Tag Archives: McMansions

A room by room look at the McMansion on The Sopranos

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My study of what the term McMansions means included several newspaper references to the McMansion owned by the Soprano family on the HBO show. The Chicago Tribune story about my study included a large picture of the Sopranos eating a meal in their large dining room. Here is the house from the front:

SopranosMcMansion

Here is my look at the individual parts of the house to assess whether it contributes to the McMansion nature of the home.

1. The front exterior. I don’t know that the front looks that garish. There is certainly a large entryway with a double door and little vestibule but it has a two car garage, the proportions aren’t too bad, and roof has a smaller number of gables. Interestingly, the first season includes several long shots of the house from a distance (including prominent floodlights on the house/driveway) but later seasons include more views from the house down to the street and it appears much closer to the other homes and interlopers, like federal agents, pull into this shorter driveway multiple times. McMansion rating: looks like a big house but not too garish.

2. Foyer. McMansions often have expansive foyers. The Soprano’s house has two sets of doors, one to the outside and then another set into the room. It is a fairly big space with the main staircase to the house to the left when you enter. The foyer also has two columns which we see in later scenes have guns stored inside (they are locked up). McMansion rating: pretty big space.

3. Dining room. The family seems to be shown eating here more than they do in the eating area just off the kitchen. These meals include family members as well as “family” members. It is a big table but not too large. McMansion rating: not really.

4. Kitchen. The room is decorated in a more country style with lighter colored cabinets and floral patterns. The kitchen also has a large island that faces out to the foyer, eating area, and family room. The usable kitchen space itself is decently large but there is a lot of open space just beyond the large island. McMansion rating: no stainless steel, dark wood cabinets, or granite countertops but plenty big.

5. Family room. This room involves one large couch, some other seating, and a decent-sized TV (though nowhere near the common large flat-screen TVs of today). McMansion rating: big but not too ostentatious.

6. Garage. While it is only a two-car garage, it is quite deep. The show doesn’t have too many scenes in the garage but it seems to have lots of space. Also, it is pretty clean. McMansion rating: plenty big.

7. Upstairs. The kids’ rooms aren’t too large but the master suite is pretty  big and also has an ensuite bathroom. A pretty dark room, particularly when Tony is depressed and the curtains are drawn. McMansion rating: plenty big.

8. Basement. This unfinished space is where Tony often carries out face-to-face work conversations while in the house. It is used for some storage and for laundry. It has some decent light next to the laundry area. It is a little strange that the family owns a pricey house and hasn’t finished off the basement. McMansion rating: nope.

9. Pool and pool house. There is a large in-ground pool in the backyard and some important scenes, including Tony’s fascination with ducks in Season One and AJ’s attempted suicide in Season 6, take place there. Tony seems to use the space more than anyone else; we never see Carmela out there alone and the kids aren’t playing in it regularly on the show. There is a pool house which acts as a theater space. This is a definite luxury point in the home. McMansion rating: large luxury items.

10. Backyard. This is pretty large as there is space for a pool, pool house, areas for Tony to hide cash, and it is a little hike to the back fence to interact with neighbors. McMansion rating: plenty of space.

Areas of the house not examined: the more formal living room (rarely used), the eating area just off the kitchen (a small table with four chairs fills the space), the bathrooms (not portrayed much).

Overall, this home fits the general McMansion definition of a large house. It is hard to estimate from watching on the screen but the home is at least 3,000 square feet. Unlike some other McMansions, it is on a large lot – a mobster can’t live in a large house where the next door neighbors are peering in the windows just a few feet away. The architecture and design doesn’t seem too jumbled though there is a clear emphasis on space. And, the home is clearly a reminder of the suburban nature of the Sopranos: the house is the setting for both “normal” suburban life as well as the unusual family life that made Tony’s purchase of the home all possible in the first place. Such a home is intended for the boss, whether it is Tony or John Sacrimoni, as the guys below the boss tend to live in denser suburban settings.

“Have You Noticed How Adam Sandler Characters Always Live in Giant Mansions?”

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This level of commentary is not usually associated with Adam Sandler movies but this is an interesting question: “Have you noticed how Adam Sandler characters always live in giant mansions?”

Ostentatious displays of wealth are a tricky thing onscreen: Movies are meant to be aspirational, but if the main characters live in over-the-top splendor, not many audience members will be able to relate. No one has passed this note to Adam Sandler though; his characters, more than those of any other modern movie star, tend to live in gigantic, multi-million-dollar megamansions. How does Sandler so often manage to luxuriate in his own wealth without alienating his less fortunate fan base? It probably helps that as his characters’ homes grow ever grander, Sandler’s clothes remain eternally grubby. (Hey, you don’t have much money left over for new duds when the mortgages are this high!) Join us now on a tour of Sandler’s biggest screen houses, accompanied by a look at his wardrobe in each corresponding film. Get ready for some sticker shock!

I have seen two of these seven movies but I have a few ideas about why these characters might live in such homes.

First, the big home represents the pinnacle of success but ends up contrasting with characters who find they need more than money to enjoy life. Big homes are shown as lonely places – there is a lot of room for fun activities but it might take you a while to find other people or have regular interactions with others in the house. Thus, we see the big homes early in the movies as supposed success but we are meant to leave with the idea that one can be house rich and love poor. This is a theme of a lot of movies, not just Adam Sandler films.

Second, big homes (and other garish displays of wealth) are associated with bad people. In other words, movie-goers are intended to see the unnecessarily large home and quickly make the association that the characters living in it are not nice people. The big home is then a shorthand image intended to reveal more about the character of those living there.

This requires more analysis for a definitive answer but these big homes are certainly plot devices. Given the relatively short amount of time in a movie (particularly compared to longer novels or multiple seasons of a television show), these large homes are likely the product of careful decisions.

Just how much should McMansions cost?

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Curbed San Francisco asks whether a McMansion in the city should sell for $2.16 million. The pictures are interesting and here are a few more details on the home:

The big abode was built in 2011 and features things like “5 luxurious baths” (one of which is photographed with an awkward looking dog in it) and too much recessed lighting. In fact, there’s too much of everything. Too much moulding, too much granite, too large rooms. The 5-bed, 5-bath home clocks in at 4,487 square feet and is asking $2,160,000, which is way more than half of the neighborhood average list price of $869,500.

The main argument here, both in the post and in the comments, appears to be that the home is priced too high compared to the neighborhood in which it is located. Prices for real estate, of course, are relative. But, this could lead to a larger question: how much do McMansions cost? It is assumed that McMansions are big so they will cost a lot. But, just as I have argued that at some point the square footage of a home makes it a mansion rather than a McMansion (perhaps around 7-8,000 square feet?), is there a price point where the mass produced McMansion becomes something only for the wealthy? In addition to being big, another trait of McMansion is that they are more mass produced in terms of architecture and design. Yet, how many Bay Area residents could afford a $2.16 million home? I’m not sure exactly where this price point for a McMansion versus a mansion is, particularly in expensive markets like San Francisco, but there is a line somewhere.

Los Angeles neighborhood group has a comprehensive set of arguments against McMansions

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A neighborhood group in Beverly Grove, Los Angeles is fighting mansionization and McMansions. Here are a few highlights:

-A definition from the front page: “Mansionization replaces older homes with houses that are out of scale with the homes around them. These oversize houses deprive neighbors of light, air, and privacy. They spoil the character of established neighborhoods.”

-From the page “Why Garages Count“:

Current LA City code excludes the first 400 sq ft of attached garages from the Floor Area Ratio (FAR). But the case for including that square footage is solid:  -Attached garages would not be prohibited, they would simply count towards the FAR calculation. -Attached garages add bulk to homes, eliminate the buffer of a driveway, and spoil the character of older neighborhoods.- Most people do not park in their garages. Excluding attached garage space from the FAR encourages bigger houses but does little to relieve street congestion.

-From the page “Mansionization myths and fallacies“:

 They say the city has no right to set limits on their property rights.

But the city’s zoning code does just that:  It balances individual rights and community responsibility.   And good zoning promotes compatible development.

They say the RFA will stop local residents from remodeling or rebuilding. 

But the RFA absolutely allows remodeling and rebuilding.  It just sets reasonable size limits.

They say the RFA will discriminate against large families that need large houses. 

But the RFA will allow spacious 3,000 sq ft homes that do not put a burden on their neighbors.

-From the “Debunking Green McMansions” page:

New York might have alligators roaming its sewer system, but LA can now boast of its own urban legend: “green” McMansions.  Yes, that’s right; in Los Angeles, McMansions, those boxy, oversized, energy-demanding suburban houses plopped into the middle of older neighborhoods are officially considered to be sustainable development.

How could this be?  After all, McMansions require huge amounts of energy to assemble their building materials and move them to job site.  Furthermore, the houses themselves are massive, which means enormous heating and air conditioning bills, even if their windows are double-paned, their walls padded with extra insulation, and their restaurant-sized refrigerators and stoves Energy Star rated.

Then we need to consider their multiple bathrooms and heated outdoor pools and spas, the most energy intensive features of modern houses.

Other McMansion features also have their detrimental environmental effects.  During demolition they release dust and asbestos into the air.  After construction, their large patios, pools, spas, and double driveways reduce natural open space.  Combined with their elimination of parkway trees and landscaping for driveway cuts, the cumulative result is a heat island with less penetration of rainwater.

Last, but certainly not least, we need to factor in their transportation system.  All McMansions are built on single-family residential lots located away from bus stops and transit stations.  This is why McMansion residents rely on their cars to get around; the only difference being that most of their vehicles are large, thirsty SUVs.

-And some photos of the McMansions in the neighborhood.

The full site seems to have a fairly comprehensive set of arguments against McMansions. Now, it remains to be seen whether this rhetoric is persuasive…

Are McMansions due to Baby Boomers?

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I’ve seen this suggestion before: Baby Boomers are responsible for McMansions.

For decades, demographers, marketers and pollsters have been carefully tracking baby boomer trends, from the increasing demand for classroom space during their early school years to the rise of the McMansion as they began to raise families of their own.

This could be a case of confusing correlation and causation. The average new home in the United States in the 1950s was under or around 1,000 square feet while it has risen to near 2,500 square feet in recent years. There is little question that homes have gotten bigger. At the same time, is this due to the actions of the Baby Boomers? Are McMansions really a generational issue? A few thoughts:

1. This could be related to the common argument that McMansions are symptomatic of excessive consumption. After World War II, the prosperity in the United States made possible all sorts of new and more purchases including items like houses, cars, televisions, and more. However, this consumption might cross multiple generations and be the “normal” American pattern.

2. There is recent data suggesting two things. Aging Baby Boomers will look to sell many of these larger homes in future years as they retire and downsize. At the same time, Millennials may be less interested in big houses that their parents purchased. But, might this be more about life stages than generations?

I argue it is too soon to tell whether McMansions and big homes can be closely tied to a specific important American generation or whether McMansions have cross-generational appeal. It may be beneficial to an argument to tie the homes to Baby Boomers (they get blamed for other issues, they are aging so it suggests McMansions could be on the way out, etc.) but we need to see more evidence.

NIMBY conundrum: live near a prison or McMansions?

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Here is a letter to editor that presents a dilemma: would the average American rather live near a prison or a large McMansion development?

After all, the new facility could very well provide an experience so rewarding and beneficial that an inmate would not want to leave. The main benefit will actually be to provide developers the 700 acres of valuable land the prison now occupies in order to build McMansions. I’ll bet the board will surely come up with many ways the prison proposal will benefit all of us. But the “in” crowd will be the only beneficiaries. You and I will suffer a tax increase.

Neither of these options would be very attractive. Prisons involve convicted criminals and ugly buildings. McMansions involve large garish houses and new infrastructure costs. However, prisons bring jobs and McMansions bring new housing options. If presented with only these two options, I suspect more people would settle for McMansions. But, these same people would probably want to do what they can in their communities to avoid a choice like this in the first place.

Claim: “McMansions Murdered Big Fireworks”

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According to the president of a fireworks company, one reason fireworks have gotten smaller in recent years is because people are living closer together:

That’s not just your childhood memory at work. Fireworks shows really were slower and fueled by bigger explosions just a few decades back. Today, shows tend to pack in more, smaller fireworks to make up scale in bulk. There are a variety of intersecting anthropological and financial reasons for that, explains Doug Taylor, the president of Zambelli Fireworks (a company that will put on roughly 600 fireworks shows across the country this holiday weekend). People live closer together, safety regulations have gotten tighter, and if you don’t have size, fireworks are exciting in sheer density.

To understand firework lingo, you have to realize that fireworks are described in inches per shell, and each inch correlates to 100 feet in launch height. That means a 2-inch shell fires 200 feet into the air, and a 4-inch shell reaches 400 feet. The bigger the shell, the bigger the pyrotechnics.

“What’s happened is, the size shell that you can shoot in a particular location has decreased,” Taylor explains. Just as shell width correlates to height, so too does height correlate with regulation. Old regulations dictated that you needed 70 feet of area cleared for every inch of shell fired around a launch area. The new industry standard is 100 feet. So when you play that out, practically, a large 12-inch shell needs 1,200 feet (or nearly a quarter of a mile) cleared in every direction to be considered safe.

Taylor tells me that fireworks sites nationwide have been shrinking with both urbanization and suburban sprawl. And fellow fireworks company Pyrotecnico echoes the sentiment. “What we’re finding is that sites are shrinking,” explains Pyrotecnico Creative Director Rocco Vitale. “Growth is happening. More buildings are going up. And when that happens at a site, a show you could use 6-inch shells two years ago becomes a place for 4-inch shells.”

So the term McMansion is used here as a shortcut for sprawl. More suburban homes makes it more difficult to find open spaces for big fireworks. The use of the term McMansion seems gratuitous to me – sprawl is composed of all sorts of homes and other buildings but the term will grab people’s attention.

So, armed with this knowledge, could anything change? Probably not. Americans like fireworks but they also like their sprawl. However, this might be another piece of ammunition (pun intended) for proponents of open space. At the same time, those who like open space may not like the idea of fireworks shells in natural settings anyhow. Does this then make it a better fireworks experience over large bodies of water?

Why not give McMansions green roofs?

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McMansions can be made green by adding green roofs:

Where it gets tricky for a McMansion is that green roofs tend to lend themselves to shallower gradients, not to 20deg-30deg pitches. We’ll assume for now that a McMansion roof structure [typically prefabricated timber trusses] has enough load capacity to bear a fully soaked green roof.

Here’s how it could potentially be done;

1. Remove the existing cladding – whether it be concrete tiles or metal decking. Metal decking could remain if the load isn’t too much. Replace with marine ply board;

2. Add the requisite layers of waterproofing, drainage cell, insulation and geotextile;

3. Add the perimeter angles to hold the soil/planting [sounds like it could be a tricky detail, but it is possible];

4. Add the soil profile and planting. For this one there are various methods available – I didn’t have any luck sourcing Australian examples/products so the US it is. There are proprietary soil stabilisation products available for steeper slopes with in-situ planting, or there is planting in plastic trays or even mats which come ready-established.

I agree with the final assessment of the post: I’ve not seen this proposal before. How much might it cost to retrofit the roof of an existing large home? It seems like the easiest way to make this happen would be to change buildings codes to require greener roofs and then the cost simply becomes part of the new home.

With more interest in greener dwellings (tiny houses, net zero energy homes, passive homes, etc.) plus the negative connotations of owning a McMansion or larger homes, I suspect more of these homes will be constructed with green features. However, I continue to wonder: will a large home with some green features, like a green roof, be considered green enough?

Maybe not just McMansions making a comeback; “Super Gulp” mentality extends to pickup trucks

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A review of the 2014 Chevy Silverado starts with some commentary about American consumer behavior: from McMansions to Super Gulps to large trucks.

North Americans are feeling so comfortable with their bank accounts these days that they’re re-embracing a Super Gulp mentality. They’re eating more hamburgers – at restaurants. They’re back to buying McMansions. And, as the major auto makers reported last month, they’re also buying trucks – especially the sort of full-size pickups that could plow sedans asunder.

General Motors reported sales of its Silverado were up an astounding 25.3 per cent in May compared with a year earlier – and that’s before its long-overdue update, which arrived at dealers this month with the same $32,710 starting price as the outgoing model, despite massive tweaks.

Small might have been big in a down economy, but for the 2014 model year, big is most definitely back en vogue.

I’m not sure exactly why this commentary starts the review as it seems to have a decently positive ending:

The 2014 Chevrolet Silverado may have been redesigned as a boxy utilitarian man wagon, but it’s a muscular manservant that even a woman could love.

At the least, this review draws upon a common critique of McMansions, SUVs, and other large items: they are all part of consumer mindset where bigger is better. These sorts of comparisons to large food portions or vehicles are not unusual when invoking McMansions. And lurking behind this is the issue of how to pay for all this size – the review doesn’t mention it but a fully loaded 2014 Chevy Silverado doesn’t come cheap (MSRP starting at $31,715, according to Chevy). Additionally, the size is anti-social as the truck reviewer dreams transforming her commute in the truck into a demolition derby.

It’s too bad we can’t get this same reviewer to look at a few houses of different sizes, or perhaps an economy car, to see if this worry about the size of consumer items is a bigger issue.

Hoping McMansions aren’t making a comeback

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Not everyone is happy with the idea that McMansions may be making a comeback:

Please don’t tell me we’re picking up where we left off. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against big houses in particular, but I had hoped we’d seen the end of over-building tiny residential lots to gain spaces far larger than they really needed to be. If there was a silver lining in the housing downturn, I thought it might be a shift toward smaller spaces that put a premium on creativity, great design, and organization.

Thankfully, I don’t think the census data points toward the whole nation deciding, once again, that bigger is better. Instead, I think we’re seeing the results of a very simple economic fact: When the economy is in the tank—which it undoubtedly was a few years ago, when 2012 completions were in the planning, permitting, and construction phases—the only people building houses were the “Go Big or Go Home” crowd whose members probably splurged for the extra bedroom or three. That’s why the census data is now showing a record high median home size. I hope, at least.

See recent posts about a possible return of McMansions: a CNN report in early June 2013 and a New York Times follow-up on the CNN piece.

Tim Layton hints at several complaints against McMansions. First, the homes are simply too big to start with. They have more space than people really need. This is related to the idea that Americans often think “bigger is better” and don’t think about anything else. Instead, Americans could think more about the design of their homes rather than just focusing on more space. This sounds similar to Sarah Susanka’s arguments about her Not-So-Big House.

Additionally, this also gets at trends and cycles in housing. McMansion-type homes emerged in the 1980s with the term exploding in the early 2000s. But, the economic crisis led to smaller homes for several years. The question is what will come next. Layton does not want McMansions to return but he also notes that we may also be in new kind of market where the wealthy continue to purchase such homes while they don’t really extend to the larger housing market. Perhaps there will be a limited McMansion comeback? If so, there may be plenty of opportunity for builders and others to be more creative with smaller homes.