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Actually, up until the early 1900s, most suburban neighborhoods weren't built the way they are now, with the houses built by the developer. A suburban subdivider more often just sold the land, without a house on it, and it was up to the purchaser to build something on the lot. They might hire a local house builder, or order a pre-made kit, or hire an architect, or just build it themselves if they had the skills. Later, developers started offering standard designs to customers, but they still had the option to use a kit or hire someone else. There were sometimes private agreements regarding common setbacks or distances between houses, but house design didn't need to be standardized. Some neighborhoods during 1920s housing booms built like this, on a relatively limited scale, as did places with special circumstances like "factory towns" built to house workers of a specific employer, like Pullman, Illinois. In the 1930s, housing slumped due to the Depression, and government housing projects that produced houses to spec, but their numbers were limited too.
It wasn't until after WWII, and the resulting massive demand for housing and massive rush to the suburbs, that mass-produced housing with pre-built buildings really took off. And it was only a decade or so later that songs like "Little Boxes" started appearing.
But, to repeat, "Little Boxes" is not primarily a song about architecture.
That's baloney. As TonyVaz1009 said, there are many neighborhoods, in many cities, built in the 1920s, that consist of row after row of bungalows. I was just in such a neighborhood in Denver today, and there are many others in that city alone.
My McMansion definition: small lot, large house, something like 70%+ house. An equal number of bathrooms and bedrooms. Every room has 10+ foot ceilings, rather than just the public rooms (ie, bedrooms and bathrooms too). The house has 4000+ sq ft, and the bathrooms are the size of a regular house's bedrooms with mostly empty floorspace in them.
Very prominent 3+car garage, such that the garage is of equal prominence on the front side of the house to the front door and living space. Essentially the house looks like 1/2 giant garage.
The architectural style (or lack thereof) is irrelevant, but there are several building materials on the front that don't belong together, such as a small section of white natural looking stone while the majority of the house is red brick.
The cost of the materials is irrelevant, except where they don't belong or look extra fake. Examples would be fake shutters that are not large enough to actually cover the window where they real or obviously fake dormers.
A lot of extra doo-dads, like some peaks here and half-arch windows there (extra points if the half-arches are listed as "Palladian" or "Palladiam" and I love misspellings in the overblown description in the sales stuff.
Agree with oversized for the lot. The average new house in my area is about 2500 sq.ft., 4 beds/2.5 bath, "straight-front colonial" with one of those big upper windows over the entrance. Boring facade, boxy look. I don't consider them McMansions but they are quite boring (and the standard interior layouts really speak to people who watch too much "House Hunters" and who haven't thought about how a space should work for how they really live).
A McMansion looks wrong. Too big for the lot, too many mish-mash "elements," sticks out as inappropriate for the area, site, and to the eye. Might include a sense of absurd pretensions. Certainly out of proportion.
A McMansion looks wrong. Too big for the lot, too many mish-mash "elements," sticks out as inappropriate for the area, site, and to the eye. Might include a sense of absurd pretensions. Certainly out of proportion.
These are all subjective criteria.
What is the objective difference?
Anyone?
The only definition I can find is something about how U.S. real estate agents call anything over 8000 square feet a mansion.
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