On Balconies | David Margolin

If a man’s home is his castle, his balcony is his throne. In theory, the royal inhabitant rests comfortably on the balcony, watching the activities in the kingdom. Why is it then, I wonder, that balconies are so underused?

There is no doubt that the presence of one or more of them increases the value of the dwellings upon which they are appended. Potential occupants imagine themselves standing on their balconies enjoying a commanding view of the surroundings, but more frequently the real vista is a wall of the building next door or an air-conditioning unit. The height of the viewing platform is usually important, the general rule being higher is better. On the other hand, the cold, wind, and vertigo increase with height as well. 

Balconies vary greatly in size. Some are mere suggestions of a balcony, not large enough to step onto but sufficient to host a plant or two. Others are large enough to have multiple entrances, service multiple rooms, and even wrap around corners. Bigger is not always better. Beyond a certain point balconies begin to lose their charm.

During my daily walks in the city, I see many balconies, but they are rarely occupied by humans. It is not uncommon to see dogs. They are usually well-behaved, but some enjoy barking at passersby, regardless of the novelty of the occurrence. Those with a propensity to bark do so equally enthusiastically for a single passerby as for a continuous stream of them. I haven’t yet determined the rules for barking. My theories include: bark for a set amount of time, and bark until the passerby is a certain distance away. Barker-fatigue is definitely not a factor, as it is well known that dogs with a propensity to bark can continue barking for an infinite length of time, or at least well beyond the point when everyone within earshot has lost their mind.

Balcony plants are very common. One reason I know this is that, more than once, I have been showered by the overly enthusiastic watering efforts of the plant tenders. The list of other objects that inhabit balconies is endless, but the order of frequency is something like: chairs, tables, bicycles, and barbecues. The season makes a difference. In October, skeletons, witches, pumpkins, and zombies are on display. The majority of balconies hold nothing, particularly the larger ones. This is one corollary of the general rule that the density of objects on the balcony is inversely proportional to the size of the living space to which the balcony is attached. 

Balconies can be a stage. Popes, politicians, and actors have spoken, preached, railed, conned, waved, died, and sung from them. I haven’t seen any of those behaviors in real life, but one day I did see a senior citizen walking back and forth on his balcony, apparently getting his daily exercise. That was at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, so he was probably substituting his balcony for the gym.  Other new faces appeared during the pandemic, most notably during the short-lived make-noise-at-7-pm-for-health-care-providers period. The balcony was an ideal venue for the rarely seen and reticent apartment dwellers to come out and bang pots and pans, clap, and blow air horns. They have long since retreated behind the balcony doors.

According to my thesaurus, porch, deck, and terrace are synonyms for balcony; I think that this is much too broad a brush. Granted, there may be overlap, but there are fundamental differences. First, let’s dispense with the terrace. Unlike balconies, terraces aren’t hanging off the building. They are planted on the ground next to a building or planted on top of a building. Like terraces, patios tend to be well grounded, but the two are not the same.

Terraces invoke images of richly decorated spaces, populated by men in tuxedos and bejeweled women in gowns elegantly displaying cigarettes–often unsmoked– at the end of sleek holders; a scene my mother would have disparaged as, “pissy elegant.” Patios invoke images of regular people in casual dress, engaging in informal activities, such as barbecuing. In my childhood neighborhood anyone referring to their patio as a terrace would have been seen as having delusions of grandeur and been laughed out of town (or at least into some ritzier neighborhood). 

How does one distinguish a deck from a balcony? If you need to paint it, stain it, or otherwise maintain it in order to prevent it from rotting to pieces, it is a deck. 

Distinguishing between a deck and a porch is more about geography than semantics. Someone “out west” (of the Rocky Mountains, that is) is much more likely to have a deck than an “easterner”. To an easterner, the word deck is more likely to conjure up an image of the walking surface on a boat than something attached to a house, but the word porch will immediately resonate. The quintessential porch is found in the Midwest. To wax Sandburgian about them, they are broad-shouldered and husky—all business.

 In my youth I worked in the family building-supplies store just west of downtown Chicago. Chicago loves its neighborhoods as if they were children, so each one has a name. This family of neighborhoods numbers over 200. Our store was in a neighborhood named East Ukrainian Village, but I remember most of the people being of Polish origin.  My mother’s parents, who were from Russia, had to learn to speak Polish in order to do business on Division Street in Chicago. 

One of my jobs during my summer employment at the store was to “mark up” paint cans—writing the price on the cover with a broad, bold, black marker. Porch paint came in a wide variety of colors—all of them gray: light gray, medium gray, dark gray, and battleship gray. The porch attached to our “2-flat” (grandparents and spinster aunt on the top floor and our family below) home on the north side of Chicago was painted medium gray—no radicals in my family. 

Like other Chicago-area mid-century porches, it was built as an open outdoor structure—stairs, landings, and railings—a place to sit out on during reasonable weather. Before long ours was built out to become part of the living space. This “den” substantially increased the living space of our home and was much more lived in than the living room. It included a couple of fundamental attractions– a TV to watch and a couch for my father to sleep on. Over the years the TV morphed from black and white to color, but the fold-up TV tray-table technology remained the same. Rarely there were frozen TV dinners, but usually it was good home cooking enhanced by TV series cultural delicacies such as Wanted Dead or Alive, The Bounty Hunter, Jim Bowie, Bat Masterson, and The Court of Last Resort.

Over the years my dwellings have had decks, patios, or screen porches. I have even survived periods of time without any of these enhancements, but currently I am well situated. I love my very urban balcony. Although it is only 12 feet or so above the busy sidewalk, and people can see me seeing them, it allows me to dip a toe into the outside world. I feel much more protected and much less awkward than when I stand outside of my front door. 

It is a great venue for checking the weather, taking a mini break from work, watching dramas in the neighborhood, playing board games with my wife, and enjoying an occasional meal. We love watching the Anna’s hummingbirds taking advantage of the bird feeder, and our squirrel friend Nibbleena visits every day to collect her nuts. If we ever put our home up for sale, we can describe the balcony and add, “townhouse attached.” 

My mother’s third-floor suburban condo had a small, rectangular, concrete-floored balcony accessed through sliding doors in the kitchen. Although it was plain in appearance, it had a fine view of the swimming pool. From her folding-lounge-chair throne she kept track of the comings and goings of the neighbors and their extended families. She reported these mini-dramas to me, sometimes in amazing detail, during our weekly phone calls.  Now that she is gone, I wish that I had listened better.  

How great it would be to have my mother sitting with me on my balcony, watching the people walk by and hearing her comments (and struggling with her to keep her voice down below earshot of the observed). The passersby would be strangers, not her neighbors, but it would have been her style to wave at them and smile, just the same.