Terraced house

A terraced or terrace house (UK) or townhouse (US) is a term in architecture and city planning referring to a style of medium-density housing that originated in Europe in the 16th century, where a row of identical or mirror-image houses share side walls. They are also known in some areas as row houses or linked houses.

Terrace housing can be found throughout the world, though it is in abundance in Europe and Latin America, and extensive examples can be found in North America and Australia. The Place des Vosges in Paris (1605–1612) is one of the early examples of the style. Sometimes associated with the working class, historical and reproduction terraces have increasingly become part of the process of gentrification in certain inner-city areas.

Origins and nomenclature

Though earlier Gothic ecclesiastical examples, such as Vicars' Close, Wells are known, the practice of building new domestic homes uniformly to the property line really began in the 16th century following Dutch and Belgian models and became known in English as "row" houses. "Yarmouth Rows" in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk is an example where the building fronts uniformly ran right to the property line.