The Ugly Housing Bubble

By now almost everyone has heard of the housing bubble. For years real estate has been “frothy” in the U.S., to use Alan Greenspan’s term, as certain parts of the market have seen rapidly rising prices. Although many analysts now feel that the bubble is coming to an end, it remains to be seen whether there will be a hard or a soft landing. As that debate rages, there is another bubble that I hope will burst very soon—the “ugly housing bubble.”

If you’ve ever had the misfortune of visiting an upper-middle class subdivision, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If not, then go if you dare to the exurbs and suburbs that surround our cities (but are still comfortably far away from property value killers like the impoverished or minorities). There in the suburbs and exurbs you, too, can see really ugly architecture. Now nearly all of the subdivisions you will see will be revolting, but if you want to find the worst you need to look for the upper-middle class. To find them and their hideous abodes, look for small oases of respectability, usually with names such as Pheasant Creek or Aspen Grove.

But be careful not to get confused by these names. Pheasant Creek will have neither pheasants nor a creek, and Aspen Grove will have no trees at all, at least in the first few years of development.

Once you’ve found a subdivision that sounds like a WASPish Connecticut country club, you’ll be perfectly prepared to take in the grotesqueness of your surroundings. A guidebook, however, is entirely unnecessary. These subdivisions are filled with the easily identifiable domicile sometimes referred to as “the McMansion.”

I refer to it as “the” McMansion because there is really only one version sold. Designed (roughly) as a one-fiftieth scale model of the palace of Versailles, with a few elements taken from Cinderella’s Castle, the same McMansion is found all the way from Detroit to Dubuque, and everywhere in between.

Fitted with copper flashings and decorative turrets, the house has an imposing façade that seems strangely aristocratic, even if its inhabitants are strikingly not. But it is an aristocratic bearing with no patina, copper without verdigris.

The McMansion design seems to me to have been originally conceived as an anesthetized imitation of the past, a sort of fairy-tale version of grandeur meant for mass consumption. As such, it is inevitably an artistic failure. The bizarre meld of faux-antique European design seems out of place 10 minutes away from Toledo (Ohio, that is, not Spain). Tradition cannot be created ex nihilo with only a vague sense of the past. It needs to be handed down from one generation to another or carefully rediscovered.

Moreover, conspicuous consumption, the second force fueling the creation of McMansions, leads to absurd designs and uses of space. Most American families do not need formal sitting rooms, studies, and formal dining rooms. They also do not need 50-foot high Palladian windows, unless they are conducting church services in their great room on Sundays instead of watching football on a 70-inch plasma TV. And are cathedral ceilings really necessary—especially when they extend to a foyer big enough to hold the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree? Unless these people are having foreign leaders and royalty over to barbecue on their deck, they could probably cut the disgusting opulence down a bit.

All in all, the careless pastiche of gaudiness and “history” in these homes is quite disturbing. It is likely a bad sign that our wealthiest citizens are ensconcing themselves in Disney versions of feudal manor homes. As income disparities continue to widen, one wonders if these houses might become even more fantastic. (As of yet, few have moats, but plenty of subdivisions are gated to keep out the lower orders.)

Although most people who purchase these McMansions may not be consciously striving after the past or showing off their wealth, architecture exerts a powerful influence on human behavior. These McMansions seem likely to nurture disturbing attitudes of elitism and a glib sense of superiority among their owners. But the effects of these architectural monstrosities likely do not end at their owners’ front doors.

Perhaps the McMansion has even contributed to the current American renascence of triumphalist conservatism with its own fairy-tale romanticizing of the past. Our current McMansion conservatives, although often ignorant of history, would recreate the nation by returning it to some vague, Edenic period when everything was right in the country (usually, this means the 1950s, which is as far back as most remember). This sense of nostalgia is not only myopic but woefully artificial. Instead of appealing to an organic tradition, conservatives increasingly create one in their minds.

Consequently, something should be done about these supersized McMansions which seem to me to be every bit as unhealthy for the body politic as a Big Mac is for an individual.

So rally around me, stalwart haters of artificiality. McMansion delenda est! Let us sow salt into the well-manicured lawns of these suburbanites, so that they will live without their lush Kentucky Bluegrass for a thousand years!



Charles R. Drummond ’09 is a history concentrator in Adams House. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.