{"id":2254,"date":"2009-03-23T23:41:48","date_gmt":"2009-03-24T03:41:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingmontreal.ca\/2009\/03\/23\/montreals-shoeboxhobbit-houses\/"},"modified":"2013-01-21T11:07:43","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T16:07:43","slug":"montreals-shoeboxhobbit-houses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2009\/03\/23\/montreals-shoeboxhobbit-houses\/","title":{"rendered":"Montreal&#8217;s shoebox\/hobbit houses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/christopherdewolf\/2737542168\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3235\/2737542168_06f722e53c.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"Shoebox houses\" title=\"Shoebox houses\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve always been curious about the flat-roofed one-storey houses that are sprinkled throughout many of Montreal&#8217;s neighbourhoods. Rather than traditional bungalows, they look more like growth-stunted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.urbanphoto.net\/blog\/tag\/plexes\/\">plexes<\/a> that are missing their upper floors. Last Friday&#8217;s Gazette featured a nice feature by Susan Semenak on the houses, looking both at their history and their current popularity with home buyers looking for an in-town single-family house. I never realized they had a name: <a href=\"http:\/\/w5.montreal.com\/mtlweblog\/2009\/03\/on-tiny-houses-in-rows.html\">shoebox houses<\/a>. (It&#8217;s cute, but I prefer &#8220;hobbit houses,&#8221; which is what <a href=\"http:\/\/www.urbanphoto.net\/blog\/2007\/10\/09\/one-storey-houses\/\">one Urbanphoto commenter<\/a> called them.)<\/p>\n<p>Most shoebox houses are found in neighbourhoods like Verdun, lower NDG, Villeray and Ahuntsic, which were opened to development with the spread of Montreal&#8217;s electric tramway. They appealed mainly to working-class families that couldn&#8217;t afford to build proper duplexes or triplexes but still wanted a house of their own. According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.deut.uqam.ca\/fiches\/hanna_david_fiche.html\">David Hanna<\/a>, an urban studies professor at UQAM and Montreal&#8217;s plex expert, they could be built for as little at $500 if family members helped with construction. (That&#8217;s about $9,500 in today&#8217;s money, according to the Bank of Canada&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bankofcanada.ca\/en\/rates\/inflation_calc.html\">inflation calculator<\/a>.) The houses were designed to be expandable, so that a second storey could be eventually be added, a piecemeal process similar to the way houses are built in many of the world&#8217;s developing countries.<\/p>\n<p>That kind of independent house construction has vanished in Montreal, as land and construction prices soared and the house-building trade became dominated by professional real estate developers. And even though shoebox houses might be enjoying a resurgence in popularity, they&#8217;re also being knocked down for new condominium developments, a trend documented by Guillaume St-Jean <a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/?p=128\">here on Spacing Montreal<\/a> and in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/guil3433\/2906186948\/\">his series of then-and-now photos<\/a>. My feelings about this are mixed: on one hand, densification is a natural, desirable trend, but on the other, we&#8217;re losing an historically important type of house that remains an affordable entry into homeownership. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/christopherdewolf\/2563266162\/in\/datetaken\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3103\/2563266162_d4380d09b5.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"Shoebox house\" title=\"Shoebox house\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/christopherdewolf\/2465928854\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2288\/2465928854_18f0abded7.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.urbanphoto.net\/blog\/2009\/03\/23\/hobbit-houses\/\">Crossposted from <b>Urbanphoto<\/b><\/a><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve always been curious about the flat-roofed one-storey houses that are sprinkled throughout many of Montreal&#8217;s neighbourhoods. Rather than traditional bungalows, they look more like growth-stunted plexes that are missing their upper floors. Last Friday&#8217;s Gazette featured a nice feature by Susan Semenak on the houses, looking both at their history and their current popularity<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2009\/03\/23\/montreals-shoeboxhobbit-houses\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;Montreal&#8217;s shoebox\/hobbit houses&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5008,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,15,7842],"tags":[3827,1870,9,735,125,3826,3825,3828,3829,302],"class_list":["post-2254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-housing","category-urban-design","tag-bank-of-canada","tag-david-hanna","tag-development","tag-guillaume-st-jean","tag-montreal","tag-real-estate-developers","tag-susan-semenak","tag-uqam-and-montreal","tag-urban-studies-professor","tag-usd"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Montreal&#039;s shoebox\/hobbit houses - Spacing Montreal<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2009\/03\/23\/montreals-shoeboxhobbit-houses\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Montreal&#039;s shoebox\/hobbit houses - Spacing Montreal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#8217;ve always been curious about the flat-roofed one-storey houses that are sprinkled throughout many of Montreal&#8217;s neighbourhoods. Rather than traditional bungalows, they look more like growth-stunted plexes that are missing their upper floors. 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