If you have not watched Jonathan Meades’ documentaries, you may wish to at least see this one.
It’s probably on YT somewhere.
4 Likes
I always find this distinction between the preserving the interior and exterior interesting. Where do we draw the line? What are we really trying to preserve?
Is it just the exterior appearance? Anything within that shell doesn’t matter?
Is it the entire layout of the structure? Should the floor plan be preserved then, even if we change and update the infrastructure running within the walls or how the walls are constructed?
Is it the entire construction method, along with the layout and exterior. Meaning we should restore and maintain the original construction techniques. At least when possible and safe.
I grew up in a community where complete demolition wasn’t allowed, yet many of the houses started as three season dwellings not the current year round use. This lead to lots of creative changes and definitions of what “complete demolition” meant. A common change was keeping a fireplace, chimney, and perhaps one wall. That could make the project a remodel and not a demolition.
In more recent years, a house up for preservation was moved to a new site and taken over by a historic preservation group instead of being demolished. Preserving and rehabilitating the entire structure not just the exterior. While also clearing the original land location.
3 Likes
Wikipedia liked our block so much, they used a photo taken from the northeast corner facing south as the main gen’l image to illustrate our neighborhood.
Ours is the 4th house, w/the grue-bleen porch pillars. It really is the best block in Woodbridge; all the homes & yards have been well-maintained, except ours really needs paint. We don’t wanna be letting down the side anymore.
We’re hoping the neighborhood improvement fund will provide for a paint job. We’d like to use two shades of less blue-y greens, with a beige-y or copper 3rd ‘highlight’ color.
My fantasy involves this real copper paint from a local family-owned company!
This Dutch-style home is on the corner across our northern cross street.
It has pretty much the same floor plan as ours, but their bay window’s on the side.
Trumbull Ave, two blocks east of us, still has many nice places.
The one on the left has had a lot of work done, and looks far better now, and the one on the right is no longer ivy-engulfed.
Editing to say “Thank You!” for the compliment. Can’t believe my ADHD arse didn’t thank you straightaway!
9 Likes
I lived in a neighborhood full of comparable mid-century modern homes for about 12 years (eichlers, which share most of the key design elements). There were about 11,000 eichlers built in California.
The flat roof looks real cute, but it’s a maintenance nightmare. There’s a reason nobody puts flat roofs on homes. Water pools on them rather than draining off like on a pitched roof. That pooled water leads to a lot of leaks.
Also, eichlers came with in-floor radiant heating. The unit I lived in, the radiant heating only lasted about 20 years, then it lay dormant and non-functional for 30 more years. Then it finally sprung a leak and destroyed the flooring in a room.
Those massive windows looking out on the back yard? They’re really cute, but absolutely disastrous for HVAC. The energy efficiency of those houses is pretty dismal.
I’ve lived the california “mid-century modern” life (these sorts of homes were dirt cheap when california real estate dipped in the 1990s – they sold for less than a low-end studio condo sells for now). The design is fraught with practical failings. It does look real cute though. As long as you ignore the leaky roof, rotting floors, and drafty windows.
5 Likes
The LA Conservancy actually weighed in on this last year…
But I guess that was just their opinion, which is just as good as judging the historical merits of architecture as checks notes Starlord…
Also…
6 Likes
I’ve visited two open air architectural museums like that. The Black Country Museum near Birmingham the UK and another in Kawasaki City in Japan. (Kawasaki Minkaen if you make it over there.)
Both of them are collections of antique buildings reassembled after being saved from demolition in their original locale. The Japanese one is more eclectic, since they’ve gathered examples of traditional architecture from all over the country, which wouldn’t naturally be found next to each other.
2 Likes
The guardian quotes the nytimes.
The modern farmhouse, for those who aren’t familiar with the style, is the architectural equivalent of a pumpkin spice latte: ubiquitous and insipid. The New York Times has called it “the millennial answer to the baby boomer McMansion” and mused that its popularity might be a response to social upheaval. In times of uncertainty, the NYT has noted, it feels fitting that Americans are gravitating towards “a look that makes you think of Little House on the Prairie, but only if the Ingalls family lived in the suburbs and worked in finance”.
The link is free to read, should you wan to read more bout insipidity.
“There is an American fetishism for folksiness and rural life, and there is a longing for rural life that comes into the modern farmhouse,” said Kate Wagner, the creator of the McMansion Hellblog. “It is alienating living in an exurb when the only thing you encounter is a huge strip mall. You have to make up for this barren, alienating landscape by devising some kind of homeliness in your house.”
4 Likes
… and of course telling people on the internet that they should stop complaining always ends well 
4 Likes
As if that could stop them.
1 Like
… you’re not the boss of me :-P
2 Likes
Especially when there objectively IS something to complain about.
3 Likes
Let’s stick with the car analogy for a minute as it’s actually pretty apt (although I don’t understand the Yugo reference and what that has to do with the argument).
It’s pretty pointless to stick with the car analogy if you don’t understand the Yugo reference.
A Ferrari has one redeeming feature: it is beautiful. A Yugo is a cheaply made box of a car that is irretrievably ugly. Preserve the Ferrari; send the Yugo off to get recycled for scrap metal. That’s the point.
Some may say the Yugo has more cultural and historical significance than the Ferrari and deserves to be preserved more. Who are you to judge?
2 Likes
For me, I think the first litmus test is the externalities of the demolition/renovation. If you gut the inside of a classic Queen Anne, but leave the exterior alone, you don’t push your tastes onto the neighbors, you keep them to yourself. Then, the only people dealing with your choices are you, and whomsoever you sell the house to in the future. You aren’t externalizing your choices onto all your neighbors, and you are allowing a future person to choose what you have done to the interior.
I am reminded of a home here in Denver that was built in a block of 1890s homes - it is a big, 3 story cube with a flat roof. I met the woman who bought it, and her take was “I want to look at old houses but never live in one.” So her choice was to impose her taste on an extant neighborhood where everyone else now had to look at her house, even though they had all bought those homes because they liked to live in and look at old homes.
To me, this is one of the huge problems with American society - people don’t care how their choices effect those around them.
You still don’t seem to understand the difference between choice and necessity. No home needs to be torn down to provide electricity, heat, or insulation. Just like people don’t NEED an F350 to drive to the mall, people don’t need 12 burner stoves and a bathroom for every bedroom. Are thos things nice? Are those things convenient? Yes. But are they necessary to have a lovely home? Does the lack of a 4th bathroom justify tearing down a house and building a new one? Let alone the imposition of architecture on the neighbors, there’s the absolute waste of materials and energy involved.
5 Likes
12 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
