A porch is the gentle grind of rockers on floorboards, the drone of bees in the zinnias. It's the easy greeting when a neighbor ambles by. The porch is where our grandparents went to unwind--until they bought one of those fabulous inventions, the automobile.

After World War I, going for a drive was a lot more enticing than rocking in place for hours. Arriving home to houses that were being squeezed increasingly closer together, people found themselves craving privacy, not a porch.

Now we want it all back: the gracious architecture, the nostalgia, the repose. "Pleasures of the Porch: Ideas for Gracious Outdoor Living" by Daria Price Bowman and Maureen LaMarca (Rizzoli, $35) reports a surge since the 1980s in porch construction and renovation--a high-touch antidote, perhaps, to our high-tech lives. No wonder this outdoor room, nearly obliterated by the ranch house, is back in style.