The function of the stoop

Excerpt from John F. Freie's Counterfeit Community: The Exploitation of Our Longings for Connectedness. Published by Rowman & Littlefield, 1998

"While children received an education at the neighborhood school, the recreational center was the alley in the back of the house or, when adults were not around, the front stoop and front street. Thus, children played within the neighborhood, well within sight of adults who did not hesitate to help form character through the use of discipline even if the child involved was not one's own.

On summer evenings the front stoops became informal meeting places where neighbors carried on conversation well past dark. Even places of business were extensions of the web of relationships that existed in the community."