PORCH (OF., Fr. porche, from Lat. portiems, porch, gallery, from po•ta. gate). An open lobby, vestibule, or room, affording entrance to a build ing, and usually built as an accessory to the main mass and projecting from it. The porch of a church may be a gabled building, small and low in comparison with the church proper, with a single door of entrance and a single passage-like interior with permanent seats along the sides; or it may be a mere roof, vaulted o• of wooden frame-work, resting upon a pair of columns, as often in the churches of Lombardy: or it may he as long as the whole church is wide, as in the narthex of Eastern churches, or the great vesti bule of Saint Peter's at Rome. Such great porches as these will naturally be more or less closely united to the main structure, as they are high and as it is common to build a series of rooms o• a gallery above them: they are, there fore, more properly vestibules than porches. though the latter term is more generally applied to them.
The projecting porches of Gothic churches add much to their variety of outline and often receive the richest ornamentation. (See PORTAL.) Thus
the cathedral porches of the thirteenth century, especially in France, are made to shelter great nunihers of statues of life-size, and larger, and a still greater crowd of small figures under niches: and in addition to this, much floral sculpture. In England there still remain many wooden porches of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and one or two exist on the Continent. Finally, it must be mentioned that the lower story of a tower is often made to serve as a porch, having, perhaps, three doorways in its three free sides, and in the fourth side a doorway into the church. The most elaborate porch of this character is con nected with the Church of Saint- ilenoit-sur-Loire (Loiret), France.
In domestic buildings, especially in lands where there is much hot sun, it is common to have verandas, and these are porches if the access to the doorways of entrance is by means of them.
The propyhea of a Creek palace or temple inclosure is to be considered a porch, although the person entering does not reach the main build ing immediately. See PROPYL.EA.