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So its against the rules to borrow lines from mansions? Us proletariat are supposed to stick with the cape and saltbox colonial?
With all due respect: Please don't put words in my mouth. I never said it was "against" any "rules" to build or buy a McMansion. Nor that income level is or should be tied to a house style. Where'd that come from???
I was expressing my personal opinion that to my eyes, plopping a scaled-down version of a true Mill Neck/Old Brookville/Gold Coast mansion on a 1/3 or 1/2 acre lot ... especially when it either (a) is the only one on the street because the buyer knocked down a smaller house in order to build it, or (b) is one of a group of clones put up by the same builder as a mini-development .... looks completely incongruous. The typical McMansion is way, waaay out of proportion for the lot it sits on. It makes the house look like an elephant balancing itself on a postage stamp.
IMHO, overbuilding any house for its location looks silly and pretentious. Just like faux designer bags and fake Rolexes look silly and pretentious. Or putting up a huge pink Spanish/Floridian villa in the middle of a Boston suburb looks totally out of place. But those are just my own personal opinions It has nothing whatsoever to do with the socioeconomic level of the owners of the McMansions, fake bags, fake Rolexes, and New England spanish villas.
I was expressing my personal opinion that to my eyes, plopping a scaled-down version of a true Mill Neck/Old Brookville/Gold Coast mansion on a 1/3 or 1/2 acre lot
I think you're giving McMansions too much credit when you call them a scaled down version of a true Gold Coast mansion. 99.999% of the McMansions I have seen were not designed by architects. It's like the builder flipped through a catalog and just pointed at a bunch of stuff and built it. Perhaps in their minds they were trying to build a scaled down version of a true Gold Coast mansion, but if they were...they failed...miserably.
Like this...what the heck is this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eyespanker/2335744088/ (broken link)
Though as I peruse photos on google I am realizing people's definitions of what a McMansion is seem to be fairly broad.
Last edited by OldLongIsland; 01-08-2009 at 04:01 PM..
So its against the rules to borrow lines from mansions? Us proletariat are supposed to stick with the cape and saltbox colonial?
There may be houses on LI worth saving. However the vast majority are not. You bring up Huntington, but gloss over that most of Bellmore, Wantagh, Massapequa east meadow Levitown, Hicksville and plenty others were all high density cookie cutter development. I say down with the crappy hollow core doored houses with no personality.
On the other hand there is something to be said for romanticizing Levittown, that was when a decent relatively new house was affordable to us snobby stuck up kids. Now we need two incomes earning close to 6 figures to buy one that the original owner has lived in for 40 years and hasn’t updated.
If you really think there's nothing worth saving in those places, especially Bellmore and Wantagh, I think you're totally nuts. Wantagh itself is one of the oldest European settlements on LI. There are several homes that date from the 1700s and older....it has more Historic Markers placed on it's street than any other town in Nassau County. I grew up here and Wantagh Woods was fascinating when I was younger, now it's just another McMansion dump, stripped of trees and any discernable character the last two centuries had passed down to it. The neighborhood went from "charming, rustic" to "expensive, good schools" in less than a decade. Places like Levittown and East Meadow were always farming communities until the 1950s happened, so it's very rare to find something older than a Levitt-style development in those places....but Bellmore, Wantagh and Hicksville trace their roots back long before any of us were put on this earth. These are classic LI towns, and so are the Levittowns of the world in their own right. Are the cookie cutter Levitt-capes more "dignified" than their 5000sf McMansion offspring? I'd say so...a Levittown might be boring, but it's not pretending to be something it isn't. Middle class dwellings for middle class people, be proud of it, cherish it, celebrate it.
Thankfully, I think the McMansion is dying a painful death right now. I haven't noticed any new ones in quite awhile. I don't think all of them are disgusting, either....just some... and I'm not particularly opposed to the silly little gated McMansion developments out in the middle of farmland in places like Calverton and Manorville - even though I'd live in a cardboard box before I lived in one.
I think you're giving McMansions too much credit when you call them a scaled down version of a true Gold Coast mansion. 99.999% of the McMansions I have seen were not designed by architects. It's like the builder flipped through a catalog and just pointed at a bunch of stuff and built it. Perhaps in their minds they were trying to build a scaled down version of a true Gold Coast mansion, but if they were...they failed...miserably.
Like this...what the heck is this: McMansion in Lexington on Flickr - Photo Sharing! (http://www.flickr.com/photos/eyespanker/2335744088/ - broken link)
Though as I peruse photos on google I am realizing people's definitions of what a McMansion is seem to be fairly broad.
You know, a couple of homes in that Flickr group really aren't too bad...
This humpback McMansion (http://www.flickr.com/photos/dscott28604/2669362047/in/pool-mcmansions - broken link) is a little out of proportion size-wise, but doesn't look totally unnatural sitting next to the brick ranch.
...but things like this (http://www.flickr.com/photos/winnabago/116034575/in/pool-mcmansions - broken link) are totally gross, no doubt.
If you really think there's nothing worth saving in those places, especially Bellmore and Wantagh, I think you're totally nuts. Wantagh itself is one of the oldest European settlements on LI. There are several homes that date from the 1700s and older....it has more Historic Markers placed on it's street than any other town in Nassau County. I grew up here and Wantagh Woods was fascinating when I was younger, now it's just another McMansion dump, stripped of trees and any discernable character the last two centuries had passed down to it. The neighborhood went from "charming, rustic" to "expensive, good schools" in less than a decade. Places like Levittown and East Meadow were always farming communities until the 1950s happened, so it's very rare to find something older than a Levitt-style development in those places....but Bellmore, Wantagh and Hicksville trace their roots back long before any of us were put on this earth. These are classic LI towns, and so are the Levittowns of the world in their own right. Are the cookie cutter Levitt-capes more "dignified" than their 5000sf McMansion offspring? I'd say so...a Levittown might be boring, but it's not pretending to be something it isn't. Middle class dwellings for middle class people, be proud of it, cherish it, celebrate it.
Thankfully, I think the McMansion is dying a painful death right now. I haven't noticed any new ones in quite awhile. I don't think all of them are disgusting, either....just some... and I'm not particularly opposed to the silly little gated McMansion developments out in the middle of farmland in places like Calverton and Manorville - even though I'd live in a cardboard box before I lived in one.
I for one think the Levitt Cape is an icon of hope and an American treasure.
I really don't think there are any left that are original. I've only been in one that was "close" in my life, and that was almost ten years ago....I drove passed recently and it had a dormer on top. My parent's house, the one I grew up in, was basically an original 800sf ranch - carport, original G.E. fridge, original stove, unfinished second floor. There was a tiny screened porch on the back, I think that was the only update. They still have the same front door, oil burner cover and asbestos shingles from 1952. We somehow survived growing up with only one bathroom, I don't know anyone else that did!
Some Levitt remodels are OK, some are disgusting. All in all, however...they're very "function before fashion" - just like the original intention of the homes, so I can't hate.
...and yeah, that is an inline high-ranch all dolled up. The architectural equivalent of putting a 3' tall spoiler on a bright purple 1992 Honda Civic.
"Heaven is not built of country seats
But little, quear suburban streets."
Christopher Morley
I have a 1845 edition of A History of Long Island: From Its First Settlement By Europeans Until 1845 by Nathaniel Prime (1845). There is a mention of Jerusalem, Town of Hempstead, County of Queens.
Next I pulled out Discovering Long Island by William Stevens (1939). An abysmmal disappointment. The more I read, the more apparent it became that Stevens preferred the North Shore. His book starts with Northwestern Nassau and heads east, looping around to the south fork, back west along the south shore in Suffolk and then ends abruptly at Frank Buck's Zoo in Massapequa. It was as though there was nothing west of Massapequa.
Leafing through Nassau Count Long Island in Early Photographs 1869 - 1840 Weidman & Martin (1981) yields the first glimpse of an earlier Wantagh (ca. 1929) It's an aerial view of the Wantagh SpurIn the left foreground of the picture is a small development of new bungalows with garages to the rear of the building. They are situtated just north of Merrick Road and appear to be Willow St, Cypress St & Beech St. It states that in 1925 a three-room (yes, room not bedroom) house sold for $3,500. Looking at Google Earth, it would appear that some of the old garages still stand, and perhaps 2 of the bungalows on Willow may not have been significantly altered. Sadly, everything around them is crammed into small lots, and a lot which housed one of those little bungalows now has a monstrosity of outlandish proportions shoe-horned into the lot.
The remainder of the land south of Merrick Road is devoid of any sort of building. It's amazing to see. Reading up on the history of the area the reason became apparent -- Germans had flocked to the area in the mid 1800's to farm the land, and it remained that way for many years.
Yes, there is history to be preserved in Wantagh. What is left should not meet the fates of the Jerusalem River and Cherrywood estate. I was amazed to read that developers filled in the Jerusalem River. It was disgusting to learn that The Cherrywood shopping center -- a suburban strip mall completely devoid of character -- was once the site of Capt. John Seaman's home, Cherrywood.
This is what is wrong with development on LI. It's sad that greedy developers and myopic homeowners (i.e. The Windmill Gate at Oakdale -- where they razed the windmill as opposed to restoring it!) have little value for the structures which bore witness to our history as it unfolded.
There is a quiet dignity to be had in the Levitt homes and their history. They were built with affordable housing as the first priority for returning GIs. They weren't about flash and fancy, but utility and basic creature comforts. They were designed to be expanded upon for growing families. (Two years ago the 50th anniversary of Levittown was celebrated; when the historical society set out to find an original Levitt house, they were hard-pressed to find one which hadn't been tweaked in some fashion.) The Levitt house was designed to be a home, a shelter, a place to raise one's family. They were purchased by grateful men and tended to by wives who made that little cracker box gleam and shine for her husband to return to. Yes, there is something to be romanticised about in that era of humble thrift. The Levitt home is representative of this period of pride in home ownership -- no matter how modest.
The McMansion is is representative of a period of conspicuous consumption, ego, and is the architectural manifestation of self importance.
(On the other hand, those higher taxes they pay help offset what the rest of us pay....)
For me it's about sense of place, respect of community, architectural aesthetics and scale of design. Build anything you want, but respect the setting in which it is being built. Don't build a 3500 sq ft, 35' tall home on 1/3 acre in a neighborhood consisting of 2000 sq ft homes which are one story. Expanding upon what someone else wrote -- don't build a Spanish villa in a neighborhood of colonials, and don't build a Victorian in a area chock full of California ranches.
Eagle Realty in Stony Brook was at a crossroads. Instead of preserving an old school building in the historic district and rehabbing it as a community/visitors center, the building was demolished and a builder threw up 5 or 6 oversized homes of varying styles. At a community meeting, a local architect stood up and referred to the new cul de sac as 'The Scar.' It really is. These homes all dwarf the tiny, 150 - 200 year old homes which surround them. They bear no resemblance to the vintage of these older homes and have no design elements in common.
Last edited by OhBeeHave; 01-08-2009 at 09:39 PM..
Reason: My Deliberate mispell "quear" in Morley quote. The site won't allow the word which also means 'odd'
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