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“So we used to have this pony wall in our house. Like a half wall, waist height, right by the front door. My cat would always sit on top of it, and we’d leave our shoes up there too. It was kind of like the spot where stuff just ended up. I don’t know, it was just always there. I think a lot of houses in Vegas have them which is where I was living at the time. I didn’t really think about it as a ‘thing’ until later.”

Context

My friend grew up in Las Vegas, where he lived in a house with this pony wall. After hearing him describe it, I looked into it and found that pony walls are a fairly common architectural feature in Las Vegas residential properties. Another term I came across for the same thing is “garden wall”.

Analysis

The pony wall is an example of material folk culture, a kind of vernacular architecture that shapes daily life without anyone consciously thinking of it as tradition. What makes it folkloric isn’t the wall itself but how it gets used. My friend’s family didn’t decide the pony wall was the shoe spot or the cat spot. It just became those things and was their families’ unspoken, shared agreement about how a space in their home worked. What is also interesting is that he had not noticed that the pony was was a regional feature until he moved from Las Vegas. People don’t notice the built environment they grew up in is distinctive until they encounter places that don’t have it.