Slate
As I’ve visited other cities in recent years, I’ve noticed that Arlington is far from alone. This style is becoming the dominant mode in well-off neighborhoods everywhere, from Atlanta to Nashville to Austin to Boulder. If you drive through the Arlington of wherever you live, you’ll surely see Giant White Houses sprouting on every cleared lot. As one went up next door, I wondered: Why are the houses so giant? Why are the houses so white? Why are the houses like this now?
After speaking to realtors, architects, critics, and the guy who built the house next door, I’ve learned that the answer is more complicated than I’d imagined. It has to do with Chip and Joanna Gaines, Zillow, the housing crunch, the slim margins of the spec-home industry, and the evolution of minimalism. It has to do, most of all, with what a certain class of homebuyer even believes a house to be—whether they realize it or not. More
Go lick a harpoon you imbecile. Feeling a bit unendowed? Are you afraid of the “whiteness”? You probably should investigate why barns are red (mostly).
I thank God everyday for my “Roseanne” type house. 102 years old. Bones are solid as a rock. Built by men long gone with a craftmanship that may never be seen again.
Solid oak trim around the baseboards and windows. The foot board value alone would be in the thousands.
This is happening all over suburbia – knocking down old, modest size houses on 1/4 acre lots and replacing them with McMansions that take up every available square foot of the lot the ordinances will allow. They dwarf the houses on each side. They are quite pathetic in that they barely leave a lawn mower width on either side of the house. Many also eat up the entire back yard.
And yes, they also have hideous white and gray siding that looks atrocious.
Seeing that headline, I thought this was going to be another Monica Lewinsky story.
Now you know where all that USAID money went to.
I designed my home and had the plans drawn up by a professional draftsman. I was my own contractor and saw every square inch of it being constructed or I did the work myself. It has stood strong through several hurricanes including Rita and Ike. After Hurricane Harvey flooded my home, I had to gut the bottom four feet of the inside and I rebuilt it back better. I’ve been living in it since 1993. I’m having it reroofed soon because it’s about that time. We don’t have basements where I live and that’s fine with me. I’ve been very pleased with my home. We’ve been good to each other.
Perhaps they know the wastrels their raising and fully expect their 2.6 adult children (and family) to be moving back in one day.. this is what an architect friend calls “Uglitecture”
Our friends in Collegetown, MS live in the house where he grew up. It’s 1500 square feet, Sits on 3 wooded acres. Next door is a 4000 sf spec house that told for $1.2 Million. Down the street, lots are selling for $300,000 per acre and there are three gigantic houses being erected. A realtor offered to buy our friends’ house for a huge sum. His notion was to knock it down and build something enormous and expensive.
The warehouse/ industrial style siding is cheap.
It looks cheap too.
I remember when every house you went in was Laura Ashley or shabby chic.
People seem to love trends.
Like in the 80′ & 90’s millions of girls were named Ashley.
Gee Wally, if highways can be racist, surely this is too!
s/
Banker from Minneapolis bought a modest sized 1950 style ranch summer home across the lake for a million, tore it down and put up a McMansion for another million. Now we have to look at it when they come up annually for the 4th of July and around New Years. That’s the saving grace though, they’re rarely there lighting everything up with their flood lights all over that place.
There’s a new one going in on my side of the lake, thankfully it’s set back in a small bay and back from the shoreline, thanks to zoning. It’ll be an ugly multilevel monstrosity too, I kind of hope it slides into the lake someday.