I was reading up on the concept of McMansions over at Wikipedia (McMansion - Wikipedia) and while looking through the various pictures of the article, I noticed that I’ve seen many similar house types. In fact, I can’t think of many large houses I’ve seen that didn’t have similar features or concepts to those supposedly classifying them as McMansions on that page. Can anybody produce some examples of houses that would NOT be classified as McMansions? What differentiates them so much from these?
Much of this article just makes it sound like any generic large house makes it a McMansion… <shrug>
I think this is one of those words who’s meaning has been lost to the ages. Nearly every house of above average size built in the last 20 years is referred to as a McMansion.
The real question is what will people call them in 2025 (when the first McMansions will be around 40-50 years old).
McMansion is just a term that people use when they think a given house is “too big.”
“Too big” might mean larger than average for that neighborhood, or too big for a person’s budget, or large but made out of cheap materials, or large but with garish decorations that even the Sopranos would be embarrassed to have.
I once heard some doofus passerby describe one of the gorgeous 150+ year old Victorian mansions here in Brooklyn as a McMansion. McDonald’s wasn’t even around back then!
To get an idea of what I’m talking about take a look at some pictures of VictorianFlatbush.
Beautiful, beautiful houses that go on for blocks and blocks. I love those houses and want to own one some day.
The Minneapolis City Council recently held meetings to consider putting restrictions on
‘McMansions’.
One of the criteria they were considering using to define these was a house ‘too big’ in proportion to the size of the lot. The footprint for normal city houses (including the garage) are usually less than 30-35% of the square footage of the lot. A defining feature of ‘McMansions’ was that they occupied a larger percentage of the area of the lot.
Look at any Habitat for Humanity house.Most examples that I read about probably don’t get to be 3k sq.ft, but the materials are used efficiently and the homeowner can likely do much of the maintenance without special tools or skills.Such houses tend to blend into their settings.There are houses upscale from that baseline,but not usually built by developers.Around here,none.
Here,McMansions -plural- spring up on farmland,say a 40 acre field with no trees.Suddenly there is a house with fifteen different ridges at varying heights and slope atop setbacks that usually feature stone veneer ( never quoins) next to vinyl siding.There’s a space of 15-20 feet,then the next one.
It appears they try to copy English country houses made either of stone or timber framed,sitting secluded on wooded acreage with scrupulously tended gardens.
Even the highest dollar houses have far to large a footprint and scream pretentious.Hard to believe when the farmer is spreading manure on the (at present ) field across the road.
Oh, Jesus. What is it with these central planners? Why can’t they let people live in big gawky mansions if they want to? Did the council critters give anything resembling a logical reason for their meddling?
If the house is built before 1980 and is over 3,000 sqft, chances are it’s an “actual” mansion instead of a McMansion. Ok, maybe that’s too small to be defined as a mansion, but it would have been a big house made for a rich family. The house will have high quality craftsmanship, with a unique layout and materials.
McMansions are a cookie cutter approach to building a high class “rich guy” home. The goal is to build the highest amount of square footage, and the greatest appearance of quality for the lowest price. If something looks complicated or fancy, chances are it was built fancy in a factory and installed onsite with glue and a nailgun.
As mentioned in the article, they’re also built to be resold, rather than built to be your home. People absolutely make design decisions based on what other people are going to want when they resell, so there’s a disappointing sameness to the homes. Go to a neighborhood of big homes that are 50-100 years old, and you’re not likely to see the same house multiple times.
*What in the hell are you you talking about? * This was a neighborhood meeting, to get the views of the people who actually live in the neighborhoods where such houses are starting to be built. Hearing from the citizens & taxpayers of the city. Where do any “central planners” come in? We don’t want your socialist ‘central planning’ here in Minnesota!
And there were many reasons that people gave for opposing such houses in their neighborhoods. They could be summarized in two categories:
[ul]
[li]aesthetic arguments (such houses don’t ‘fit’ into the neighborhood, don’t look right, mess up the view, damage the property value of other houses on the block, etc.)[/li][li]overloading problems – such houses use an excessive amount of city services.[/li][list]
[li] Their large footprint leaves less lawn to absorb & filter rainwater, instead it runs off into the sewer system, overloading the system during heavy rains and causing overflows into the Mississippi River (plus that rain goes downstream instead of soaking into the ground and replenishing our aquifer). [/li][li] Such houses are built so close to the lot lines that there is less distance between houses than normal, which increases the risk of a fire spreading to neighboring houses. [/li][li]There is usually little room left on the lot for trees or other plantings, thus increasing the city ‘heat island’ effect in the summer (plus less trees to remove CO² and add oxygen to the air). [/li][li] The large size of such houses can overload city utilities for electricity, heating/cooling, etc. in the neighborhood. But they usually don’t support any more occupants than traditional houses. [/li][/ul][/list]
There were lots of other comments from people, but most of them fell into those 2 groups.
And this was just a public meeting to get input; no changes have been made to the zoning codes yet.
But the point I was trying to make in response to the OP was that one of the indicators of ‘McMansions’ was the larger ratio of house size to lot size.
[QUOTE=t-bonham@scc.net]
*What in the hell are you you talking about? * This was a neighborhood meeting, to get the views of the people who actually live in the neighborhoods where such houses are starting to be built. Hearing from the citizens & taxpayers of the city. Where do any “central planners” come in? We don’t want your socialist ‘central planning’ here in Minnesota!
And there were many reasons that people gave for opposing such houses in their neighborhoods. They could be summarized in two categories:
[list]
[li]aesthetic arguments (such houses don’t ‘fit’ into the neighborhood, don’t look right, mess up the view, damage the property value of other houses on the block, etc.)[/li][/QUOTE]
This is how McMansion is defined in my 'hood. When an existing older home (built somewhere between the 30s and the 60s usually) is torn down and replaced by a home that looks nothing like the surrounding homes. When it is enormous, modern, and looks like it belongs in the new subdivision on the other side of town, it’s a McMansion.
I think one of the major components to a “McMansion” is how disproportionate the house is. How disproportionate is the size of the house to other homes in the area? How disproportionate are the decorations and styling to other homes in the neighborhood? How disproportionate is the house to it’s lot size as compared to other homes in the area? How disproportionate is the quality of the house to other homes?
I can link to plenty of large homes that are unique and tasteful in style and architecture.
To me, the McMansion term was more in reference to the mass-produced quality of the houses. The defining quality of a McMansion is that it is surrounded by 500 nearly identical houses. It’s interesting to see these other definitions.
I *am * a “central” planner, and many of t-bonham@scc.nets arguments are right on track as far as utilities usage. Big houses built way the hell out in the boonies are tough on municipal services. Better to just maintain a reduced residential density out in the country (1 unit/10 acres) and intensify the already-urban areas.
To me a McMansion is primarily defined as a very large house on a disproportionately small lot of modern construction surrounded by other houses of any size and any construction on basically equally small lots.
A McMansion community is when those surrounding houses are very large houses of modern construction.
The first time I encountered the term was in a Washington Post article in the early 2000’s. Around here, a McMansion needs to be a Colonial. The Wikipedia article shows many Spanish and Contemporary styles that would definitely NOT be considered McMansions in the DC area. Cape Cods aren’t McMansions. Tract housing isn’t either, no matter how elaborate the roofline.
Down here in SW Florida it is all about a spanish-italian hybrid called “mediterranean.” The county code now virtually requires it for commercial retail buildings as well. So the McMansion-esque monotony is now extending to the commercial sector as well.
The “real” expensive homes around here are much more sprawling than a McMansion. Instead of a single chunk of house, it’s usually spread out with a large semi-detached garage, and a significant one-story part.
Aren’t “McMansions” also characterized by rather cheap/shoffy construction? Like windows that require replacement in 5 years, veneer-faced particle board kitchen cabinets (the hing screws pull out after a few hard pulls), low-end appliances, nad particle-board doors? I’ve seen some of these houses, about 7-10 years after being built/assemble-sagging floors, walls out of plumb, window frames settling at off angles, and cracked tile in bathrooms. I’d say many of these McMansions are due for serious repar, at less than 10 years
In Hunters Woods (the south half of Reston, VA) on the southern block of Myrtle Lane, there’s an enormous monster house, easily 4-5 times the size of anything else in the heighborhood. The original owner, a wealthy middle-easterner, wanted a house big enough that his two wives could keep their households without running into each other very often, and a minaret (which looked like a fairly ordinary turret) was attached to one side. This is generally a very wealthy neighborhood, with several pools in the same block.
At some point, the guy discovered that maintaining the place would bankrupt him and he abandoned the project before it was finished. He tried to sell it, and Michael Jackson was rumored to be a potential buyer, but it was a money pit even by the Gloved One’s standards. It’s quite visible on Google Earth. Last time I drove by (about five years ago) it looked inhabited.
Examples of a house not considered a McMansion? Try every other house on Myrtle Lane, and every other house within a mile of it except for this one.
I think it’s clear that the usage has definitely shifted to mean a house oversized for its location.
Is it a house characterized by shoddy construction, as ralph124c says? No. Some of these houses may be, of course, but there’s nothing in the definition, usage, or reality to say that most or even many of these houses are shoddily-built, or at least any more so than modern-day smaller houses.
While to me the definition has always been an oversized house on and undersized lot. It also conjures up a house that is built to impress, rather than be lived in. Oh yeah, I have a 40ft entry way, cathedral ceilings throughout, and granite counter tops, while all my furniture is in a store somewhere waiting for me to be able to afford it.
I just read the Not So Big House and it discusses these monstrosities that are absolutely not built to actually live in. During my brief time in real estate, I saw far too many of them. Oh, they will impress your friends and accomodate large parties, but the rest of the time, you’ll spend your time huddled in your 20x15 walk in closet praying to feel some sense of comfort from the walls around you.
Westchase, the community that epitomizes all that crap. Identical houses, small lots, built to impress, enough price points that people actually buy into a neighborhood looking to work their way up to the “Eagles Nest.” It has all the joys of deed restrictions, bad traffic, indistinguishable houses, nosey neighbors and flooding problems.
