Arlington House Styles Part 4

Arlington House Styles Part 4 - The Split Level

July 31st, 2008 Categories: Arlington Dirt, Neighborhoods, Northern Virginia Real Estate Dirt, Real Estate 101

Today’s lesson will be a short one – in all actuality it probably should have been included yesterday. Today I’d like to discus the split level home. These were wildly popular in the 70’s although I’m not quite sure why, but we see quite a lot built during that time period – of course some earlier, some later.

The main characteristic of a split level is that the home is quite literally split into two halves and they are 1/2 a story apart from each other. MOST of the time, the split is side to side. So, what you can expect from a floor plan is to enter into a foyer and have a living room, dining room and kitchen on that same floor. Then, you can turn to the left (or right) and choose to go UP 1/2 a flight of steps to the bedrooms (anywhere from 2–4 depending on the size of home) or DOWN 1/2 a flight of steps to a rec-room. Sometimes you can continue down 1/2 flight zig-zagging through the house from side to side to lower level bedrooms or even an unfinished storage area, laundry, etc…

You’ll hear references sometimes to a 4–level split. Conceptually, if you flattened the house out, you’d have a rambler on a basement. Instead, this just gives some interest to the spaces. The most I’ve seen is a 5–level split. Also, and I’ve only ever seen one of these, I once saw a back to front split - it was a very interesting home but you wouldn’t be able to tell it’s a split level from the outside…

Here are our photo examples: This first one is a little tough to read, but look at the window heights on the left side of the home compared with the top of the door frame…

Arlington split level 1