Front Door Landing And Steps : The landing pad between house and front walk or city sidewalk, a stoop may be as small as a single step to the front door of a country farmhouse, or as tall and imposing as the stone steps leading to the parlor floor of a brooklyn brownstone.

Alternatively, the builders could have dug deeper so as to leave an adequate crawl space under the houses and then set the floor at ground level, but that is not what they did.