Bigger Isn't Always Better (continued)
Communities across the U.S. are taking action against the supersize houses invading their front and backyards
What’s to be done about McMansion-ization in the wrong places? Historic districts offer the most protection. But residents are wary of restrictions. “My constituents are afraid they’ll be told what color to paint their front door,” says Atlanta’s Mary Norland. But last year, a task force in her city did create a new set of regulations on square footage that should bring down the size of many homes. In Dallas, new Neighborhood Stabilization Overlay Zones allow residents to decide what they’ll permit, and what they won’t, when new buildings are to be erected. In Minneapolis, home footprints are now limited to 50 percent of lot size. In Boulder County, Colorado, where home size averages a gigantic 6,500 square feet, a bold plan is afoot to create a system of transferring square footage rights from small houses to large houses. Owners willing to sell their right to expand their homes will get a direct payment from the county. Those rights can be bought by somebody else who wants to build or expand a McMansion beyond a certain threshold. As with pollution and carbon credits, a market for square-footage credits might just work.
The graceful neighborhoods now under siege from McMansions, it’s worth remembering, were created not so much by regulation as by an earlier generation’s sense of style, proportion and landscaping. “What we’re trying to do is not about judging someone for having too large a home, but what’s appropriate for a community that’s been here for more than 100 years,” says Lauren Norton, an Atlanta preservationist.
When Norton bought her own house, she received an unexpected letter from a former owner. Her name was Louise Noble Willams, and she wrote that the house had been built by her father in 1921, when only one other house was on the street and electricity had not yet arrived. “She wrote that letter when she was 83 after seeing the home for sale in the newspaper,” says Norton. “I keep that letter framed on the mantel.”
It’s continuities like that that get lost when the big yellow Cats roll up on the lawn of an old house whose only crime is that it suddenly seems too small.
An updated Teardowns Resource Guide is available from the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NationalTrust.org/teardowns). It’s a fact-packed advocacy guide on how to take control of neighborhood character.
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