Meaning
In Philadelphia, a rowhouse is a house joined to neighboring houses by shared side walls as part of a continuous row; rowhome is a common local variant, and the naming itself is strongly associated with the city's built environment and Mid-Atlantic speech.
How it is used
Rowhouse is ordinary Philadelphia housing, neighborhood, planning, architecture, and real-estate vocabulary. Row house, rowhome, and row home also occur, and local writers and institutions do not use every spelling identically.
Examples
- “They renovated a brick rowhouse in South Philadelphia.”
- “Her block is lined with narrow rowhomes.”
- “The rowhouse shares side walls with the houses next door.”
Pronunciation
/ˈroʊˌhaʊs/ · ROH-house
Tone and register
Neutral and practical. The term names a common building form while also carrying strong Philadelphia cultural and neighborhood associations.
Visitor guidance
Visitors can use rowhouse naturally when describing Philadelphia housing. Rowhome is also familiar locally, but there is no need to treat one spelling as the only authentic form. The building type and related terminology extend beyond Philadelphia, especially elsewhere in the Mid-Atlantic.
Cultural context
WHYY describes rowhouse as a defining part of Philadelphia's Mid-Atlantic dialect and documents a long-running local preference debate among rowhouse, row house, rowhome, and row home. The Philadelphia City Planning Commission itself titles its homeowner publication the Philadelphia Rowhouse Manual while describing it as a guide to owning and maintaining a rowhome, illustrating how both forms coexist in civic usage.
Places represented
Open the reviewed place guide for each regional sense carried by this canonical entry.
Comparisons featuring this term
Open reviewed place comparisons that explicitly use this canonical term in their editorial comparison set.