The Dreams That Drive Us

Demographic and cultural shifts -- soon one in four American households consisted of a single person -- paralleled the rise of planned communities, clusters of attached townhouses planned around leisure activities and natural amenities (often an artificial lake). The 1973 recession encouraged restrained designs, with smooth wood or stucco siding and bold angles for shed roofs. Cultural ideals were equally important. Uniformity would tame competition. Why try to keep up with the Joneses if your units looked just the same? All too soon, the historical evocations devolved into trite, hyper-controlled Disneyland settings -- pueblos in Nebraska and Italian hill-towns in New Hampshire.

Through it all, single-family houses remained the American ideal. Suburbanites organized to protect this privileged realm from intruders. Some zoning regulations banned apartment buildings, prefabricated homes and townhouses, which the "Me Decade" considered signs of failure for people who couldn't afford "real homes" and wouldn't respect the American way of life.

The New Economy of the 1990s fostered delirious spending with easy credit. Americans were encouraged to borrow far beyond their means. A pervasive taste for extravagance equated size and opulence with luxury. The McMansion, gargantuan in size, appeared, often entailing the demolition of several historical houses. The facades of these homes are adorned with a showy pastiche of super-size motifs. How about some classical columns, two stories high, to stir memories of Southern plantations, alongside huge displays of half-timbering to evoke a Tudor castle? Interiors focus on a majestic stairway and a portentous spectacle called the "Great Room."

A McMansion is rife with contradictions. It's an exhibitionistic house, yet it's set far back from the street, with tall gates and security systems. These Hummer houses appeal to people who want a truly conspicuous display of wealth. They've given freedom of expression a new and rather disturbing meaning: the right to do whatever you want, to be totally self-absorbed. Which is where we are, for the most part, today.

Americans have a preternatural fascination with their homes. Yet the underlying emotions don't always make sense. No one is above it all, unaffected by desires and phobias we didn't expect to feel. As a historian who specializes in domestic architecture, especially American housing, I'm not immune. My husband and I are renters, like most New Yorkers. A decade ago we decided to buy a weekend house in a beautiful woodland setting. The real estate agent laughed at our questions about future value and possible problems with leasing the place; the mortgage broker insisted that we were foolish not to grab the variable rate he offered us. Maybe they were right, I worried, which only strengthened my determination to sign the contract.

Over time we've changed our plans for the future, and last January, we put the house up for sale. Bad timing. The bubble had burst. The quixotic American Dream had turned into a nightmare. Okay, I admit that's an overly emotional response. Nonetheless, like millions of other Americans, I know that it's hard to buy anything right now, and equally difficult to sell without losing money. But let's not lose perspective. Finding an affordable place to rent is the biggest challenge of all.

gw8@columbia.edu

Gwendolyn Wright is a professor of architecture at Columbia University and the author, most recently, of "USA: Modern Architectures in History."