(FYI - this is going to be a longer post than usual, so you might want to open it in a new tab if you’re reading it on Tumblr feed. There will be a read more break about halfway through.)

Howdy, folks! Welcome to the first edition of the McMansion Hell Yearbook - a year by year account of how the McMansion came to be. We begin our tour of time in the year 1970.

Why 1970: A Brief History Lesson

Whether or not the McMansion belongs to canonical or vernacular (everyday) architecture is a topic of some dispute - for example, Thomas Hubka, in his book Houses Without Names claims that the McMansion is simply the latest iteration of highly-customized architecture designed by and for rich people, which is why it doesn’t belong in studies of vernacular architecture. However, Hubka himself includes in his evolutionary study of floorplans, a type called “Large Suburban” which features a central foyer flanked by formal rooms leading into a vast living/entertaining space and kitchen. The question of where “Large Suburban” ends and “McMansion” begins is perhaps less of an architectural question than it is a cultural one, but that’s something we’ll discuss in more detail later on in this series.

A Styled Split-Level from a 1960 trade publication. Public Domain. 

Meanwhile, Virginia McAlester includes McMansions, called “Millennium Mansions” in the second edition of the Field Guide to American Houses, a phenomenon she places as starting around 1985. However, like most architectural phenomenons, the McMansion didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Its predecessor is what McAlester called the Styled Ranch (and Styled Split Level) - an elaboration of the ranches and split-levels of midcentury featuring the costuming of the simple ranch form in a variety of different architectural styles or themes including Colonial Revival, Neoclassical, Mediterranean, and Tudor. How these styled ranches and split levels escalated into the sprawling McMansions we know today is something this new series hopes to tackle.

Enough history (for now)! Here’s our 1970 house found in none other than Bergen County, New Jersey.

This 5,600 square-foot house features 6 bedrooms and 6 bathrooms and can be all yours for ~$1.8 million USD. You’ll notice a lot of things about this house that are not McMansion-like: its symmetry, its lack of a complex roofline, its unified exterior claddings and window styles. However, this is why the house is interesting - it is not as much a McMansion as it is a proto-McMansion. Many McMansion features are apparent in their nascent form, for example, the competing architectural styles of Tudor (windows) and Neoclassical (portico, front door, quoins), the tacked-on mass containing the three car garage, an ostentatious pediment with elaborate columns, and extruded double bay windows.

The most interesting of these proto-features is the front entryway, an early development of what will be known on this blog as the Lawyer Foyer. We see a large central window above the door (architectural historian Charles Jencks traces this to LA in his book Daydream Houses of Los Angeles, appropriately calling it the “LA Door”), with an outdoor decorative light dangling in front of it, a motif borrowed from certain, usually later iterations of the split level (seen in this example [top left] from a 1963 trade catalog). Let’s step inside:

Proto-Lawyer Foyer (Law School Foyer???)

What’s interesting about this example is that it is very McMansion like in its use of a large curved staircase and over-indulgent chandelier. However, the above-door window has yet to merge with the front door into a transom-window, and the chandelier, though large and ornate, has yet to replace the lantern outside as the lighting feature that can be seen from the street.

Sitting Room

Though this house tends to feature more Louis XV-style furniture (my suspicion is that this might be evidence of an 80s or 90s era redecorating), the emphasis on bulky, ornate 18th century reproduction furniture, moldings, and wallpaper is indicative of the fascination in the 1970s towards the (American) Colonial era in anticipation of the 1976 American Bicentennial. You can read more about this in this fantastic and captivating Collector’s Weekly article.

Dining Room

As we can see, the stuffy formal dining room has always existed in McMansions, simply because it has always existed in rich people houses in general since the dawn of time.

Living Room

While ugly and too big, this living room definitely is more reminiscent of a ranch-style living room than it is a McMansion great room. It even has doors (heresy!) Personally I stan those 70s brick veneer fireplaces because they are groovy and increasingly hard to find.

Oh. I should mention that you’re really, really not prepared for what you’re about to see in the next room.

Horse Shrine

SERIOUSLY:

For some reason having a racehorse shrine seems, like, peak New Jersey.

Ahoy, Chef!

If your nana or great aunt didn’t have these wyd

Master Bedroom

I should add that the listing for this house shows none of the six bathrooms, and, after viewing this room, I have to believe there’s a reason for that.

Spare Bedroom

Is there a tacky wallpaper museum?? If so, how do I get on the board of directors???

Anyways, this concludes our interior tour. Let’s go back outside.

Rear Exterior:

Well, on that (thankfully more subdued than usual) note, this concludes our 1970 entry in the McMansion Hell Yearbook. See you soon with an update on Brutalism, and stay tuned for next month’s 1971 McMansion.

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