12-year-old mutt, Cricket, and fat tabby, Orange Cat, are front porch regulars. So are friends and neighbors.

Of the wrap-around design, she says: "I wanted to be able to walk around my front porch from front to back. It's a lot like my grandfather's front porch in Fort Worth."

What makes for a really great front porch?

Ragland thinks she knows the recipe:

Plenty of room. Railings to prop your feet on. Ceiling fans and plant hooks, too.

"A good front porch just makes you want to come and sit down and visit," she says. "I guess you could say, it's like a smile."