Doppelhaushälften

May 26, 2021 10:42 AM

What can happen when only half a house is sold? Doppelhaushälften (Semi-detached houses), in this case houses in the Ruhr region of Germany, where former coal miners retain a lifelong right of residence to their quarters, and the sold half is renovated. Photography by Wolfgang Fröhling.
posted by Halloween Jack (35 comments total)

You sometimes see similar things with semi-detached houses in England, with each side being painted differently. Though there isn't usually as sharp a dynamic between gentrified/ungentrified there, unless the shabby side is subdivided into a series of Rental Opportunities.
posted by acb at 10:51 AM on May 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

Neat. My mom grew up in a split house like that in a tiny copper mining town in the Upper Peninsula. Five kids raised in a two bedroom, one bathroom house half. But you bet your sweet ass it had a nice sauna beneath it*.



*I wouldn't call it a basement since all that was down there below the house was the sauna. Pronounced: SOW-nah, hey. Usage: time to go SOW-nah, hey
posted by NoMich at 10:51 AM on May 26, 2021 [6 favorites]

There are lots of semis in Toronto that look very, very different from one half to another, as well. And even, occasionally, a semi that becomes fully detached.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:58 AM on May 26, 2021 [15 favorites]

The stucco sides are the new ones, yes? Is there a material advantage or is it more that smooth siding is currently the style?
posted by clew at 11:00 AM on May 26, 2021

Pretty!!! jacquilynne beat me to the punch, there are so many of these in Toronto! This one is a statement.
posted by stray at 11:05 AM on May 26, 2021 [6 favorites]

The stucco sides are often a bit grimy, and usually have generic, functional-looking doors and windows, while the smooth-rendered sides are as clean as a Wes Anderson film set and often have cute-looking details on the doors and shutters, so I'm guessing they're the gentrified ones.
posted by acb at 11:05 AM on May 26, 2021

This is so cool. For some it's obvious which side is renovated. For others I couldn't tell - or rather I could guess which side was renovated, but it looked demonstrably worse afterwards. Then again, I appreciate brick.
posted by Emily's Fist at 11:12 AM on May 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

How does it work when someone tears down half a house like that? Who is responsible for how much boundary wall?
posted by aniola at 11:17 AM on May 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

I find this way more charming than it has any reason to be. I guess I’m just tickled by odd things that happen for highly understandable reasons.

In the same vein as the picture jacquilynne linked, there’s a house near me that appears to be half of a modular home. My sister and I joke that it just fell off the truck.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:32 AM on May 26, 2021 [4 favorites]

I grew up in one of these in the southwest of Germany. Very common. More so than detached single homes.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 11:35 AM on May 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

I really like this. In some cases, the two sides are oddly complementary to each other (like those that have blue shutters on one side, and blue curtains on the other).

It does kind of remind me of the duct tape line in bedrooms housing squabbling siblings, though. In a kind of sweet, nostalgic way (says someone that didn't have to share a room with a sibling)
posted by Gray Duck at 11:52 AM on May 26, 2021 [4 favorites]

I really like the brick + bright paint combinations. I don't see that often, but it looks good to me.
posted by Dip Flash at 11:56 AM on May 26, 2021

A friend of mine bought one-half of a semi-detached home. The neighbours had done some significant renovations to their half so the two halves look quite different. My friend's plan is to do similar renovations to make the whole building look a bit more unified but it doesn't look like that will happen any time soon.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:57 AM on May 26, 2021

I was living in Tokyo during the peak of Japan's economic bubble, and I recall an old house in the neighborhood facing one of the major streets. At one point, the folks who lived there (who I think operated a donburi stand next door) sold half the house, which was razed, and the open wound covered with corrugated blue plastic sheeting. Later, they sold half the remaining house, which got the same treatment.
posted by adamrice at 12:07 PM on May 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

There are a lot of large 19th century duplexes in my neighborhood that were built by rich/upper middle class people but are now mostly apartments. They are sometimes slightly fancier on one side (bigger front door, more decorative trim). Somebody from the historical society told me it is because originally the bank president or judge who owned the house lived in the fancier half and the plainer half was for relatives like his daughter and son-in-law or his wife's unmarried sisters. Or it was rented out.
posted by interplanetjanet at 12:27 PM on May 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

Semi-detached houses are built as a standard dwelling in the UK, the 3-bed semi is practically a defining characteristic of the middle class upbringing. I'm in one now.

I did at one point live in what had been a rectory, built in the C19th and which had been split into two after. We got on with the neighbours so had a look in both sides. It was quite weird, our side got the big rooms while the other side got what would have been servant quarters, that sort of wrapped around our side. They servant side was pretty pokey. While the landlord was renovating he found the pull cords for ringing the bells to call the servants through. The bells weren't there of course.
posted by biffa at 12:31 PM on May 26, 2021 [3 favorites]

That's because you have to wait 'til midnight on a full moon to pull the cord. Then you'll hear the bell.

Yes master?

I love spooky old houses.
posted by adept256 at 12:57 PM on May 26, 2021 [5 favorites]

There are lots of semis in Toronto that look very, very different from one half to another, as well. And even, occasionally, a semi that becomes fully detached.

Exactly the house that came to mind.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 1:11 PM on May 26, 2021

As @biffa says, semi-detached houses are super common here in the UK. Since I was born forty years ago, I've lived in 2 detached houses, 6 semi-detached houses, 5 terraced houses (part of a line of three or more houses attached to one another; being at the "end" of a terrace is functionally-equivalent to being semi-detached, although in some very cheap terraces the adjoining wall doesn't go all the way up to the top of the attic's crawl space), 2 flats (apartments), and 1 university halls. Semi-detached definitely a norm from my experience.
posted by avapoet at 1:15 PM on May 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

I live in a semi in the UK, and the houses are on two different streets. We're No. 1, and the adjoining house is No. 36.
posted by pipeski at 1:17 PM on May 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

Emily Eden; The Semi-Detached House and The Semi-Attached Couple.
posted by clew at 1:17 PM on May 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

Semis are also very common in Toronto and - for the most part - seem to work just fine. (I live in one). But it's not unknown for the renovation of one part of a semi-pair to be done very badly - and ruins the other. Or in a place that is depopulating, one half might be abandoned and the other start to suffer.

There has to be cooperation between the owners of semis or any rowhouse to ensure that they respect each other's property.
posted by jb at 1:40 PM on May 26, 2021 [2 favorites]

These are pretty much standard in the UK - most of the people I know that live in houses as opposed to flats live in semis or terraces. As biffa mentions, they are a cliche of middle-class life. You either get along with your neighour, ignore them or indulge in ridiculous passive-agressive feuds about Leylandii hedges and painting one half of the central shared drainpipe a different colour to theirs.

Some of the older semis, built in the 1920s-30s when commuting range increased with the building of the Tube etc., have a certain charm, with completely inexplicable Tudor half-timbered and arts-and-crafts details. Traditionally the front garden was kept competitively neat, with beds of standard roses, but nowadays often paved over for cars. They made up most of the suburbs that sprang up in the early years of the 20th century around London, known as Metroland, after an advertising slogan of the Metropolitan railway, which offered the chance of a house of your own (or half of one) with a garden (very important) in relatively rural surroundings, but within easy reach of the city. To quote the rather exasperated-sounding editor of the Architectural Review in 1946; "for all the alleged deficiencies of suburban taste ... it holds for ninety out of a hundred Englishmen an appeal which cannot be explained away as some strange instance of mass aberration".
posted by Fuchsoid at 1:49 PM on May 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

"My Pink Half of the Drainpipe separates next door from me."
posted by Paul Slade at 1:52 PM on May 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

Who is responsible for how much boundary wall?

In the UK you may have to deal with the delights of the "party wall", where each side owns half the thickness of the wall. I've just had to deal with this in my mother's house, where the other half were having some alterations done.

There are surveyors and lawyers who make a living out of drawing up party wall agreements and adjuducating on disputes.
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 2:26 PM on May 26, 2021

What's with the ladders? Most of the ones where you can see the roof seem to have a ladder on it, presumably as a semi-permanent fixture.
posted by tavella at 2:28 PM on May 26, 2021 [1 favorite]

I think the ladders are permanently installed on steep roofs for the chimney sweep.
posted by amf at 2:42 PM on May 26, 2021

That and the necessity of shovelling snow off the roof before its weight causes damage.
posted by acb at 2:56 PM on May 26, 2021

How does it work when someone tears down half a house like that? Who is responsible for how much boundary wall?

As has been indicated, it's always going to be a complicated issue, but versions of it will arise in all jurisdictions (even if semis aren't a thing, apartments are pretty universal in the modern era). In England and Wales, at least, the fundamental common law issues are the torts or trespass to land and nuisance, and contractual and land law rights in the form of covenants of support and shelter. However, these are modified by statute, most notably by the Party Wall etc. Act 1996.

I do worry about the picture in this collection where it looks like the purchaser of the right-hand property has replaced the roof on their side of the ridge, while the other half of the building looks likely afflicted with damp. Given that a big chunk of the price is just getting the roofers up there in the first place, I'd have been inclined to just the whole thing done even if the neighbour's landlord wouldn't pay half. I'd rather have the peace of mind than the money...
posted by howfar at 3:40 PM on May 26, 2021

Yeah, in the UK you also get terraces (2 party walls - no HOA as you might have in the US, party wall arrangements are so common as to be enshrined in law) and this sort of thing is perfectly normal. Though the German ones are certainly a study in contrasts.
posted by How much is that froggie in the window at 10:47 AM on May 27, 2021 [2 favorites]

> in some very cheap terraces the adjoining wall doesn't go all the way up to the top of the attic's crawl space
This reminds me of a family story from when I was a young child. One of my dad's elderly relatives complained about things going missing in his house. My dad and his brother investigated and found the roof space was completely open between adjoining houses. Fortunately dad's brother was a brickie and they closed the gap up. I believe matters with the neighbour were settled informally.
posted by crocomancer at 12:15 PM on May 27, 2021

I grew up in one of these in the southwest of Germany. Very common. More so than detached single homes.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 11:35 AM on May 26 [1 favorite +] [!]

I just now noticed this comment. My forefathers hail from near Stuttgart, so maybe my finding the houses delightful is some kind of ancestral memory.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:14 PM on May 27, 2021

Painting exactly one half of a shared exterior drainpipe is funny but not so huge a hassle. Are the sewer drains shared? How soon do I have to worry about my semi-neighbors flushable* wipes habit?
posted by clew at 3:58 PM on May 27, 2021

Its complicated but mostly its the water company's responsibility
posted by crocomancer at 3:36 AM on May 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

I thought those were very clear responsibility diagrams!
posted by clew at 9:28 AM on May 28, 2021