House & Horizon

Dilworth was drawn in 1891 for people who wanted a porch, a shade tree and a short ride to work, and that bargain still explains most of what happens on these streets. Our regular pages document it block by block: the bungalows and foursquares, the East Boulevard storefronts, the greenway that follows an old rail bed. This collection widens the frame.

Readers here rarely stop at the property line. A century-old house raises questions about framing, systems and finish work, which leads to the builders, designers and technologists who answer them. A love of one neighborhood breeds curiosity about the next — Elizabeth over the hill, South End across the tracks, the older suburbs south of Queens Road. Families eventually look for room, for a shoreline, for a stretch of coast in October.

What follows is arranged the way that curiosity tends to travel: from the people who shape a house, outward through the city's neighborhoods and planned communities, to the water and, finally, somewhere else entirely. Each entry is a separate publication with its own editor, its own subject and its own point of view. Read them as chapters, not as listings.