Dingbat (building)

A dingbat is a type of apartment building, named for the midcentury-esque visual motifs on their exterior, that flourished in the Sun Belt region of the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, a vernacular variation of shoebox style "stucco boxes". Dingbats are boxy, two or three-story apartment houses with overhangs sheltering street-front parking. They remain widely in use today as “bastions of affordable shelter.” The dingbat, like the bungalow court, was a "popular and populist form of housing."

By converting single-family lots into multi-family homes, single-family dwellings could now house multiple households and still provide parking space.

Mainly found in Southern California, but also in Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Nevada, and Vancouver, Canada, dingbats vary in cost from inexpensive to high-end. Some replaced more distinctive but less profitable building structures, such as single-family Victorian homes. Since the 1950s they have been the subject of aesthetic interest as examples of Mid-Century modern design and kitsch, since many dingbats have themed names and specialized trim.

From a structural engineering perspective, the "tuck-under parking" arrangement may create a soft story if the residential levels are supported on slender columns without many shear walls in the parking level. Soft story buildings can collapse during an earthquake.