Make duplexes beautiful again!

Sometimes, I walk my dogs along Highland Terrace and admire the homes up there. It took me a while to realize some of the beautiful historic homes were, in fact, duplexes. Not the kind that were converted long after they were built—though those exist too. I’m talking about this gorgeous old gal. 

A few years ago it went on the market, and the owners at the time held a big tag sale. They even opened up the house so you could walk around inside and look at the bigger items that were for sale (and get motivated to buy it, I presume). I dragged my husband out of the house so we could go ogle this beauty. 

I’ve been thinking about this house—and others like it scattered around town—since the PZC has been talking about changing the zoning regulations to allow two-family homes to be built in AA Zones (where only single-family homes had been previously allowed). Predictably, there’s been a lot of griping about the ramifications of this change. Often times, the same people who are mad about the values of their homes increasing during the last reassessment are the same ones complaining that allowing duplexes in their neighborhoods might bring down their home’s value.

It’s a real ouroboros of property complaints.

For a moment, you might be tempted to be swayed by these arguments—though it’s hard to imagine that even a glut of duplexes could do much damage to the huge gains most property owners in Stafford have seen (especially those who have lived here for decades and bought, or built, their homes for a song). 

Then I think about this house again. 

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather live in a neighborhood filled with beautiful, well-designed duplexes like this than the boring, vinyl-clad, single-family homes that abound in Stafford and in neighborhoods across Connecticut. Just because the houses got bigger doesn’t make them any different than the mass produced houses of the post-war boom. 

Don’t get me wrong, my house is as boring as the rest. I’ve tried to give it some character, but that takes time. Furthermore, I know most people are not building houses as beautiful as the ones on Highland Terrace anymore. Nope, these days everyone wants an open-concept white box with gray everything. 

Still, there are towns that encourage this kind of thoughtful design when building two-family housing through Architectural Review Boards. They enforce design standards that encourage duplexes to still look like single-family homes by hiding the separate entrances (not unlike how the entrances are de-emphasized in our beautiful example home). This kind of control over what people can do with their properties would never go over in Stafford, and in a lot of ways, I’m grateful for that. But sometimes, I really wish we could stop people from building boring, utilitarian homes and get back to building beautiful.