Porches along Alba Street in Portland sit empty on an early August evening. (Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer)

PORTLAND — On the front porches of the single-family houses set side by side around Deering Center, you’ll see benches, hammocks and chairs of all kinds — rocking, Adirondack, wicker — but the pristine seat cushions on many of them speak to the infrequency of another sight: people using them.

That is, aside from next weekend, when dozens of homes in the Portland neighborhood will host musical acts during Porchfest, an annual afternoon of bands playing in front of houses while a traveling audience moves among them.

Amy Thompson said her main motivation for starting the event in 2014, bringing the concept with her from Ithaca, New York, was so she didn’t have to miss it. The effect it’s had in strengthening the neighborhood’s bond is an added bonus.

“I do think that it has connected a lot of people that perhaps wouldn’t have had the chance to meet each other or just hang out for the day,” she said.

So, why don’t they keep the party going the rest of the year, or at least during the warmer months, using their porches to observe and interact with neighbors who are outside or passing by?

Thompson said her porch on Leland Street is too small, though she’ll sometimes sit on her front steps in the morning sun, but most people on her street, some of whom have couches and tables, don’t tend to use them much either.

“I feel like people are in their backyards more often. People have patios, and they tend to go for that option for privacy,” she said.

Although she speculated it also had something to do with the weather in Maine, even in Ithaca, Thompson said, people spent noticeably more time outside their homes and in their neighborhoods.

In Maine, she said, “it’s not something culturally that we do.”

But having a front porch is still an increasingly popular choice, here and nationwide. More than two-thirds of new homes were built with them in recent years, compared with less than half of homes in the 1990s, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

That number is slightly higher in New England, where 72% of homes built in 2023 had porches, though not quite as high as out West or down South, the region most associated with porch-sitting as a pastime, complete with a glass of sweet tea resting on the arm of a rocking chair.

Annabelle Brooks, 17, from Cheverus High School, sings and plays the keyboard at Deering Center’s annual Porchfest in 2022. (Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer)

In Maine, porches serve different functions, including as somewhere to display decor and for packages to get dropped, said Paul Lewandowski, founder of Portland architecture firm Paul Designs Project and the chairman of the design committee for the Maine chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

“Everything’s moved to the backyard,” said Lewandowski, who believes people prefer privacy when they’re relaxing, especially now that there’s less of it in the rest of our lives.

Before cars took to the streets, sitting on the porch was also a more pleasant experience, he said, and the front of the house was used more, in general, before people started pulling into driveways and entering through doors off the kitchen.

“People have a nostalgia for the front porch. They love the idea of it,” he said. “But the reality is nobody’s going to be out there because you’re right on the street.”

Mass-market home magazines focus on the front porch for its display potential, including for seasonal or holiday decorations, making it “really more of a storefront,” he said.

In neighborhoods like Parkside and Munjoy Hill, there are more apartment buildings, where porches are shared. If some residents started using them, Lewandowski said, it could lead to a “turf war.”

At his home in the West End, Lewandowski doesn’t have a porch but a front stoop. The only time he sits out there is on Halloween, when he hands out candy and chats with neighbors, and he admits, “it’s fantastic.”

On a pleasant early evening this week, David Reilly was on his porch on Brentwood Street resurfacing a piece of furniture. He said he feels like his neighbors are out on their porches a fair amount, but he was the only one for blocks that night.

On the other side of Stevens Avenue, Mary Coulombe and her 12-year-old daughter, Daisy Cope, were sitting on the porch of their two-family home on Concord Street with their dog Rex, while Daisy finished up her summer homework before the start of the school year.

Coulombe said her in-laws, who live in the other half of the house, sit on the porch in the mornings, and she probably does three times a week in the summer, partly because they don’t have air conditioning in their living areas, and it’s cooler out there — one of the structure’s initial purposes.

But she prefers it over the back of her house for social reasons, too, whether she ends up chatting with neighbors who are also outside or seeing familiar faces coming down the street.

“We like to watch people go by,” she said.

Thompson, the founder of Porchfest (happening Sept. 7 from noon to 5 p.m.), said she thinks it would take more events to get people in Maine out on their porches more often.

“I think if we were to designate a day to say, ‘Hang out on your porch,’ people might do it, but we’re just not used to it,” she said.