Howdy, folks, and happy October! (It’s snowing here in Chicago lol)
Before I get down to business on today’s post, I want to let you know of two big events coming up this week:
First, I’ll be in conversation with Susan Chin and Vinson Cunningham tomorrow evening (10/28) to talk about urbanism during the pandemic (virtually) at the Museum of the City of New York.More info and tickets here.
Alright, now back to the main event. We’re back in Cook County, Illinois because of course we are, and this house falls into the rare McMansion Hell category of “this house is terrible but also kind of cute somehow????”
It’s a shame you can’t really see the turret because it adds so much. Anyways, this house is peak 70s McMansion: longer than it is tall, involves a mansard, big picture windows, not too adventurous roof-wise. Still, it’s 6900 square feet boasting 5 bedrooms and 6.5 baths all at a whopping $1.5 million dollars. Just some pocket change, you know…
Let’s see inside, shall we?
Lawyer Foyer
All I want is some Looney Tunes action where some’s coming up from the basement and someone’s coming in the front door and WHAM!!!!
Sitting Room
I kind of stan the dog pots though…
Dining Room
I think the wallpaper might be crabs???? (????)
Kitchen
Pros of tile countertops: v twee and cute Cons of tile countertops: grout
Also we NEED to bring back the kitschy farmhouse aesthetic from 40 years ago. No more quartz countertops. It’s time for tiles with chickens on them!!!
Sunroom
Is this room supposed to be like weirdly tropical?? or Parisian??? or Martha Stewart??? or???
Vibe check: [please calibrate vibe checker and try again]
Office
After all, inside every middle manager is a languishing Hemingway…
Main Bedroom
“Struggled hard for these views (six arm flexing emojis)”
Also, disclosure: McMansion Hell will no longer use the term “master bedroom” because it’s antiquated and never made much sense after the (American) Civil War if you really think about it for more than three seconds.
Main Bathroom
where to purchase malachite wallpaper asking for a friend (the friend is my office)
Spare Bedroom
Nothing says “I am a fun-loving carefree and slightly cRaZy girl” like this font:
Alright, that’s it for the inside. Instead of the rear exterior though, I’m going to end this post with a fun aerial shot instead just to show that my suspicions about this house have been confirmed.
Secret Aerial Footage (helicopter sounds)
See, this house is actually very weird!!!! It is not as cute when all of its wily tricks have been revealed!!!!
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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.
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.
Howdy folks! This post has been months in the making. Scouring the hell that is the McMansion Trenches of Virginia for only the best (worst) houses for your viewing pleasure generated some truly awful contenders. Of all the counties in Virginia, it was the wealthiest DC suburban counties of Fairfax and Loudoun that delivered. I won’t leave you hanging longer than I already have, so without further ado, the countdown:
#10: The Trellis Terror (Loudoun County)
The scrunched up piles of roof and narrow windows are a casualty of trying to squeeze the biggest possible house complete with not one but two garages into the smallest imaginable lot. The second story over-the-garage trellis aims to invoke the Tuscan countryside, but ends up looking like a bad strip mall Olive Garden instead.
#9: Tricorn Turret (Loudoun County)
The consistency of cladding materials and window shapes make this house more well put-together than most McMansions. However it made the list for obvious reasons: a substantial and precipitous roofline, a rare triple turret dormer assembly, and that bizarre skeletal stone porch thing transform this house from country estate to ridiculous Hummer house.
#8: Fort Void (Loudoun County)
Usually the problem of McMansions is too many large windows, in this case it’s too many small windows, all of them different from one another as if this house was just a front for the Pella Window showroom. The monotonous brick swallows the windows giving the house a fortress-y aura. The juxtaposition of pastoral rolling farmland with an equally ugly house right next door is particularly choice.
#7: Mt. Nub’s Revenge (Loudoun County)
This house is a perfect example of how, even when they try really really hard, McMansions are incapable of symmetry. The more you look at this house the more “spot the difference” elements you find: the weird short colonnade vs the five-bay picture window; the length of the two wings, the roofline of the right wing is for some reason broken up because God is dead. And then there’s that nub.
#6: Sticker Shock (Loudoun County)
This robust residence is absolutely chaotic. No two gables are the same. Stone is applied liberally and without logical consistency. Gutters trail down columns and crevices. Every window antagonizes its neighbor. The only thing over which any control has been exerted is nature itself, repressed and dominated by a monocultural expanse of grass. Normally I am not so blunt, but I will be today: I hate this house.
#5: Chonky Corinthian
There is a certain type of house that is very popular in Fairfax County. It consists of a hulking range of hipped roofs punctured by a central (?) portico supported by columns that can only be described as thicc. This is one of these houses. The people who built this house could not decide when they were done building it. One can only assume that the myriad plans for this house were saved with file names like “House″ “House 2″ “House 2 final” “House 2 final final” “House 2 FINAL FINAL FOR REAL THIS TIME”
#4: Mad Hatter (Fairfax County)
First of all, this home is way too long. It just keeps going. It’s like six different houses stitched together. Roofs begin and end. Porches come and go. Two stories somehow transform into one. By the time the eye reaches the front entrance, one is already exhausted. Finally, whoever decided to take the phrase “nesting gables” and apply it in this way deserves a trial at the Hague.
#3: Tragic “Tudor” (Fairfax County)
This is the house equivalent of an identity crisis. Elements of French, English, and Donald Trump commingle to produce a truly formidable facade. All of the landscaping choices in this post are sad, but this house takes the cake for most depressing scenery, and not just because it was photographed in winter. Stubby shrubs appear to be gasping for breath, what trees exist are mere, unstable sticks; beside the pergola, a fallen cypress.
#2: Foaming at the Mouth (Fairfax County)
This is a classic McMansion: it does its best to look dignified and imposing and instead appears cartoonish and cheap. Every element of this house except perhaps the wooden door is derived from petroleum products. The massive transom screams “climate denialism.” The grand entrance is overdone and top-heavy to the point of parody. In short: I hope this house melts.
#1: Brick Behemoth
If you combine all of the insipid elements of the other houses: mismatched windows; massive, chaotic rooflines; weird asphalt donut landscaping; pompous entrances, and tacked on masses; you’d get this house. The more one looks at this house the more upsetting it becomes. The turrets don’t match. The roofline is truly mountainous. The windows are either too small or too big for the walls they are housed in. The carhole is especially car hole-y. What sends this one over the top is its surroundings: lush trees and clear skies that have been desecrated in order to build absolute garbage. At least it doesn’t have shutters.
Well, that’s it for Virginia! Stay tuned for another installment of “The Brutalism Post” - this time about what Brutalism actually is.
There is a whole new slate of Patreon rewards, including Good House of the Week, Crowdcast streaming, and bonus essays!
Not into recurring donations or bonus content? Consider the tip jar! Or, Check out the McMansion Hell Store! Proceeds from the store help protect great buildings from the wrecking ball.
Howdy Folks! We’re continuing our out-of-order-for-dramatic-effect tour of the 50 States of McMansion Hell today with perhaps one of the most underrated McMansion counties in the country: Waukesha County, Wisconsin. These houses were so bizarre it was hard to choose just one to do a takedown of. So, without further ado…
#10: Doom McGloom
This 2002 estate, thanks to the clever machinations of whoever took these photographs, looks less like an enticing investment property and more like a prime candidate for the Chernobyl ripoff set in America that has 2 stars and is only available on Amazon Prime.
#9: Headquarters of Tree-Haters Anonymous
This 2004 manse is $1.4 million dollars and yet its creators couldn’t afford more than a single (invasive!) tree. I don’t know what kind of sociopath wakes up in the morning and actively hates everything taller than a malnourished shrub. Whoever they are, this is certainly the house for them.
#8: Roofer’s Paradise
A post-recession 2011 McMansion, this house clearly didn’t learn anything from the recent past. With many McMansions, I can conceive of ways to improve them to make them better. With this house, I simply do not know how to rectify its main problem: it’s, like, 90% roof. In my head I refer to houses like this as “turtle houses” but frankly this does a disservice to the noble turtle.
#7: Haunted Geometry
This house was built in 2014, a time when people should definitely have known better. Its inclusion in this list is solely due to the absolutely bizarre geometry of its roof, a kind of geometry formerly unknown to mathematics until this time. Bonus points for the continued animosity to trees found in the wealthy populous of this county.
#6: McEscher
Nothing about this house makes sense. I’m serious. I’ve looked at it from several different angles and have yet to perceive any coherent spatial logic to how it comes together. This is house is an SCP. It’s an X-Files case. House of Leaves was actually based on this house. It’s an Escherian nightmare. 0/10 would not go inside even if you paid me.
#5: Obligatory Beigehaus
You know when a bad stand up comedian tells a joke that just keeps going way too long? The audience is like, okay, we get it, you need therapy, but he (and it’s always a he) just keeps going on and on. Well, this is the house equivalent of that.
#4: House of Lumps
Whoever built this house was utterly incapable of picturing in their minds eye what a house should look like. The very conception of a house is foreign to them. They have never seen a children’s book with houses in it. They probably didn’t even have a childhood.
#3: Play-doh Playhouse
This house made it so far in the countdown because it is, frankly, weird. I don’t know why it is painted the color of jaundice, or why they have transformed every gable into a hollow cavity longing for death. Lots of things are happening here, though none of them could appropriately be called “architecture.”
#2: Farmhouse Freak
Let your eyes glaze over as you look at this “farmhouse” - the more you look at it the less sense it makes. What are they farming, you ask? Why, turf grass of course! Bonus points for this image in which the house appears through a haze of ozone or something.
And now, the moment you’ve been waiting for…
#1: Corinthian Catastrophe
It’s one thing to have oversized Corinthian columns on your absurd McManse, but it’s a whole new level of extra to spray paint the capitals gold. This house takes all the elements found in the other houses (treeless sociopathy, turret lust, garish mismatched windows, foam) and ramps it up to 11, which is why it earns the number one slot in the county. Also, as a bonus, I find it incredibly funny that they embossed the letter “C” everywhere. I guess whoever buys it either has to have a name starting with C or has their work cut out for them. The C represents the grade they got in home design class.
Anyways, that’s it for Wisconsin, folks! Stay tuned for a special essay on whether or not brutalism is good, as well as the next installment of the 50 States: Wyoming. Have a great weekend.
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