The Over-Under Duplex

The Over Under Duplex

a unit typology review

Eric S. Brown, author

Kielbasa, a Cleveland favorite

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What is a Cleveland Double? 

What is a Cleveland Double?  No, it’s not a double kielbasa sandwich, it is the Cleveland Double House.  This is a unique housing type that is prevalent in industrial era cities especially those along the Great Lakes and is also know as an Over-Under duplex or a two flat house.  

These over under duplexes were typically built in the heart of the industrial expansion era 1890-1920. Many were built as speculative houses in the expanding 1st tier street car suburbs.  In many cases, a family bought the unit and then rented the lower floor to either family members or to renters to help with the mortgage cost.  Most were wood frame with possibly some brick veneer and could be found in alley conditions or park behind front load streets.  

In other cities, especially the south, this type became the single family house that was converted to a double (or more) later.  The Charleston Side house makes a great Over Under duplex as do the more formal Mansion house form.  

This type is still a very valid part of the “missing middle” class of non-single family housing types.  It can be used along side the more common side by side duplex as both types live differently and have different architectural characters. 

A Cleveland Double, Cleveland Heights, OH.

Advantages of the Over Under: 

• Flat living arrangement all on a single level.  This is what many people prefer as a lifestyle choice.  This arrangement also provides for typically a more modern open efficient floor plan. 
• Efficient: This type is a little more efficient than the side-side duplex as the building has one stair vs. two and also that the unit plans stack over each other in what is typically a basic box form. 
• Privacy: The over-under split allows each unit to have a private porch space front and/or rear with the only crossing occurring at the front door zone. A side-side has trouble with adjacent porches being next to each other along with being much more narrow in width. 
• Building Code: These fall under the International Residential Code for 1 and 2 family dwelling units, avoiding the more complex (and expensive) Commercial code that the small apartments fall into.  Also avoids the FHA for rental units.
• Rental Property:  These are great starter houses for young people getting started who have rental income if they buy the whole unit and live upstairs or this can be packaged off to a small investor as a rental unit. 
• Multi-Generational:  A family can take the entire property and put an aging parent or sibling downstairs or any combination of family patterns that are so common now.  The unit is flexible and can also be rented. 
• Ownership Flexibility:  These units can be sold fee simple or can be done with a condominium arrangement. 
• Elevators:  It is easy to put in a residential elevator or at least reserve the space for one which allows the older market to feel comfortable buying the units. 
• HVAC:  Simple single zone system with a single return. 

Mansion Form Duplex, Brown Design Studio

Challenges of the Over Under: 

• Sound Control:  Always a problem in any type of multi-family, sound control is important.  Care must be taken to design the proper floor system which is the sound control barrier (and fire barrier as well).  Well designed units will be able to have hardwood floors if desired even.  Care must also be taken during construction for sound control of all areas that penetrate the system, such as plumbing and vent stacks.  This is the main source of sound control issues. 

30' Small Form Duplex, Brown Design Studio

Where to use the Over Under: 

• These work best in the T-3 to T-4 transect zone and blend in well with the typical single family street scape in scale, form and mass. 
• Great infill units in most  cities. 
• In greenfield development, typical units make great transitional streets from a single family neighbor hood to the the town center or multifamily blocks. 
• Lots sizes generally run 40‘x100’ to 65‘x100’ for larger Mansion form units. 

We have designed and built these units for last ten plus years and have found them to be accepted well in the market with a modern update to the design of course.  These can be smaller units that function as great starter homes for a young person or family that helps cover the mortgage or we have also built larger high end market homes that are popular with the older retired crowd or retired singles.  

While the top image is a Cleveland Double in Cleveland Heights, the other images are some of our built units and a new design for a small lot infill project (in Cleveland of course).  Brown Design Studio offers 17 years of experience building great places and the buildings that are the fabric of those places.  Duplex and other unit types plans can be found at our website or contacting us directly.  www.brownds.com

A Mansion Form Duplex Street, Brown Design Studio

Award Recognition for Brown Design Studio

CNU Charter and Driehaus Awards

Brown Design has received recognition for two awards at the recent Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) in Dallas, Texas.  Both awards stem from the same project, the Beaufort County Community Development Code. The project received the CNU Charter merit award and the Driehaus Form Based Code Award from the Form Based Code Institute (FBCI).

Congratulations go out to the lead planning firm of Opticos from Berkley, California.  Opticos Principal  Stefan Pellegrini lead the planning/design team and process along with staff from Beaufort County Planning and the Town of Port Royal.  Brown Design was able to assist Opticos in architectural design and local calibration of the code.  

The code is notable for being in a large county with a full rural to urban transect and also unique local conditions.  Additionally, the code was an inter-governmental coordinated effort between Beaufort County and the Town of Port Royal.  The planning design team participated with the local community over the course of many charrettes, workshops and meetings and the code responded with a  set of place-types and transect zones that capture the uniqueness of the Carolina Lowcountry.  

Copyright all images @ Opticos. 

CNU Beaufort Article Series: “Res Privata”

What makes up the Private Realm? In short, it is composed of the everyday common things in people’s daily life. These things include our homes, our garages, our yards, and the basic places we get our daily needs from, our stores and typical places of employment. All of these things form the backdrop of our lives and provide the basic urban fabric that we inhabit. A great Private Realm provides the largest single defining attribute to a region’s built character, more so than the architecture of monuments. It is easy to tell if you are in Charleston’s peninsula, the French Quarter in New Orleans or Old Town Alexandria. The common buildings there all share the same vocabulary of vernacular architecture. They also form a pallet of background fabric that reinforces the notion of a place while also allowing the place’s Res Publica or monuments/landmarks to clearly standout. The vernacular architecture of the Res Privata, has certain characteristics that allow it to be a great sense-of-place builder. It must have a modest beauty, an economical sense, an honest use of local materials and adaptation to local conditions, and a clarity of form & typology. Beauty, in modest domestic architecture, comes from simple mass, proportion and rhythm. These three principals are typically driven by proportions found in nature or the “golden section”. These proportions are common to our human bodies and thus we (unknowingly) find them comforting.

Common background architecture must, by definition, must be economical and reproducible by the common people of the region that it originates from. Patterns and principals are the method by which all these goals are accomplished. Stylistic choices give individual touches to each building but each house on a street should have more in common with its neighbor than different. Vernacular architecture is necessarily very much linked to local climate and local materials. Here in Beaufort, the common materials are wood framing & siding typically on a raised foundation. The raised foundation helps to cool the building along with a taller ceiling height. Porches shade the hot summer sun while protecting large tall windows from rain. A house built in New England, would look very much different

Clarity of form and typology means that buildings read as they are. Houses look like houses, stores look like stores very much like how a cat looks like a cat and a horse looks like a horse. Confusion comes from buildings which look like a cat but function like a horse. Or worse yet, are a Frankenstein like creation. The background fabric of a place should be predictable, not nervous or confusing. Great Cities, Towns and Places have Great Public Realms. These are the collection of background fabric buildings that we may not notice as individual pieces, but that we do notice on a collective level. Ideally, this background architecture, has its own distinctive vocabulary derived from the local region. This architecture is not static, it can and should adapt as time moves on. Beaufort has a distinctive vernacular style as does the Lowcountry as a whole. Having our new growth use this DNA as a starting point is the key to growing from what we are, not growing away from what we are.

Habersham Farms Project - The Buildings

 

Habersham Farms Project - The Buildings

Brown Design Studio, along with Moser Design Group is hosting a group of students from Andrews University for their Spring 2010 Semester. They will be writing periodically about their farm project for Family Farms Foundation’s Habersham Farms in Beaufort, SC. They will be designing a series of buildings for the farm, building one of them, and completing pricing sets for others, so that they’re ready for farmer Pat Gallagher to build

March 12, 2010
The project for Habersham Farms has been developing quite nicely. Our group of interns has been working on a redevelopment of the master/site plan as well as designing some prototypes for the main farm buildings. There will be four main buildings, which are as follows:

1.Kitchen/Pavilion: the footprint for this building will be around 3,500 sq. ft.. The function of this facility will be to teach cooking classes and serve as a community meeting point for various activities.

2.Education/Gallery building: this building will be approx. 2,500 sq. ft. on two floors. It will contain a large space that will be used for educational and mass media gatherings as well as office space, a kitchenette, and additional storage space. The main idea for this building is that groups can come here to learn about the functions and history of Habersham Farms while also learning about farming methods for the South Carolina Lowcountry.

3.Bunkhouse/Gateway: this building is about 4,000 sq. ft.. It will be two stories and will contain a bunkroom with kitchenette upstairs with locker rooms and a main storage area on the ground floor. The hope is that the bunkhouse could house anyone, students or workers, who may be working at Habersham Farms for a semester or indefinitely. It also derives its gateway name because the building will consist of two sections on either side with an open middle porte-cochere on the ground floor. This will provide a visual axis and connection from the main farm area to the barn.

4.Barn: there will be a typical barn that will draw its character from many SC Lowcountry barns. It will house livestock as well as be a storage space for various crops. There will also be an area where machinery and equipment can be repaired.
There will be various other structures and small outbuildings which really make the farm function as it should. These include greenhouses, a windmill, and shading/storage structures. In addition, our group is designing a prototype vegetable stand that will be located on Cherokee Farms Road. From this stand Farmer Pat will be able to sell daily to those customers who desire fresh, ripe, locally grown fruit and produce.
This past Wednesday we had a review of this project with farmer Pat Gallagher, Patrick Kelly from T&D Landholding’s and local Habersham architects, Eric Brown and Eric Moser. We had a good discussion regarding the implementation of these designs. As this project moves forward during the next few months you can follow its progress on this blog.

The T5 Public Realm: Shopfronts, Awnings, Balconies & more...

Private Frontage Secrets-Brown CNU17

View more presentations from Congress for the New Urbanism.

CNU17 Presentation - Private Frontage Secrets

Eric presented on the T5 Public Realm at the last CNU in Denver. Specifically, this presentation shows images and drawings of different ways buildings interact with the public realm.