Thanks to the pandemic, the front porch is enjoying a new golden age. Like their near cousins, stoops, steps, even fire escapes, porches offer a semipublic setting where we can meet friends and neighbors face-to-face—even if those faces are masked. In the words of Claude Stephens, founder of a tongue-in-cheek group called Professional Porch Sitters Union Local 1339, a porch is "the only place where you can feel like you are outside and inside at the same time; out with all of the neighbors and alone reading a book."

In Europe there are town squares and sidewalk cafes for fostering casual encounters, but there is something distinctly American about the front porch. Starting in the 19th century, every respectable house in the U.S. was built with a confident front porch. In an era when the backyard was devoted to drudgery—vegetable gardens, trash pits, outhouses, perhaps a chicken or goat—the porch offered an oasis of calm.

"The front porch was an escape from the heat of the wood-burning kitchen stove," explains historian Donald Empson, the author of "The Street Where You Live," an architectural guide to St. Paul, Minn. "On the porch, in the cool of the evening, the family could gather to discuss the day's events and exchange the latest news with neighbors strolling by." Porches offered neighbors a place to exchange gossip, to spin sagas and sing songs, to flirt and court and air political views. The front porch at the turn of the century was Starbucks, flash mob, church social and Facebook rolled into one.