Springfield (well, certain parts of it) has undergone something of a housing boom in the last few years. New subdivisions with clever names like “Eagle Glen” and “Morningwood” have been built, all with their McMansions, both great and small.
Thing is, those McMansions all start to look the same after a while, with their manicured lawns, Tudor-style architecture, etc.
I’m imagining a neighborhood where the developer(s) have thrown out their planning books and allowed any architect and/or any builder to build whatever they want, according to the homeowner’s whim.
For example: One homeowner has always wanted to live in a house that looks like a Medieval castle, so he has someone build him one. Next door is a rather eccentric artist who has always wanted to live in a house with weird angles, bold colors, and sculpture garden in the front yard. Another homeowner thought it would be cool to live in a pirate ship, so his house’s exterior looks like a pirate ship. You get the idea.
Anywhere, is there any neighborhood in the US where the houses were built according to the homeowner’s or builder’s whim? Where there is an attitude of “anything goes” as regards the homes’ size, appearence, etc.? Where there are several homes that could be considered “extreme”?
I am a little bit confused. Do you mean actual subdivivions or just any neighborhood? Not all )or even most) neighborhoods are centrally planned and don’t have to have houses built with a common architecture.
For the most part, I mean actual subdivisions. But I’m thinking their might be actual neighborhoods, closer to any city’s core, that meet the criteria of the OP.
I can’t think of any new housing development I’ve seen in which all of the houses were of a mere four or five or six types. And I assume such developments are centrally plan.
No idea where exactly it was, since what most people call “Miami” is actually a bunch of different towns, but back when I lived there a friend had an interview for a rent-a-cop job at such a place. It was one of those neighborhoods where they don’t charge you for breathing: they charge you to look at the neighborhood from outside it.
He mentioned a house that seemed to be all glass (“and they didn’t even have curtains! I mean, it was set back pretty far from the road, all you saw was little figures, but still!”), one which looked like a medieval castle designed by Stephen King (“gargoyles everywhere”).
I think that in many cases it’s not so much a matter of central planning as of how much more expensive it would be to build something so radical.
There are plenty of places where you cn just buy lots rather than actual houses and build what you want on them. Sometimes landowners will build a road and simply sell the lots rather than going through the trouble of building houses. Such neighborhoods don’t need to have zones restrictions based on appearance or homeowner’s associations to enforce anything like that. Most houses will end up looking similar just because people don’t want something that sticks out or is hard to sell but they don’t have too.
Lots of places have no unified designed. Here for example. But even in the US, zoning laws do not generally impact on the looks of the place. You want to live in a silo, you can. (If it meets fire code, setback, and so on.)
The city of Houston is most often cited as the largest US city with no zoning at all.
Modern subdivision where they sell the homes themselves almost always use six or so models that are switched around to help break up the monotony.
But there are older subdivisions where all they sold was the land. In those cases, each person builds their own house and so you can get a great deal of variety. Building codes and economics can limit the variety somewhat, though.
Here in Lee County, FL we have Lehigh acres. It’s the classic “sea of quarter-acre lots” that were sold off to suckers around the world. There are about 132,000 lots out there and people build their own homes. Now, there are home building companies that buy up a bunch of these lots and then build standard models, but there are still plenty of individually owned parcels that a person can “get original” with.
In Milwaukee (actaully Shorewood on Lake Drive) you’ll see what you’re looking for. The houses range in size from average to ginormous and the style differs just as much. As I drive down it, I’ve seen houses that look lie fortresses, houses that are probably by Frank Lloyd Wright (or at least replicas) and my favorite, The Mary Poppins House, looks straight out of London (or at least that’s what I associate it with), either way it’s very out of place.
I think what you need to look for is going to be cities where all the houses where built one at a time over the past 100 years or so. Stay away from newly formed subdivisons with clever names.
My mom’s neighborhood (metropolitan, not suburban) might qualify. Her next-door neighbors have a house similar to hers (same first floor, but different second), and there’s another house around the corner and down a block which is mirror-image to hers, on both floors, but other than that, it’s unique. But most of the houses still look pretty similar to each other, probably because it’s just easier that way. It costs more to get a custom design from an architect than it does to just say “Gimme another one of those you built there”.
Well. Taking aside the issue of city regulations regarding all issues of home building w/i city limits, yes. At least in McAllen, Texas, where doctors and businesspeople live, there are enclosed neighborhoods where e/a house is different from the other. Not as “extreme” as you state, but e/a homeowner has a different taste in architecture and materials. One home will be build using Spanish design. Another, Miami style. Another, original design.
There are plenty of neighborhoods where people have built whatever house they like.
What generally doesn’t exist are neighborhoods where a big contractor will buy up a parcel, subdivide it, and build 100 homes, each one totally different. The wacky custom homes are those built to the personal specifications of the future owner. But these subdivisions aren’t built that way, the contractor builds them all and tries to sell them all. So they build them all in the same general style, because that saves labor, materials, and generic homes are easier to sell than quirky homes.
People who want quirky homes have two options. Find a quirky home for sale and then buy it, or buy a lot and have their quirky home built. But building a quirky home and then trying to find a buyer isn’t good business. Because although lots of people like quirky homes over generic homes, the trouble is that none of the quirk-lovers all like the same quirks. If everyone liked the same quirks they wouldn’t be quirks anymore, they’d be standard issue. So for every buyer who just loves the faux-norman castle exterior, there will be 100 who hate it. And that one guy who absolutely has to have a faux norman castle will have to pay to have it custom built.
You’re looking for new subdivisions without either underlying zoning or restrictive covenants that affect the appearance of a home. Hard to find, except in semi-rural areas, land scam subdivisions from the 1960s (Lehigh Acres, Florida; Luna County, New Mexico, and so on) and communities that can be described as having a “rural Confederate cultural orientation.”
North of Las Cruces, New Mexico, there are many small subdivisions carved by mom-and-pop developers, where you won’t find restrictive covenants. Underlying extraterritorial zoning may prevent the construction of mobile homes, but otherwise it’s fair game, as long as it meets zoning setback standards and the Uniform Building Code.
There are many modern suburban subdivisions where you can buy a single lot, but those are mostly in regions where there are very few or no national homebuilders among the fray, such as Buffalo and Rochester. Even then, though, you’ll still probably be subject to restrictive covenants regarding architecture.
The woods behind my house was destroyed by the owner to build a subdivision. Apparently she didn’t count on the bubble bursting, which is has. I’ve been afraid to go and ask, but is this one of those things where they’d be likely to sell me the lot adjacent to mine, and let it run wild? I.e., the lot behind me that used to be woods? Maybe my neighbors would like to do the same as well…
Where I live, Kew Gardens, NY, is one such area. The houses got bedraggled in the 70s and are now being bought as tear-downs + rebuilds. New Yorkers laugh at the idea of zoning taste, as evidenced by Architectural styles recently seen within a few blocks of my house:
Tasteful Queen Anne (original style of neighborhood)
Odd American Tudor (half timbers where no half timbers should be)
LA Confidential (scuplted concrete, lots of glass)
Bizarro World Bavarian/Urban Ski Chalet
Louis the Somethingeth (lots of wrought iron and pink paint)
Megalow (like a bungalow, but bigger)
Carmella Soprano Italianate (started embellishing and couldn’t stop)
Northeastern Southwestern (Pueblo + The Alamo - taste)
I guess it costs a lot to build a butt-ugly house.