page_title: Stoop (architecture)
section_title: Stoops as a social device
hierarchical_section_title: Stoop (architecture) / Stoops as a social device
caption_attribution_description: Group of newsboys on a stoop at 4th &amp; Market Sts. "Take our mugs, mister?" Investigator, Edward F. Brown. Location: Wilmington, Delaware. Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine, May 1910. From the National Child Labor Committee Collection at the Library of Congress
context_page_description: In urban architecture, a stoop is a small staircase ending in a platform and leading to the entrance of an apartment building or other building.
context_section_description: Traditionally, in North American cities, the stoop served an important function as a spot for brief, incidental social encounters. Homemakers, children, and other household members would sit on the stoop outside their home to relax, and greet neighbors passing by. Similarly, while on an errand, one would stop and converse with neighbors sitting on their stoops. Within an urban community, stoop conversations helped to disseminate gossip and reaffirm casual relationships. Similarly, it was the place that children would congregate to play street games such as stoop ball. Urbanites lacking yards often hold stoop sales instead of yard sales.
  In her pivotal book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs includes the stoop as part of her model of the self-regulating urban street. By providing a constant human presence watching the street, institutions such as stoops prevent street crime, without intervention from authority figures. In addition, they motivate better street maintenance and beautification, by giving it social as well as utilitarian value.
caption: Newsboys congregating on a stoop, 1910
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