17 ms·

Bad Manors: The McMansion as Harbinger

69 points by samclemens 3y ago

Turing_Machine 3y ago
> What was once a mix of modest, low-slung ranch-style houses And when those ranch-style houses were new, architecture snobs were decrying them as as soulless cookie-cutter crap. Here's a novel idea: if you don't want to live in a "McMansion", don't buy one.
- User23 3y ago
  As always, we must consider the actual alternatives and not just our imaginary ideal scenario. What is the alternative for the relatively large population looking to start families in a neighborhood with a good school district and child care on 1-2 working to middle class salaries while building some equity? Can you point us to someplace where there is quality, affordable, and aesthetically pleasing new home construction happening at scale?
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    One consideration is that "new homes" have historically been something of a "luxury good" but somehow become so normalized in the last couple decades, that people argue "middle class salary" should be able to buy one. Growing up, no one in my family lived in a new construction home, nor did any of my friends. New construction needs to happen to increase aggregate supply to deal with incremental increases of demand. That supply though, may be more high end than median. Even this works fine because it means someone will buy a pricey new construction home rather than a cheap home and gut renovate it. The lack of new construction causes high income buyers to move further and further down market to buy-to-reno.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      In many places (where building is still happening) the cost of new vs old construction is surprisingly close; so why not get a brand new 2023 house instead of that older 2003 one?
      - steveBK123 3y ago
        if it is, then great. but the baseline built in assumption that all home buyers should be able to afford new homes when people complain that new homes are too expensive is what misses the point. New homes are built on the expensive side because that's what allows developers to turn a profit in areas where development plots are scarce to come by. That is - where land is the constraint, why would a developer choose to have a lower ROI? Areas that new & old homes don't price too differently & there is still building happening are likely not in land/development/zoning constrained with undersupply. Also laughing/crying internally as you describe 2003 as old (from my 1970s home).. Never lived in a building that wasn't older than me..
        bombcar 3y ago
        Heh my last few houses have pre-nuclear steel in them, since they were built before the bombs dropped. And yes, the "standard" (hard to call something a standard that only really existed for 50 or so years of the modern USA) of houses going out of style and passing down as starter homes, etc has been sadly disrupted. And many of those starter homes are now held out as rentals, which further distorts it. (We're actually in a "starter home" now and considering what the next step should be, and the vast improvements in energy, etc over the last 20 years alone is making me heavily lean toward building, especially as I can sit on the design and get something more reasonable for the cost.)
      - peteradio 3y ago
        Because new construction is not necessarily built with the same materials and expertise as old construction. Good bones and all. Although I think you'd have to go back further than 2003 to get a meaningful difference in construction practices.
        bombcar 3y ago
        That may be the case, but you have to take survivorship bias into account, and the vast differences in available equipment and materials. A modern double-paned house with R20 insulation and a well designed heat pump system is going to blow(er test) the doors off an immaculate mansion built in the 1900s with single pane glass and a gravity furnace.
    - User23 3y ago
      With a rapidly growing population[1] new housing isn't a "luxury good," but rather a necessity. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183457/united-states-resident-population/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183457/united-states-res...
    - Turing_Machine 3y ago
      > One consideration is that "new homes" have historically been something of a "luxury good" but somehow become so normalized in the last couple decades, that people argue "middle class salary" should be able to buy one. Yes, how dare the proles expect to live like the "best people".
  - WillPostForFood 3y ago
    McMansions are aesthetically pleasing to the average taste, which is out of alignment with coastal elite modernism. If your taste is out of the mainstream, then it is harder to find houses, and they will be more expensive. There are the occasional attempts at the non-standard suburban subdivision style. I liked these: https://starlightvillagehomes.com/ https://starlightvillagehomes.com/
    - MSFT_Edging 3y ago
      > which is out of alignment with coastal elite modernism Most coastal areas I've been to typically value their historical architecture and maintain those aesthetics. Really not sure where you're getting that from. If you go to areas in Michigan such as Troy, most of the houses are of a mid-century modern design similar to what you're sharing. The design language of a McMansion inherently lacks cohesion. Its not an elitist take to say "taking various design elements from 6 different eras of building and inflating them all up to 150% scale" is a bad design. If a design lacks any kind of symmetry, has windows that dont line up that are all different sizes, misplaced features, etc; its an ugly design. Not sure what else to say. Midwesterners are not immune to good design practice, and its bizarre to suggest that people outside of the coasts are incapable of making a cohesive design.
      - User23 3y ago
        > Most coastal areas I've been to typically value their historical architecture and maintain those aesthetics Given that virtually all new construction in coastal cities is five over one crapboxes along with the occasional uninspired at best highrise, I don't see it. Certainly nobody is putting up what one might consider well built aesthetically pleasing mansions in downtown San Wherever.
        MSFT_Edging 3y ago
        5-over-1s are basically universal in the United States. You might see them more in coastal areas but that's because its where the population gravitates to. I don't like 5-over-1s either but they're a product of zoning laws that tried to legislate out more compact housing. I much rather have a couple duplex/quadplexes on each suburban block but a lot of folks really don't like that idea. Bring up the idea of putting a cafe or convenience store inside a suburban culdesac hell and people will lose their mind.
- MSFT_Edging 3y ago
  I'll regularly go to estate sales in McMansions. It's really amazing to see. Master Bedrooms the size of my apartment that are mostly empty. Huge tall ceilings with poorly assembled trim to break up the monotony. Two extra large AC units needed to cool all that air. Basement bars that have gone unused for years, expansive basements with old kids toys laying about, so roomy that it feels almost commercial. So many extra sitting rooms just there as a place to put things. Its amazing how wasteful they are, how they basically just exist to say "look, big house". Nothing in them is practical, they're difficult to navigate because you need to make room for the massive foyer staircase and inexplicable loft/bridge to overlook your leather couches with USB ports in them, sitting across from a tv mounted 3 feet too high to ever have a comfortable viewing angle. I've seen the ugliest ceiling mural, attempting to emulate an Italian fresco with all the skill of a high school drug PSA mural. These homes just reek of desperation, like they've accrued all this wealth and have found themselves sitting at the back of the bus in "The Graduate", without any purpose and unsure why they fought so hard. Its really interesting seeing a bathroom with enough open space to store an old beetle, with 30 drawers under the acreage of counter top. Mostly empty but dispersed with normal human items, like they're trying so hard to make it seem like any of this was necessary. All of these places are devoid of any kind of design, it all feels like a simulacra of old wealth, like its what they "should" be buying and decorating with, but then you see personal items and realize they're no better than the average person, they have the same interests and hobbies, only now they're buried deep inside this dryrock dungeon, hidden away so they can appear high class and fancy. The worst thing about them? How cheap it all feels, and how much it feels like a normal house scaled up beyond any purpose. Sure the first floor may have some kind of granite tile, but every other floor seems to bow and give under your feet like you're on a rubber running track. Noises reverberate if there's no carpet, but if there is, it most likely came with the home and has not been taken care of. McMansions are an amazing symbol of the hollowness of seeking wealth. You could have a much nicer, bespoke and practical home if you wanted. For the money you could hire a real designer, real craftsmen to build your hardwood features or master plaster craftsman to make real ceiling moldings. Instead of ordering a steak from a fine restaurant, the McMansion is spending the equivalent money at a McDonalds.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
- bombcar 3y ago
  Fun fact: the term "Victorian" for that type of house (IIRC) was intended to disparage them, as they were considered tacky and cheap.
- gonehome 3y ago
  Yeah, this is my takeaway whenever someone uses “McMansion” in a disparaging way - it’s mostly to sneer at some “lower class”.
  - micromacrofoot 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - gonehome 3y ago
      Sprawl is a problem, but I don’t buy that this is the main reason people complain about McMansions (I live in a condo in a dense building fwiw due to personal preference so this isn’t sour grapes). The people I know living in these large houses that were cheaply built with weird architectural accents were primarily middle class people in suburban areas with low cost of living and larger families. Often they grew up with less money and were the first of their family to do well. Typically they bought a house in some new development with a good school. The people I’ve heard complain the most about it are the upper-middle class people on the coasts that went to Stanford, I mostly only heard this style of complaint after moving to the bay and meeting people that grew up in these higher classes. It really comes across as a way to look down on the lower classes that “don’t have good taste” dressed up as something more intellectual. Actual rich people (not upper-middle) don’t give a shit, probably because they’re not afraid someone will mistake their status for middle class - they just live in their estate in atherton and don’t read articles like this. I don’t like suburban sprawl either, but I have an allergic reaction to this kind of elitism. It’s true - middle class people often don’t know how to properly signal status because they didn’t grow up in it, but how to properly signal it is also a moving target (intentionally) by those a little above them. I just find it tedious to watch.
    - Turing_Machine 3y ago
      > vastly inefficient sprawl that plagues the country. If efficiency were the only important metric, we'd all be living in dormitories with 3-shifts-per-day "hot bunks" and institutional kitchens.
- micromacrofoot 3y ago
  A huge part of the point here is that McMansions create unattractive, difficult to use, and costly to maintain infrastructure. And the residents who live in the McMansions aren't really the people who are bearing the full brunt of these costs.
  - MSFT_Edging 3y ago
    My favorite thing was a culdesac of McMansions that had a gravel entrance road. You could almost hear the arguments of "who will pay for it?" echoing the halls like a ghost.
- dfxm12 3y ago
  Here's a novel idea: if you don't want to live in a "McMansion", don't buy one. Shopping for houses isn't like shopping on Amazon. You can't just pick what you want and have it ready on a lot of your choice in two days. If the only housing stock available/being built is houses you don't want to live in, whether they're too big, too poorly built, too ugly, not oriented on the lot right, not exactly where you want it, you're going to have to buy one anyway.
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    > You can't just pick what you want and have it ready on a lot of your choice in two days No kidding. And? > If the only housing stock available/being built is houses you don't want to live in These houses are exactly what their owners want to live in. Exactly. If the market demand weren't there, the contractors would be building something else.
nluken 3y ago
I was excited to see that Kate Wagner was contributing to this most recent issue of the Baffler. A related article from the same issue discusses the cheapness of the construction in modern housing: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/construction-time-again-sisson https://thebaffler.com/salvos/construction-time-again-sisson
- ethbr0 3y ago
  The custom vs mass-produced perspective is more interesting to me, bcause generally everything in recent architecture has distilled down to -- can it be mass-produced? Plaster and lath? Can't be mass produced/installed. Out of style. Crown moulding? Can't be mass produced/installed. Out of style. Solid wood flooring? Can't be mass produced/installed. Out of style. Brick? Can't be mass produced/installed. Out of style. One begins to see a pattern and wonder if "style" is actually "what makes more profit for builders."
  - bombcar 3y ago
    It's less builder profit and more "how can we maximize the things people compare". Builders hate finicky stupid shit [1], and charge accordingly, but big empty rooms are easy. People ask "how much house can I buy" and get $400k, say, and choose the largest sq ft with the amenities they want, instead of smaller with more design/amenities. And that's not even to say they're always entirely wrong; you should spend on the things that are expensive to change later (location, foundation, etc) perhaps; like a church that is built with plain windows because you can always add stained glass later. [1] an example my friend hated as a roofer were the little decorative things on the corners of a roof (corner gables? no idea) - he charged something like $2k per because of the absolute huge amount of absolutely fiddly labor required to build and roof them, and hated every minute of it.
hahamrfunnyguy 3y ago
This article has a lot of words but it doesn't say much and the title is misleading. tldr; Americans are building large, ugly homes out of cheap materials that have environmental impacts due to heating/cooling costs and distances required to drive.
- the_cat_kittles 3y ago
  moby dick is the story of a guy on a boat who tries to hunt a whale
  - nielsbot 3y ago
    I get the joke but sometimes writing is bad
  - ElfinTrousers 3y ago
    How's that work out for him?
    - the_cat_kittles 3y ago
      good or bad depending on who you are rooting for
coldcode 3y ago
In my city a couple of miles from me is a new housing community with $1M houses; only a few different models are available, featuring minimal paint color options, all on zero lot line spaces, any closer together they would be one giant condo. A friend toured the model and reported how cheaply it was built. Yet they sold out. The average price of a house nearby is closer to $400k. I bet the developer made a fortune.
- carapace 3y ago
  Check out this "Summit Park" development: https://goo.gl/maps/Eherg24AUS4V1aX67?coh=178571&entry=tt https://goo.gl/maps/Eherg24AUS4V1aX67?coh=178571&entry=tt Someone finagled permission to build on Brotherhood Way and this is what they made. The houses themselves seem nice, but the neighborhood (if you can call it that) has a horror movie vibe to it.
  - r00fus 3y ago
    These are mega-townhomes, right?
  - HEmanZ 3y ago
    Throw in a small cafe, local pub, and corner store, and that looks like a really nice little spot. Give it 30-50 years and people will have painted them different colors, and it won’t look like a retirement home
    - carapace 3y ago
      > Throw in a small cafe, local pub, and corner store, and that looks like a really nice little spot. Where? As in, where would you "throw" them? The buildings don't have space. There's nothing for a mile or more. This is a drive-in only development. (The road is called Brotherhood Way because there's nothing on it but churches and temples. Until they built this.) > Give it 30-50 years and people will have painted them different colors, and it won’t look like a retirement home It's really creepy there. It's hard to convey, even google street view doesn't give you the full effect. Did you watch that movie "Vivarium"? It's the shape of the place. The way it's just houses with no integration with the world outside themselves or even with each other. Packed together tightly, so tall that they block the sun, no space to expand. The park next door might as well be a million miles away. They are lockers for people, not homes.
nostromo 3y ago
It's odd how the complaints are never about actual mansions. No, it's only when the middle-class gets bigger houses do we have journalists handwringing endlessly about gauche they are.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  Isn't the typical McMansion people complain about $1M+? That's definitely not text-book middle class - which would be closer to the median house - which is less than half that price. There's not many places you're getting a 4 bedroom clown-house with a clown pool and 5 clown-y bathrooms and a 3-car clown garage for your 3 clown cars for $450k. And if you are, there's very few places this is a new-ish build. Most of the places you're getting something like this - it's like a 20+ year-old home in Montgomery Alabama or Akron Ohio or something... And usually this was once a nice house that someone renovated in the style of a clown for the McMansion buyer... You're either considering the average suburban home a McMansion or you think the top 10% is middle class. In fairness, both of these are common conceptions - but I think they're both worth critiquing.
  - cjohnson318 3y ago
    > You're either considering the average suburban home a McMansion or you think the top 10% is middle class. If wealth were normally distributed, then the top 10% definitely wouldn't be the middle class. However, the way wealth is distributed, the average earner in the top 10% makes about $173K in 2020 dollars. Which is a lot in Louisiana, but not so much in SF or New York. https://www.epi.org/blog/wage-inequality-continued-to-increase-in-2020-top-1-0-of-earners-see-wages-up-179-since-1979-while-share-of-wages-for-bottom-90-hits-new-low/ https://www.epi.org/blog/wage-inequality-continued-to-increa...
    - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
      You're not building a McMansion for less than $250 per square foot. And a McMansion is usually 3000+ sqft. In New York or LA or The Bay, you're not getting a McMansion for less than $2.5M. In Louisiana, you're not getting it for less than $800k. If anything - I think this pushes out who's buying a "real" McMansion probably closer to the top 5%. It's less affordable given where people live and how much more they cost where people make more money. Unless we're calling ugly 1800 sqft 3-bedroom suburban development houses "McMansions" - middle class people aren't buying them.
bearjaws 3y ago
The hilarious thing to me about these new neighborhoods, is you can easily find their 'end game' state by just going to one that was built 12-15 years ago. You will find the same story, brand new -> rusted out fences, broken lights, old pavement, irrigation problems. The maintenance of these communities is outrageously expensive. Without an HOA fee of $400-$600 a month, they rapidly fall apart (~10 years). Yet you typically see figures closer to $200 a month. Here in Central Florida, the second wealthiest "McMansion" neighborhood had to increase HOA dues and have a special assessment to finally pave its pot hole ridden roads. Mind you the dues are typically near $800 per month.
- avidphantasm 3y ago
  BUT THE PROPERTY TAXES ARE CHEAP!!!
snickerbockers 3y ago
Why do you care if other people buy mcmansions? The sorts of neighborhoods where they tend to crop up already have a million identical cookie cutter houses anyways.
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  I don't care myself — I'm living in one right now. Sadly the older homes in the city had only a single-car garage and I do woodworking. It does seem though like we're heading toward either trailer park or mansion. Seventy year ago they built real starter homes for newlyweds that did not yet have 2.4 kids. I'm not sure where those people go now. I have three daughters that are in their 20s now though so I guess I can watch and see.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    It's not economical to build small houses; price them out sometime and the cost to "make it a 3 bedroom" is not much at all. The closest I've seen is "modern manufactured" and you still have lot/utilities, and they still cost close to stickbuilt.
DoreenMichele 3y ago
The vernacular is the mass-produced architecture of the everyday. This is not remotely what vernacular architecture means. (And trailer parks are not vernacular architecture.) https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Vernacular_architecture https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Vernacular_archite...
- walthamstow 3y ago
  > It is a type of architecture which is indigenous to a specific time and place and not replicated from elsewhere As a British outsider, it kind of does sound like trailer parks are American vernacular architecture. Why aren't they?
  - DoreenMichele 3y ago
    The benefits of vernacular architecture include: Capitalising on local knowledge and traditions. Taking advantage of local materials and resources, meaning that they are relatively energy efficient and sustainable. Providing a vital connection between humans and the environment in which they live. They can be designed specifically with the local climatic conditions in mind, and often perform well. Vernacular architecture is associated with regional styles using local materials to build homes for ordinary people. Trailers are not any of the above.
  - glompers 3y ago
    I generally like the comments posted here by DoreenMichelle. I would cite the historic cobblestone or quarried Belgian Block pavements in American port cities like Philadelphia and Savannah as examples of locally available materials that were not local materials (many arrived as ballasts unloaded from the hulls of ships that were departing town heavier and more stable than they had arrived) but economic afterthoughts. Is it still a vernacular practice of local knowledge and local conditions that prevail in the built environment, if instead the citizens had simply used them as earthfill rubble to create new land out of wetlands? I would say no; practices that have left a trace only in being cheaper than other methods of earthfill don't meet my criteria for a vernacular practice, although they may have still been performed by some of the same families who would be continuing to pass down that pattern of form in that same tradition. On the other hand, if forestry and agriculture oriented areas of the USA find their local furniture and textile manufacturing tooling falling out of demand as furniture production goes offshore, is it possible to call it local knowhow if they repurpose those manufacturing plants to produce wood-framed, furnished turnkey mobile home trailers? It is still vernacular practice but at one remove, its nature changed by one layer (at least) of abstraction from a vernacular /tradition/, and its patterns denatured by that change as much as they were denatured by mass financing of managed mass production.
noodlesUK 3y ago
My personal worry about so called McMansions is that people are buying the largest houses they can possibly afford, and the quality of the building is sacrificed for size. The costs of maintaining these enormous houses can sometimes be absolutely staggering. I worry that in years to come, entire neighbourhoods of these houses will simply fall into disrepair, as nobody will be able to afford the costs of fixing them as they age.
- UncleOxidant 3y ago
  In the 30's lots of large houses were divided into apartments. I'm thinking we're headed there again in some places. This time with McMansions being being divided into smaller units.
  - etempleton 3y ago
    The problem is modern homes are for the most part hard to divide. Homes in the 30s often had very defined rooms connected with hallways. Modern homes include mostly open spaces with a few discrete rooms.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      Open spaces are pretty easy to divide as long as they're horizontal. Vertical 'lawyer foyers' are a bit harder to use well.
  - nemo44x 3y ago
    A big reason why is because of the depression. We constructed very few houses in the 1930s and 1940s. What we started building in the 1950s is a completely different thing and why homes pre-war that are well maintained are so prized.
    - midoridensha 3y ago
      Most of the pre-war houses are gone, because they were crappy. The houses that are still around and prized, or have been divided into multiple units, were the houses that rich people lived in. The houses everyone else lived in were torn down long ago.
jmclnx 3y ago
The only thing I did not like about these is how close they were built to each other on a small plot of land. Plus all the trees were removed.
- MSFT_Edging 3y ago
  I know of a family who lives in a neighborhood like what you describe. They complain they never see any birds or wildlife when the nearest batch of trees is at least a half mile away.
karaterobot 3y ago
> Architecturally speaking, the reason for the McMansion’s persistence is that it is the path of least resistance for building a house of a certain size. It’s hard to be efficient when forcing four thousand-plus square feet under one roof. Tailor-made architectural creations remain out of reach (or undesirable) for many people. The McMansion is a structurally stable, if visually clunky, formula. Contrary to almost four decades of urbanistic thought highlighting the need for walkability, density, and transit-oriented development, companies like Pulte Homes continue to construct McMansion neighborhoods near highway off-ramps and high-traffic arterial roads. They do this because people buy these houses and drive to work... Yeah, screw them for ignoring decades of urbanistic thought and continuing to buy houses they want and can afford. It's like they're not even considering what decades of academics and ideologues have been telling them to do with their lives. Does urbanistic thought not count for anything anymore?!
- Fauntleroy 3y ago
  Ah, the good ol' "freedom trumps a well-functioning society" argument
  - karaterobot 3y ago
    Describe some of the specific, concrete ways people buying a house with a particular architectural style damages society.
ramesh31 3y ago
>The solutions to these problems are equally obvious: more density; preserving existing green space to allow for stormwater runoff; better public transportation to decrease reliance on cars; the decommissioning of urban highways; comprehensively transforming the energy sector in pursuit of a post-oil world; and, most of all, building affordable, livable, and—dare I say it—rent-controlled or even government-funded housing. All of these urbanist types always come to the exact same collectivist conclusions. It treats human culture as a mathematical optimization problem, which it isn't. Everything would just be so much better if we all lived in 20 story 800sqft apartments and took the bus everywhere. I don't want to live like that. I want a car, maybe two for my family so that we can go where we want when we want. I want a home large enough to entertain friends, host holidays, and house my children. I want a yard with grass, and I want to spend my saturday mornings mowing it. And I think that's exactly what most other Americans want. There has to be a solution that doesn't involve the loss of individual autonomy, privacy, and freedom that we value in the US. I will not eat the bugs. I will not get into the pod.
- norir 3y ago
  The American lifestyle you describe is going to end and probably sooner rather than later.
- robbyking 3y ago
  I think what gets lost in this debate is the fact that in most major US cities you can have two cars, a yard with a lawn you can mow and a guest room without sacrificing walkability and public transportation. I live in a working class neighborhood in a major coastal city and still have everything I listed above: I bike or ride the bus to work but a lot of my coworkers drive; I have front and backyards (with lawns!) but I can walk a few blocks to a commercial district with dozens of shops and restaurants. Not every city looks like Manhattan. Not even all of NYC looks like Manhattan.
  - yamtaddle 3y ago
    > I think what gets lost in this debate is the fact that in most major US cities you can have two cars, a yard with a lawn you can mow and a guest room without sacrificing walkability and public transportation. My city qualifies! The house might even be pretty damn cheap and surprisingly big! But the schools will suck. You have to move somewhere with terrible walkability to get decent public schools.
quantumwannabe 3y ago
Remember that a 4000 sq ft house without a basement (common in the South) has around the same interior square footage as a 2000 sq ft house with a basement (common in the North). The Southerner's house looks a lot larger from the street, but it's actually around the same size inside as the "modest" house and is therefore not a "mansion". Most of the "McMansion" photos I've seen criticized on architecture blogs are either middle-class houses from areas where basements are uncommon or cherry-picked examples of unusually bad design (many of which are actually custom builds!).
- true_religion 3y ago
  > it's actually around the same size inside as the "modest" house and is therefore not a "mansion". I think there's an issue with this premise. McMansions are not 'mansions' and the criticism stems from that fact. They are too small for the architectural features they try to cram into their facades (balustrades, numerous columns, far too many windows of awkward sizes). Also because they are small, they try to maximize the use of space leading to the exterior looking very weird due to overlapping roofs so individual rooms can be as large and tall as possible.
  - crooked-v 3y ago
    The article makes an interesting argument that the typical McMansion design, internally, can be distinguished by being more-or-less the same as a suburban home floor plan but inflated beyond all sense: an entry hallway turned into a grand foyer with a huge staircase (which, obviously, never actually gets used for anything, because it's still too small for actual parties), chains of special-purpose rooms stapled on to the same core set of rooms from the original nuclear family concept, access to the bedrooms stretched and stretched out as all the other spaces get bigger, etc. It strikes me as, conceptually, a distinct contrast to an 'average' Victorian home floor plan (which is probably the other closest thing to 'mansion' that an average person might think of living in), where even a very large home is going to have pretty tight and efficient layouts meant to maximize collective practical use of the space (especially with a large family or guests), rather than just giving a ton of square footage to each individual inhabitant.
m0llusk 3y ago
There are a bunch of issues bunched up together here. Large houses are not only possible with good land use patterns, but as older cities grow the average unit size also increases. When I was young we moved from a trailer into a huge old house. It was difficult to keep up properly and seemed to always need to be repainted, but having plenty of space and more rooms than we actually needed on a regular basis was hugely liberating. With careful planning, construction, and use of materials it should be possible for most of the population to live in relatively large residences. This might be beneficial enough to specifically aim for as we make social and technological progress.
HEmanZ 3y ago
I disagree that the McMansion is back. Leave it in the 1990-2008-ish time frame. The “new ones” I’ve seen going up are genuinely better, have much more sensible layouts, and don’t try the same goofy throw-design-out-the-window stuff the McMansions did.
lastofthemojito 3y ago
They're the Microsoft Word of houses. Famously, people only use 20% of Word's features, but that subset varies depending on whether the user is a legal secretary or elementary school teacher or whatever. McMansions have all the features - the 3-car garage, the almost commercial kitchen, the vast gathering spaces, the rec room, the home office, etc. Not everyone needs it all - but some car guy will demand that third garage spot or some foodie will demand the oversized Viking appliances or some family with multiple kids will demand the big play area, etc. This way these houses meet the needs (and way beyond) of 90%+ of the upper-middle to upper-class homebuyers, so they retain their value and are way more easy to sell than the weird custom 1800sqft home with 4-car-garage, or 1-bedroom condo with commercial kitchen, or whatever.
nunez 3y ago
Kate is an amazing writer. I loved how seamlessly she floated between academic architectural review to "McMansion bad" comedy, with almost no effort. That said, I 100% agree. Mansions are beautiful and powerful in presence. McMansions are a blight and, in my opinion, incredibly cheap-looking cancerous blobs. I live in Houston, which has an example of both. River Oaks is our friendly "rich person" neighborhood. There, you'll see some _really_ nice looking custom big houses. Proper mansions, as it were. We recently moved from Richmond, an exurb about 45 minutes south towards the abyss between Houston and Mexico. Like Kate illustrated here, a McMansion neighborhood was right off of our exit. The houses are gigantic, but look incredibly, incredibly cheap. Funny enough, a large apartment complex is being built right by one of them. I wonder what that will do to their value.
- Spivak 3y ago
  > incredibly cheap-looking cancerous blobs. Oh I assure you, they're cheap all the way through. Take the mass-produced bottom of the barrel construction practices of modern developers, the architectural sense of gluing pre-made block of house together, and then just keep gluing until you hit the target square footage. It's all limestone concrete, softwood, asphalt shingles, hollow doors, plastic floors, drywall, spray painted hardware, a single layer of brick if you're feeling adventurous, a chimney that doesn't actually work, a fireplace that's electric. It's unbelievably depressing that for how expensive they are you can't actually pay for quality only for more house. And I don't really think it's anyone's fault per se but more the reality of mass-produced junk getting cheaper and human labor getting so much more expensive relative to it.
flippinburgers 3y ago
I would classify anything that tries to butt up against the edge of a lot to be the first sign of grotesqueness. I will never understand the American obsession with quantity over quality.
- deleted 3y ago
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golemiprague 3y ago
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cyberax 3y ago
Ah, a rag totally dedicated to harping the virtues of "urbanism" is unloading on actually liveable houses. Shocking. News at 11. Reality: McMansions are popular because they are comfortable and provide living space for an actual family. While being NOT more expensive on a per-unit basis than tiny condos in major urban centers. I get it, millenials got screwed by the unfortunate confluence of 2008 and by the economy finally transforming from manufacturing economy into a service-based one. They can't afford large houses, so the psychological defense mechanism kicks in: "Hey, these McMansions are bad anyway. It's good to downsize into a shoebox". But at this point we perhaps should start answering the question: do we want cities to continue being densified into Manhattan-style concrete canyons, or should we make sure that our children can live in nice houses that our generation was not able to afford?
- lmm 3y ago
  > Reality: McMansions are popular because they are comfortable and provide living space for an actual family. While being NOT more expensive on a per-unit basis than tiny condos in major urban centers. > I get it, millenials got screwed by the unfortunate confluence of 2008 and by the economy finally transforming from manufacturing economy into a service-based one. They can't afford large houses, so the psychological defense mechanism kicks in: "Hey, these McMansions are bad anyway. It's good to downsize into a shoebox". So they're popular because they're affordable, but they're hated because they're expensive? Which is it? > But at this point we perhaps should start answering the question: do we want cities to continue being densified into Manhattan-style concrete canyons, or should we make sure that our children can live in nice houses that our generation was not able to afford? Manhattan is popular, aspirational even, for a reason. Every generation before the 1950s was built by gradual densification. The wrongheaded decision to try to pickle cities in aspic via zoning laws is what creates housing unaffordability. A "nice" lifestyle is far more about being able to live somewhere you can work and socialize than about having zillions of sterile square feet to yourself.
  - mikecoles 3y ago
    Having acres of fertile square feet to yourself is indeed a nice lifestyle.
nemo44x 3y ago
Meh, people were saying this in the late 19th century as power tools made intricate carving and woodwork available to wealthy people and nit just the ultra wealthy. The types of homes they built were thought to be gauche and without pure style by those ultra wealthy and the usual critiques of “new money” (success envy by failures) being uncultured rang through. But a funny thing happened - those homes are now praised and lauded over by people like the “McMansion Rheee” lady. I agree a large home made of cheap materials with no landscaping and in a shit location is pretentious. But most people on Earth would trade their homes for one. I don’t want one but I get why people would rather have a huge house and a big car than a small apartment and public transit - it’s a better way to live for many people.
Xorakios 3y ago
speaking from direct experience coming from a family that builds homes in suburban southern california, it's sorta self-reinforcing and circular people expect familiar floorplans, planning departments approve them faster if the same elements are repeated, HVAC, plumbing and fire mitigation regulations generally require a hub and spoke architecture appraisers (and more importantly bank loan approvals) are based primarily on square feet, not quality (and also bathrooms) so we add a bonus room that is likely never to be used, to bump up valuation to spend on better plumbing (developers are liable for 20 years of defects on new homes). we also build a minimum of 4 car garages, usually 6, because it's a cheap way to add square footage without added plumbing and mainly going to be used for storage anyway...

69 points by samclemens 3y ago

> What was once a mix of modest, low-slung ranch-style houses And when those ranch-style houses were new, architecture snobs were decrying them as as soulless cookie-cutter crap. Here's a novel idea: if you don't want to live in a "McMansion", don't buy one.

User23 3y ago
As always, we must consider the actual alternatives and not just our imaginary ideal scenario. What is the alternative for the relatively large population looking to start families in a neighborhood with a good school district and child care on 1-2 working to middle class salaries while building some equity? Can you point us to someplace where there is quality, affordable, and aesthetically pleasing new home construction happening at scale?
- steveBK123 3y ago
  One consideration is that "new homes" have historically been something of a "luxury good" but somehow become so normalized in the last couple decades, that people argue "middle class salary" should be able to buy one. Growing up, no one in my family lived in a new construction home, nor did any of my friends. New construction needs to happen to increase aggregate supply to deal with incremental increases of demand. That supply though, may be more high end than median. Even this works fine because it means someone will buy a pricey new construction home rather than a cheap home and gut renovate it. The lack of new construction causes high income buyers to move further and further down market to buy-to-reno.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    In many places (where building is still happening) the cost of new vs old construction is surprisingly close; so why not get a brand new 2023 house instead of that older 2003 one?
    - steveBK123 3y ago
      if it is, then great. but the baseline built in assumption that all home buyers should be able to afford new homes when people complain that new homes are too expensive is what misses the point. New homes are built on the expensive side because that's what allows developers to turn a profit in areas where development plots are scarce to come by. That is - where land is the constraint, why would a developer choose to have a lower ROI? Areas that new & old homes don't price too differently & there is still building happening are likely not in land/development/zoning constrained with undersupply. Also laughing/crying internally as you describe 2003 as old (from my 1970s home).. Never lived in a building that wasn't older than me..
      - bombcar 3y ago
        Heh my last few houses have pre-nuclear steel in them, since they were built before the bombs dropped. And yes, the "standard" (hard to call something a standard that only really existed for 50 or so years of the modern USA) of houses going out of style and passing down as starter homes, etc has been sadly disrupted. And many of those starter homes are now held out as rentals, which further distorts it. (We're actually in a "starter home" now and considering what the next step should be, and the vast improvements in energy, etc over the last 20 years alone is making me heavily lean toward building, especially as I can sit on the design and get something more reasonable for the cost.)
    - peteradio 3y ago
      Because new construction is not necessarily built with the same materials and expertise as old construction. Good bones and all. Although I think you'd have to go back further than 2003 to get a meaningful difference in construction practices.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        That may be the case, but you have to take survivorship bias into account, and the vast differences in available equipment and materials. A modern double-paned house with R20 insulation and a well designed heat pump system is going to blow(er test) the doors off an immaculate mansion built in the 1900s with single pane glass and a gravity furnace.
  - User23 3y ago
    With a rapidly growing population[1] new housing isn't a "luxury good," but rather a necessity. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183457/united-states-resident-population/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183457/united-states-res...
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    > One consideration is that "new homes" have historically been something of a "luxury good" but somehow become so normalized in the last couple decades, that people argue "middle class salary" should be able to buy one. Yes, how dare the proles expect to live like the "best people".
- WillPostForFood 3y ago
  McMansions are aesthetically pleasing to the average taste, which is out of alignment with coastal elite modernism. If your taste is out of the mainstream, then it is harder to find houses, and they will be more expensive. There are the occasional attempts at the non-standard suburban subdivision style. I liked these: https://starlightvillagehomes.com/ https://starlightvillagehomes.com/
  - MSFT_Edging 3y ago
    > which is out of alignment with coastal elite modernism Most coastal areas I've been to typically value their historical architecture and maintain those aesthetics. Really not sure where you're getting that from. If you go to areas in Michigan such as Troy, most of the houses are of a mid-century modern design similar to what you're sharing. The design language of a McMansion inherently lacks cohesion. Its not an elitist take to say "taking various design elements from 6 different eras of building and inflating them all up to 150% scale" is a bad design. If a design lacks any kind of symmetry, has windows that dont line up that are all different sizes, misplaced features, etc; its an ugly design. Not sure what else to say. Midwesterners are not immune to good design practice, and its bizarre to suggest that people outside of the coasts are incapable of making a cohesive design.
    - User23 3y ago
      > Most coastal areas I've been to typically value their historical architecture and maintain those aesthetics Given that virtually all new construction in coastal cities is five over one crapboxes along with the occasional uninspired at best highrise, I don't see it. Certainly nobody is putting up what one might consider well built aesthetically pleasing mansions in downtown San Wherever.
      - MSFT_Edging 3y ago
        5-over-1s are basically universal in the United States. You might see them more in coastal areas but that's because its where the population gravitates to. I don't like 5-over-1s either but they're a product of zoning laws that tried to legislate out more compact housing. I much rather have a couple duplex/quadplexes on each suburban block but a lot of folks really don't like that idea. Bring up the idea of putting a cafe or convenience store inside a suburban culdesac hell and people will lose their mind.
MSFT_Edging 3y ago
I'll regularly go to estate sales in McMansions. It's really amazing to see. Master Bedrooms the size of my apartment that are mostly empty. Huge tall ceilings with poorly assembled trim to break up the monotony. Two extra large AC units needed to cool all that air. Basement bars that have gone unused for years, expansive basements with old kids toys laying about, so roomy that it feels almost commercial. So many extra sitting rooms just there as a place to put things. Its amazing how wasteful they are, how they basically just exist to say "look, big house". Nothing in them is practical, they're difficult to navigate because you need to make room for the massive foyer staircase and inexplicable loft/bridge to overlook your leather couches with USB ports in them, sitting across from a tv mounted 3 feet too high to ever have a comfortable viewing angle. I've seen the ugliest ceiling mural, attempting to emulate an Italian fresco with all the skill of a high school drug PSA mural. These homes just reek of desperation, like they've accrued all this wealth and have found themselves sitting at the back of the bus in "The Graduate", without any purpose and unsure why they fought so hard. Its really interesting seeing a bathroom with enough open space to store an old beetle, with 30 drawers under the acreage of counter top. Mostly empty but dispersed with normal human items, like they're trying so hard to make it seem like any of this was necessary. All of these places are devoid of any kind of design, it all feels like a simulacra of old wealth, like its what they "should" be buying and decorating with, but then you see personal items and realize they're no better than the average person, they have the same interests and hobbies, only now they're buried deep inside this dryrock dungeon, hidden away so they can appear high class and fancy. The worst thing about them? How cheap it all feels, and how much it feels like a normal house scaled up beyond any purpose. Sure the first floor may have some kind of granite tile, but every other floor seems to bow and give under your feet like you're on a rubber running track. Noises reverberate if there's no carpet, but if there is, it most likely came with the home and has not been taken care of. McMansions are an amazing symbol of the hollowness of seeking wealth. You could have a much nicer, bespoke and practical home if you wanted. For the money you could hire a real designer, real craftsmen to build your hardwood features or master plaster craftsman to make real ceiling moldings. Instead of ordering a steak from a fine restaurant, the McMansion is spending the equivalent money at a McDonalds.
- ryandrake 3y ago
bombcar 3y ago
Fun fact: the term "Victorian" for that type of house (IIRC) was intended to disparage them, as they were considered tacky and cheap.
gonehome 3y ago
Yeah, this is my takeaway whenever someone uses “McMansion” in a disparaging way - it’s mostly to sneer at some “lower class”.
- micromacrofoot 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - gonehome 3y ago
    Sprawl is a problem, but I don’t buy that this is the main reason people complain about McMansions (I live in a condo in a dense building fwiw due to personal preference so this isn’t sour grapes). The people I know living in these large houses that were cheaply built with weird architectural accents were primarily middle class people in suburban areas with low cost of living and larger families. Often they grew up with less money and were the first of their family to do well. Typically they bought a house in some new development with a good school. The people I’ve heard complain the most about it are the upper-middle class people on the coasts that went to Stanford, I mostly only heard this style of complaint after moving to the bay and meeting people that grew up in these higher classes. It really comes across as a way to look down on the lower classes that “don’t have good taste” dressed up as something more intellectual. Actual rich people (not upper-middle) don’t give a shit, probably because they’re not afraid someone will mistake their status for middle class - they just live in their estate in atherton and don’t read articles like this. I don’t like suburban sprawl either, but I have an allergic reaction to this kind of elitism. It’s true - middle class people often don’t know how to properly signal status because they didn’t grow up in it, but how to properly signal it is also a moving target (intentionally) by those a little above them. I just find it tedious to watch.
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    > vastly inefficient sprawl that plagues the country. If efficiency were the only important metric, we'd all be living in dormitories with 3-shifts-per-day "hot bunks" and institutional kitchens.
micromacrofoot 3y ago
A huge part of the point here is that McMansions create unattractive, difficult to use, and costly to maintain infrastructure. And the residents who live in the McMansions aren't really the people who are bearing the full brunt of these costs.
- MSFT_Edging 3y ago
  My favorite thing was a culdesac of McMansions that had a gravel entrance road. You could almost hear the arguments of "who will pay for it?" echoing the halls like a ghost.
dfxm12 3y ago
Here's a novel idea: if you don't want to live in a "McMansion", don't buy one. Shopping for houses isn't like shopping on Amazon. You can't just pick what you want and have it ready on a lot of your choice in two days. If the only housing stock available/being built is houses you don't want to live in, whether they're too big, too poorly built, too ugly, not oriented on the lot right, not exactly where you want it, you're going to have to buy one anyway.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  > You can't just pick what you want and have it ready on a lot of your choice in two days No kidding. And? > If the only housing stock available/being built is houses you don't want to live in These houses are exactly what their owners want to live in. Exactly. If the market demand weren't there, the contractors would be building something else.

nluken 3y ago

I was excited to see that Kate Wagner was contributing to this most recent issue of the Baffler. A related article from the same issue discusses the cheapness of the construction in modern housing: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/construction-time-again-sisson https://thebaffler.com/salvos/construction-time-again-sisson

ethbr0 3y ago
The custom vs mass-produced perspective is more interesting to me, bcause generally everything in recent architecture has distilled down to -- can it be mass-produced? Plaster and lath? Can't be mass produced/installed. Out of style. Crown moulding? Can't be mass produced/installed. Out of style. Solid wood flooring? Can't be mass produced/installed. Out of style. Brick? Can't be mass produced/installed. Out of style. One begins to see a pattern and wonder if "style" is actually "what makes more profit for builders."
- bombcar 3y ago
  It's less builder profit and more "how can we maximize the things people compare". Builders hate finicky stupid shit [1], and charge accordingly, but big empty rooms are easy. People ask "how much house can I buy" and get $400k, say, and choose the largest sq ft with the amenities they want, instead of smaller with more design/amenities. And that's not even to say they're always entirely wrong; you should spend on the things that are expensive to change later (location, foundation, etc) perhaps; like a church that is built with plain windows because you can always add stained glass later. [1] an example my friend hated as a roofer were the little decorative things on the corners of a roof (corner gables? no idea) - he charged something like $2k per because of the absolute huge amount of absolutely fiddly labor required to build and roof them, and hated every minute of it.

hahamrfunnyguy 3y ago

This article has a lot of words but it doesn't say much and the title is misleading. tldr; Americans are building large, ugly homes out of cheap materials that have environmental impacts due to heating/cooling costs and distances required to drive.

the_cat_kittles 3y ago
moby dick is the story of a guy on a boat who tries to hunt a whale
- nielsbot 3y ago
  I get the joke but sometimes writing is bad
- ElfinTrousers 3y ago
  How's that work out for him?
  - the_cat_kittles 3y ago
    good or bad depending on who you are rooting for

coldcode 3y ago

In my city a couple of miles from me is a new housing community with $1M houses; only a few different models are available, featuring minimal paint color options, all on zero lot line spaces, any closer together they would be one giant condo. A friend toured the model and reported how cheaply it was built. Yet they sold out. The average price of a house nearby is closer to $400k. I bet the developer made a fortune.

carapace 3y ago
Check out this "Summit Park" development: https://goo.gl/maps/Eherg24AUS4V1aX67?coh=178571&entry=tt https://goo.gl/maps/Eherg24AUS4V1aX67?coh=178571&entry=tt Someone finagled permission to build on Brotherhood Way and this is what they made. The houses themselves seem nice, but the neighborhood (if you can call it that) has a horror movie vibe to it.
- r00fus 3y ago
  These are mega-townhomes, right?
- HEmanZ 3y ago
  Throw in a small cafe, local pub, and corner store, and that looks like a really nice little spot. Give it 30-50 years and people will have painted them different colors, and it won’t look like a retirement home
  - carapace 3y ago
    > Throw in a small cafe, local pub, and corner store, and that looks like a really nice little spot. Where? As in, where would you "throw" them? The buildings don't have space. There's nothing for a mile or more. This is a drive-in only development. (The road is called Brotherhood Way because there's nothing on it but churches and temples. Until they built this.) > Give it 30-50 years and people will have painted them different colors, and it won’t look like a retirement home It's really creepy there. It's hard to convey, even google street view doesn't give you the full effect. Did you watch that movie "Vivarium"? It's the shape of the place. The way it's just houses with no integration with the world outside themselves or even with each other. Packed together tightly, so tall that they block the sun, no space to expand. The park next door might as well be a million miles away. They are lockers for people, not homes.

nostromo 3y ago

It's odd how the complaints are never about actual mansions. No, it's only when the middle-class gets bigger houses do we have journalists handwringing endlessly about gauche they are.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
Isn't the typical McMansion people complain about $1M+? That's definitely not text-book middle class - which would be closer to the median house - which is less than half that price. There's not many places you're getting a 4 bedroom clown-house with a clown pool and 5 clown-y bathrooms and a 3-car clown garage for your 3 clown cars for $450k. And if you are, there's very few places this is a new-ish build. Most of the places you're getting something like this - it's like a 20+ year-old home in Montgomery Alabama or Akron Ohio or something... And usually this was once a nice house that someone renovated in the style of a clown for the McMansion buyer... You're either considering the average suburban home a McMansion or you think the top 10% is middle class. In fairness, both of these are common conceptions - but I think they're both worth critiquing.
- cjohnson318 3y ago
  > You're either considering the average suburban home a McMansion or you think the top 10% is middle class. If wealth were normally distributed, then the top 10% definitely wouldn't be the middle class. However, the way wealth is distributed, the average earner in the top 10% makes about $173K in 2020 dollars. Which is a lot in Louisiana, but not so much in SF or New York. https://www.epi.org/blog/wage-inequality-continued-to-increase-in-2020-top-1-0-of-earners-see-wages-up-179-since-1979-while-share-of-wages-for-bottom-90-hits-new-low/ https://www.epi.org/blog/wage-inequality-continued-to-increa...
  - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
    You're not building a McMansion for less than $250 per square foot. And a McMansion is usually 3000+ sqft. In New York or LA or The Bay, you're not getting a McMansion for less than $2.5M. In Louisiana, you're not getting it for less than $800k. If anything - I think this pushes out who's buying a "real" McMansion probably closer to the top 5%. It's less affordable given where people live and how much more they cost where people make more money. Unless we're calling ugly 1800 sqft 3-bedroom suburban development houses "McMansions" - middle class people aren't buying them.

bearjaws 3y ago

The hilarious thing to me about these new neighborhoods, is you can easily find their 'end game' state by just going to one that was built 12-15 years ago. You will find the same story, brand new -> rusted out fences, broken lights, old pavement, irrigation problems. The maintenance of these communities is outrageously expensive. Without an HOA fee of $400-$600 a month, they rapidly fall apart (~10 years). Yet you typically see figures closer to $200 a month. Here in Central Florida, the second wealthiest "McMansion" neighborhood had to increase HOA dues and have a special assessment to finally pave its pot hole ridden roads. Mind you the dues are typically near $800 per month.

avidphantasm 3y ago
BUT THE PROPERTY TAXES ARE CHEAP!!!

snickerbockers 3y ago

Why do you care if other people buy mcmansions? The sorts of neighborhoods where they tend to crop up already have a million identical cookie cutter houses anyways.

JKCalhoun 3y ago
I don't care myself — I'm living in one right now. Sadly the older homes in the city had only a single-car garage and I do woodworking. It does seem though like we're heading toward either trailer park or mansion. Seventy year ago they built real starter homes for newlyweds that did not yet have 2.4 kids. I'm not sure where those people go now. I have three daughters that are in their 20s now though so I guess I can watch and see.
- bombcar 3y ago
  It's not economical to build small houses; price them out sometime and the cost to "make it a 3 bedroom" is not much at all. The closest I've seen is "modern manufactured" and you still have lot/utilities, and they still cost close to stickbuilt.

DoreenMichele 3y ago

The vernacular is the mass-produced architecture of the everyday. This is not remotely what vernacular architecture means. (And trailer parks are not vernacular architecture.) https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Vernacular_architecture https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Vernacular_archite...

walthamstow 3y ago
> It is a type of architecture which is indigenous to a specific time and place and not replicated from elsewhere As a British outsider, it kind of does sound like trailer parks are American vernacular architecture. Why aren't they?
- DoreenMichele 3y ago
  The benefits of vernacular architecture include: Capitalising on local knowledge and traditions. Taking advantage of local materials and resources, meaning that they are relatively energy efficient and sustainable. Providing a vital connection between humans and the environment in which they live. They can be designed specifically with the local climatic conditions in mind, and often perform well. Vernacular architecture is associated with regional styles using local materials to build homes for ordinary people. Trailers are not any of the above.
- glompers 3y ago
  I generally like the comments posted here by DoreenMichelle. I would cite the historic cobblestone or quarried Belgian Block pavements in American port cities like Philadelphia and Savannah as examples of locally available materials that were not local materials (many arrived as ballasts unloaded from the hulls of ships that were departing town heavier and more stable than they had arrived) but economic afterthoughts. Is it still a vernacular practice of local knowledge and local conditions that prevail in the built environment, if instead the citizens had simply used them as earthfill rubble to create new land out of wetlands? I would say no; practices that have left a trace only in being cheaper than other methods of earthfill don't meet my criteria for a vernacular practice, although they may have still been performed by some of the same families who would be continuing to pass down that pattern of form in that same tradition. On the other hand, if forestry and agriculture oriented areas of the USA find their local furniture and textile manufacturing tooling falling out of demand as furniture production goes offshore, is it possible to call it local knowhow if they repurpose those manufacturing plants to produce wood-framed, furnished turnkey mobile home trailers? It is still vernacular practice but at one remove, its nature changed by one layer (at least) of abstraction from a vernacular /tradition/, and its patterns denatured by that change as much as they were denatured by mass financing of managed mass production.

noodlesUK 3y ago

My personal worry about so called McMansions is that people are buying the largest houses they can possibly afford, and the quality of the building is sacrificed for size. The costs of maintaining these enormous houses can sometimes be absolutely staggering. I worry that in years to come, entire neighbourhoods of these houses will simply fall into disrepair, as nobody will be able to afford the costs of fixing them as they age.

UncleOxidant 3y ago
In the 30's lots of large houses were divided into apartments. I'm thinking we're headed there again in some places. This time with McMansions being being divided into smaller units.
- etempleton 3y ago
  The problem is modern homes are for the most part hard to divide. Homes in the 30s often had very defined rooms connected with hallways. Modern homes include mostly open spaces with a few discrete rooms.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Open spaces are pretty easy to divide as long as they're horizontal. Vertical 'lawyer foyers' are a bit harder to use well.
- nemo44x 3y ago
  A big reason why is because of the depression. We constructed very few houses in the 1930s and 1940s. What we started building in the 1950s is a completely different thing and why homes pre-war that are well maintained are so prized.
  - midoridensha 3y ago
    Most of the pre-war houses are gone, because they were crappy. The houses that are still around and prized, or have been divided into multiple units, were the houses that rich people lived in. The houses everyone else lived in were torn down long ago.

jmclnx 3y ago

The only thing I did not like about these is how close they were built to each other on a small plot of land. Plus all the trees were removed.

MSFT_Edging 3y ago
I know of a family who lives in a neighborhood like what you describe. They complain they never see any birds or wildlife when the nearest batch of trees is at least a half mile away.

karaterobot 3y ago

> Architecturally speaking, the reason for the McMansion’s persistence is that it is the path of least resistance for building a house of a certain size. It’s hard to be efficient when forcing four thousand-plus square feet under one roof. Tailor-made architectural creations remain out of reach (or undesirable) for many people. The McMansion is a structurally stable, if visually clunky, formula. Contrary to almost four decades of urbanistic thought highlighting the need for walkability, density, and transit-oriented development, companies like Pulte Homes continue to construct McMansion neighborhoods near highway off-ramps and high-traffic arterial roads. They do this because people buy these houses and drive to work... Yeah, screw them for ignoring decades of urbanistic thought and continuing to buy houses they want and can afford. It's like they're not even considering what decades of academics and ideologues have been telling them to do with their lives. Does urbanistic thought not count for anything anymore?!

Fauntleroy 3y ago
Ah, the good ol' "freedom trumps a well-functioning society" argument
- karaterobot 3y ago
  Describe some of the specific, concrete ways people buying a house with a particular architectural style damages society.

ramesh31 3y ago

>The solutions to these problems are equally obvious: more density; preserving existing green space to allow for stormwater runoff; better public transportation to decrease reliance on cars; the decommissioning of urban highways; comprehensively transforming the energy sector in pursuit of a post-oil world; and, most of all, building affordable, livable, and—dare I say it—rent-controlled or even government-funded housing. All of these urbanist types always come to the exact same collectivist conclusions. It treats human culture as a mathematical optimization problem, which it isn't. Everything would just be so much better if we all lived in 20 story 800sqft apartments and took the bus everywhere. I don't want to live like that. I want a car, maybe two for my family so that we can go where we want when we want. I want a home large enough to entertain friends, host holidays, and house my children. I want a yard with grass, and I want to spend my saturday mornings mowing it. And I think that's exactly what most other Americans want. There has to be a solution that doesn't involve the loss of individual autonomy, privacy, and freedom that we value in the US. I will not eat the bugs. I will not get into the pod.

norir 3y ago
The American lifestyle you describe is going to end and probably sooner rather than later.
robbyking 3y ago
I think what gets lost in this debate is the fact that in most major US cities you can have two cars, a yard with a lawn you can mow and a guest room without sacrificing walkability and public transportation. I live in a working class neighborhood in a major coastal city and still have everything I listed above: I bike or ride the bus to work but a lot of my coworkers drive; I have front and backyards (with lawns!) but I can walk a few blocks to a commercial district with dozens of shops and restaurants. Not every city looks like Manhattan. Not even all of NYC looks like Manhattan.
- yamtaddle 3y ago
  > I think what gets lost in this debate is the fact that in most major US cities you can have two cars, a yard with a lawn you can mow and a guest room without sacrificing walkability and public transportation. My city qualifies! The house might even be pretty damn cheap and surprisingly big! But the schools will suck. You have to move somewhere with terrible walkability to get decent public schools.

quantumwannabe 3y ago

Remember that a 4000 sq ft house without a basement (common in the South) has around the same interior square footage as a 2000 sq ft house with a basement (common in the North). The Southerner's house looks a lot larger from the street, but it's actually around the same size inside as the "modest" house and is therefore not a "mansion". Most of the "McMansion" photos I've seen criticized on architecture blogs are either middle-class houses from areas where basements are uncommon or cherry-picked examples of unusually bad design (many of which are actually custom builds!).

true_religion 3y ago
> it's actually around the same size inside as the "modest" house and is therefore not a "mansion". I think there's an issue with this premise. McMansions are not 'mansions' and the criticism stems from that fact. They are too small for the architectural features they try to cram into their facades (balustrades, numerous columns, far too many windows of awkward sizes). Also because they are small, they try to maximize the use of space leading to the exterior looking very weird due to overlapping roofs so individual rooms can be as large and tall as possible.
- crooked-v 3y ago
  The article makes an interesting argument that the typical McMansion design, internally, can be distinguished by being more-or-less the same as a suburban home floor plan but inflated beyond all sense: an entry hallway turned into a grand foyer with a huge staircase (which, obviously, never actually gets used for anything, because it's still too small for actual parties), chains of special-purpose rooms stapled on to the same core set of rooms from the original nuclear family concept, access to the bedrooms stretched and stretched out as all the other spaces get bigger, etc. It strikes me as, conceptually, a distinct contrast to an 'average' Victorian home floor plan (which is probably the other closest thing to 'mansion' that an average person might think of living in), where even a very large home is going to have pretty tight and efficient layouts meant to maximize collective practical use of the space (especially with a large family or guests), rather than just giving a ton of square footage to each individual inhabitant.

m0llusk 3y ago

There are a bunch of issues bunched up together here. Large houses are not only possible with good land use patterns, but as older cities grow the average unit size also increases. When I was young we moved from a trailer into a huge old house. It was difficult to keep up properly and seemed to always need to be repainted, but having plenty of space and more rooms than we actually needed on a regular basis was hugely liberating. With careful planning, construction, and use of materials it should be possible for most of the population to live in relatively large residences. This might be beneficial enough to specifically aim for as we make social and technological progress.

HEmanZ 3y ago

I disagree that the McMansion is back. Leave it in the 1990-2008-ish time frame. The “new ones” I’ve seen going up are genuinely better, have much more sensible layouts, and don’t try the same goofy throw-design-out-the-window stuff the McMansions did.

lastofthemojito 3y ago

They're the Microsoft Word of houses. Famously, people only use 20% of Word's features, but that subset varies depending on whether the user is a legal secretary or elementary school teacher or whatever. McMansions have all the features - the 3-car garage, the almost commercial kitchen, the vast gathering spaces, the rec room, the home office, etc. Not everyone needs it all - but some car guy will demand that third garage spot or some foodie will demand the oversized Viking appliances or some family with multiple kids will demand the big play area, etc. This way these houses meet the needs (and way beyond) of 90%+ of the upper-middle to upper-class homebuyers, so they retain their value and are way more easy to sell than the weird custom 1800sqft home with 4-car-garage, or 1-bedroom condo with commercial kitchen, or whatever.

nunez 3y ago

Kate is an amazing writer. I loved how seamlessly she floated between academic architectural review to "McMansion bad" comedy, with almost no effort. That said, I 100% agree. Mansions are beautiful and powerful in presence. McMansions are a blight and, in my opinion, incredibly cheap-looking cancerous blobs. I live in Houston, which has an example of both. River Oaks is our friendly "rich person" neighborhood. There, you'll see some _really_ nice looking custom big houses. Proper mansions, as it were. We recently moved from Richmond, an exurb about 45 minutes south towards the abyss between Houston and Mexico. Like Kate illustrated here, a McMansion neighborhood was right off of our exit. The houses are gigantic, but look incredibly, incredibly cheap. Funny enough, a large apartment complex is being built right by one of them. I wonder what that will do to their value.

Spivak 3y ago
> incredibly cheap-looking cancerous blobs. Oh I assure you, they're cheap all the way through. Take the mass-produced bottom of the barrel construction practices of modern developers, the architectural sense of gluing pre-made block of house together, and then just keep gluing until you hit the target square footage. It's all limestone concrete, softwood, asphalt shingles, hollow doors, plastic floors, drywall, spray painted hardware, a single layer of brick if you're feeling adventurous, a chimney that doesn't actually work, a fireplace that's electric. It's unbelievably depressing that for how expensive they are you can't actually pay for quality only for more house. And I don't really think it's anyone's fault per se but more the reality of mass-produced junk getting cheaper and human labor getting so much more expensive relative to it.

flippinburgers 3y ago

I would classify anything that tries to butt up against the edge of a lot to be the first sign of grotesqueness. I will never understand the American obsession with quantity over quality.

deleted 3y ago
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golemiprague 3y ago

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cyberax 3y ago

Ah, a rag totally dedicated to harping the virtues of "urbanism" is unloading on actually liveable houses. Shocking. News at 11. Reality: McMansions are popular because they are comfortable and provide living space for an actual family. While being NOT more expensive on a per-unit basis than tiny condos in major urban centers. I get it, millenials got screwed by the unfortunate confluence of 2008 and by the economy finally transforming from manufacturing economy into a service-based one. They can't afford large houses, so the psychological defense mechanism kicks in: "Hey, these McMansions are bad anyway. It's good to downsize into a shoebox". But at this point we perhaps should start answering the question: do we want cities to continue being densified into Manhattan-style concrete canyons, or should we make sure that our children can live in nice houses that our generation was not able to afford?

lmm 3y ago
> Reality: McMansions are popular because they are comfortable and provide living space for an actual family. While being NOT more expensive on a per-unit basis than tiny condos in major urban centers. > I get it, millenials got screwed by the unfortunate confluence of 2008 and by the economy finally transforming from manufacturing economy into a service-based one. They can't afford large houses, so the psychological defense mechanism kicks in: "Hey, these McMansions are bad anyway. It's good to downsize into a shoebox". So they're popular because they're affordable, but they're hated because they're expensive? Which is it? > But at this point we perhaps should start answering the question: do we want cities to continue being densified into Manhattan-style concrete canyons, or should we make sure that our children can live in nice houses that our generation was not able to afford? Manhattan is popular, aspirational even, for a reason. Every generation before the 1950s was built by gradual densification. The wrongheaded decision to try to pickle cities in aspic via zoning laws is what creates housing unaffordability. A "nice" lifestyle is far more about being able to live somewhere you can work and socialize than about having zillions of sterile square feet to yourself.
- mikecoles 3y ago
  Having acres of fertile square feet to yourself is indeed a nice lifestyle.

nemo44x 3y ago

Meh, people were saying this in the late 19th century as power tools made intricate carving and woodwork available to wealthy people and nit just the ultra wealthy. The types of homes they built were thought to be gauche and without pure style by those ultra wealthy and the usual critiques of “new money” (success envy by failures) being uncultured rang through. But a funny thing happened - those homes are now praised and lauded over by people like the “McMansion Rheee” lady. I agree a large home made of cheap materials with no landscaping and in a shit location is pretentious. But most people on Earth would trade their homes for one. I don’t want one but I get why people would rather have a huge house and a big car than a small apartment and public transit - it’s a better way to live for many people.

Xorakios 3y ago

speaking from direct experience coming from a family that builds homes in suburban southern california, it's sorta self-reinforcing and circular people expect familiar floorplans, planning departments approve them faster if the same elements are repeated, HVAC, plumbing and fire mitigation regulations generally require a hub and spoke architecture appraisers (and more importantly bank loan approvals) are based primarily on square feet, not quality (and also bathrooms) so we add a bonus room that is likely never to be used, to bump up valuation to spend on better plumbing (developers are liable for 20 years of defects on new homes). we also build a minimum of 4 car garages, usually 6, because it's a cheap way to add square footage without added plumbing and mainly going to be used for storage anyway...