Townhouse

Historically, a townhouse was the city residence of a noble or wealthy family, who would own one or more country houses in which they lived for much of the year.

The older predates the automobile and denotes a house on a small footprint in a city, but because of its multiple floors (sometimes six or more), it has a large living space, often with servants' quarters.

[2] Townhouses are expensive where detached single-family houses are uncommon, such as in New York City, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Montreal, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.

Rowhouses are similar and consist of several adjacent, uniform units originally found in older, pre-automobile urban areas such as Baltimore, Maryland; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Richmond, Virginia; Charleston, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia and New Orleans, Louisiana; but now found in lower-cost housing developments in suburbs as well.

Large complexes often have high security, resort facilities such as swimming pools, gyms, parks and playground equipment.

In population-dense Asian cities dominated by high-rise residential apartment blocks, such as Hong Kong, townhouses in private housing developments remain almost exclusively populated by the very wealthy due to the rarity and relatively large sizes of the units.

Commonly in the suburbs of major cities, an old house on a large block of land is demolished and replaced by a short row of townhouses, built 'end on' to the street for added privacy.