This is realy sad. I have seen a lot of it where I live.

It does not matter how lovely, or full of character and old-time gingerbread trim, or if there is a wonderful wrap-around porch. These people come in and tear it down without a moment's thought...only to build some really ugly McMansion that is so gaudy and pretentious that it proves once again that having money does not endow one with good taste.



http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/nyregion/connecticut/23Rhome.html

It's probably irrational, but I have developed quite a dislike for most developers. Where we see beautiful green trees and foliage, they see greenbacks. Wherever they've been, wreckage and backed up sewers will soon follow.


:puke:

There was an article in the Wall Street Journal about a month ago, showing all these McMansions that were being foreclosed.

They interviewed the former owner of one of these multi million dollar monstrosities. He had lost his 250,000 year job and could no longer pay the $10,000 a month mortgage. He had no savings--it had all gone into his mortgage payments and payment on a big old yacht. He said he was ruined.

Oh boo hoo :nopity: :puke:

Instead of taking up yard space with too much house, he should have been planting a garden, IMHO,... and forget about the yacht.

Perhaps some good can come out of the economic downturn--NO MORE MCMANSIONS!

And deveopers can go take a hike!:grr:

a monstrosity. They do not allow room for grass, garden or trees. It is ugly.

which for California is pretty darn old .

Made lovingly with redwood by a son for his mother .
She lived in it through the 70s . It has a well which
has layed dormant for almost 40 years. My nieghbor and
I are talking about co owning chickens .

and full of what is wrong with our country

I've known people who do it on smaller scales. But it takes money. Over the years, my husband and I put in what money we could to bring our prewar Colonial, built in the late 30s, in line with today's realities -- higher electrical service, replacing the vertical pipes, window replacement from the old weights and pulleys to the energy efficient windows and finally replacing the old pine cabinets that were built right in the house (no modular windows in those days, everything was "custom" made, even in the modest houses like ours). Such modifications and updates were really necessary and certainly not top of the line.

However, we respect the integrity of our house's design. It's a long process and has been a long investment. As a result we will probably get a profit off its sale when the time comes. But it hasn't been without some sacrifice and some financial help from my mother.

It ain't easy keeping up an older house. Eventually, things just wear out or are no longer suitable to modern realities...

like most of my neighborhood. There's one building a couple blocks away that still has a steel scrape-the-horseshit-off-your-boots thing left on its stoop.

My landlord's renovating it slowly, apartment by apartment (mine's one of the rehabbed ones). Gods bless him for it. I don't like new construction. I feel a lot better living in a place with history. It's hard to put my finger on it, it's a psychic/psychological thing.

The old ones, with the plaster and brick work have such character and beauty...There is no comparison. The same is true of the homes as well. The older homes have high ceilings, huge windows, solid walls, parquet floors, pocket doors, and so much more. There was a pride of craftsmanship that does not seem very evident nowadays.

which is something I thought about a lot in Boston. Human scale is narrow streets with sidewalks, moderately scaled buildings close to the street, lots of doorways and store windows, open areas with trees here and there with benches for sitting on nice days.

Contrast that with the newly developed areas out west: a wide street, no sidewalks, 2 and 3 car garages side by side with only narrow walkways every second one to get to the houses hidden behind them. Nothing faces the street but a row of blank garage doors, lined up in military precision. It's like trying to walk in a moonscape. If there's a park area, it's either a baseball diamond or tennis court, not conducive to enjoying the day for what it is, useful to neither the very young nor the very old.

Then there are the high rise buildings, set way back from the street, nothing at ground level but one ornate entrance and a lot of blank concrete. You feel like a bug on a plate walking to it or past it. It doesn't help if the high rise is close to the street, either, if there is nothing of interest at ground level for those walking by.

Boston's leadership realized all this while I was there, and started to mandate things like retail space on the street level of new highrises to help maintain human scale. Their flirtation with the Italian piazza having failed miserably, they were going back to greenery in city squares. Maintaining a human scale in an urban environment doesn't mean clinging to unsound and aesthetically unpleasing old buildings. It can be done with new construction.

Everything out west is still dominated by accommodations for cars, though, and the human scale is missing from most areas.

You know the Leaning Tower of Pisa is over 800 years old?

We really don't give a shit about our landmarks.

It's small, has only one bathroom and needs a lot of work, but architecturally it's really interesting. However, since the lot is a little bigger than most of the others on the block, I have no doubt that if I sold it, it would be torn down and replaced with something huge and soulless.

think it was built in 1832. The deed for the land is on a sheepskin. It is no mansion, old saltbox with four bedrooms upstairs, the one original closet in the whole house up there. Down stairs are the four original rooms and the kitchen bathroom addition in what looks like was originally an early porch addition. The only running water in the whole house is in that back addition, one small bathroom, laundry room combo and the kitchen. We heat it with a wood stove insert and once when our daughter had a bonfire out here (we are in between farms in a pretty rural area) one of the boys from her school asked if we were Amish, and these kids are from a definitely rural farming school district, so guess it looks pretty rustic here! I love it though and we have two big gardens, fruit trees and bushes and a pretty sad looking barn. I would hate to see it torn down for one of the Mc Mansions.

and this has been a great place to raise five kids and lots of cats and veggies! The older ones always tell us that they will never fight over our belongings when their Dad and I are gone, it will be more like "you take Dad's old Chevy truck, no, you take it!" And they have lots of great stories to tell about how they slept in ropebeds and cut wood for the fireplace and can grow just about anything needed. I think an interesting life is great!

I live in chicago and my block is unusual for having double and extra-wide lots.

Anyway, a developer bought a house on a double lot, tore it down and put up two huge mcmansions. He sold one, the other sits empty. Neither have back yard.

Anyway, I sold a house for a teardown. It saved me from putting in a lot of money and time into getting it ready for sell. Netted me 90 grand I guess.

Anyway, towns should put large set off, height and square foot limits. All demolition permits should be scrutinized. If a town does not want this they only have themselves to blame.

builds because people were going crazy. They would buy an old house, tear it down, and then fill up the entire lot with a huge monster. The neighbors on both sides were totally isolated from each other because the backyards were now hemmed in by the sides of the new house.
I think that more and more places will be doing that. I know that where I live, there is supposed to be a rule that if you tear down a house, you can only rebuild to something like 70% of the old house. What people are doing to get around this is virtually tearing down the old house, but just leaving one outside wall intact. They then go to build the new house, encasing the old wall within the walls of the new house. By doing this they can get around the laws, AND save all the money that it would cost for permits for a new build. They say they are "renovating". This is happening two doors from me as I type.