Saturday, December 15, 2007
In defense of "teardowns"
The New York Times devotes the front page of tomorrow's Real Estate section to teardowns, which are apparently on the upswing in the New York area. This does not surprise the TigerHawk household -- we bought a crappy little house built just after the war on a gorgeous lot in our neighborhood last summer, tore it down, and will have its replacement up at some point this winter.
The Times leads with the controversy:
Have you ever lived near a teardown in progress? Has it ever been your daily fate to deal with noise, smells, dirt and construction crews right next door — only to behold, after endless months, a space-hogging “mansionization” in place of the petite Cape Cod you used to find so sweet?
Suffice it to say that in a town like Princeton there is a great deal of opposition to teardowns, notwithstanding that much of the housing stock consists of postwar split-levels that neither appeal to modern families nor stir the soul aesthetically. Much of this opposition is undifferentiated emotionalism driven by envy. People know that if they have a modest house, it will look a lot more modest if it is next to a newer, larger house. There is also the fascist tendency in real estate development -- people seem to want little boxes, as long as they are all the same.
The neighborhood opposition to our house was nothing less than absurd. We were proposing to replace a ranch that had not been occupied for several years. It was, for all intents and purposes, abandoned. The lot -- two acres in the middle of Princeton -- was worth a great deal, but that did not stop neighborhood busybodies from complaining that the house we were proposing to build, about 4300 square feet not counting the basement, was too big. When I observed that nobody would build a tiny house on a lot worth $900,000 and that the alternative was an abandoned house on an overgrown lot, the logic was lost on at least some of them. In any case, the house was not nearly the largest in the neighborhood, and we eventually got permission to move forward.
I have long since decided that in these matters I am not like most people. I like construction in my neighborhood -- it is interesting. There is a teardown two houses down from our current house, and I look at it every morning when I drive by on my way to work. I like seeing the house go up, the changes, the surprises as it comes to life. And, no, this is not a new interest on account of our own project.
I also like variety in my neighborhood. Most of the houses in our section of Princeton are one of five or six models of split-level ranch that went up between 1950 and 1960. I think it is great when somebody breaks the tedium by adding a new addition, painting their house a strange color, or building something new altogether. The wierder the better, as far as I am concerned. If my next-door neighbor went insane and built a scale-model of the Taj Mahal, my reaction would be "cool, I live next door to a miniature Taj Mahal."
Interestingly, the Times misses the argument in favor of teardowns that should have the most appeal to its editors and readers -- that they are the most socially responsible way to rebuild the housing stock. A teardown provides a new house without the conversion of raw land, whether farmland at the boundaries of suburbia or the second growth forest that has taken over so much of the northeast. No new roads need be paved. The older homes most likely to be torn down are often closer to schools and businesses, perhaps within walking distance. Think of all the carbon they save, even before you get to the better insulation, better energy efficiency, and (in New Jersey) heavily subsidized photovoltaic power. Surely that should count for something in a lefty town like Princeton. And what about all the people with the "support your local everything" bumper stickers? Most teardowns are built by small contractors who employ local tradesmen, and they compete with the big public home construction companies that need to throw up ticky-tacky treeless developments in order to drive the growth that stockholders require. Teardowns employ the local guy at the expense of The Man.
Or do they only support their "local everything" if it isn't in their backyard?
16 Comments:
By 
, at
Sat Dec 15, 07:23:00 PM:
Tiger,
I have found that a number of people opposing teardowns already have their big house.
By 
TigerHawk, at
Sat Dec 15, 07:27:00 PM:
Well, dan, those people are not just stupid, they are contemptible.
By , at
Sat Dec 15, 07:38:00 PM:
My childhood home had two add-ons. The original ~ Revolutionary War part had a Victorian addition complete with gingerbread and then an addition in the 1930s, which became the dance hall for the Hungarian Social Club. I doubt there was any objection to those additions at the time. My father did considerable remodeling by himself without a single building permit, the advantage of living in a small town back then.
I find it ironic that those who object to build-ups/ tear downs claim "tradition" is what they want to preserve, when what is being replaced is for the most part ticky-tacky dime-a-dozen crud built post war that when it was constructed, was considered anything but traditional.
Whenever possible, single-family homes adjacent to downtown should be replaced by multi-story multi-family dwellings, which will save on material and transportation costs, instead of destroying farmland to extend suburbia. That is the environmentally responsible position. According to the NIMBYs, it is not. Think Ted Kennedy and the Cape Cod wind project.
By SR, at
Sat Dec 15, 07:59:00 PM:
You forgot that which is most dear to lefties:
More property taxes as the real estate is re-valued.
Out here in Prop 13 land teardowns or re-sale is the only way to increase the town's property tax revenue.
By , at
Sat Dec 15, 09:23:00 PM:
Yes, but . . . here in north suburban Chicago, the teardowns are not post-war split levels, they're houses from the late 1800s - 1930's that have architectural character and are being replaced with generic lot line to lot line McMansions that look like they belong on a cul de sac somewhere. It isn't pretty.
By GreenmanTim, at
Sat Dec 15, 09:45:00 PM:
The term for what TH describes in his last paragraph is infill, and it is a tenet of "smart growth", as is "adaptive reuse", which reclaims barren land and brownfields for a variety of uses, including where appropriate recreational open space and even restored habitats. Old Nick -the horned one, not the Saint - is in the details, as Anonymous 9:23 points out, but if previously built land is not used for new construction, raw land is the altertnative: sprawl and all.
By CW, at
Sat Dec 15, 10:06:00 PM:
I live in the metro NYC suburbs. In one town I lived in, it took six years to get all of the necessary approvals to build a store replacing an abandoned gas station vacant for 35 years. In another, there are community groups which appear to have nothing better to do than to lobby against any further growth. At the same time, these groups decry the lack of affordable housing in the area and often back tighter rent regulation. They see themselves as bulwarks against rapacious landlords and not as a source of the problem.
My hat's off to you. Even though I could tear down my house and put up one twice its size as of right, I just do not want the hassle, the delay, and the additional expense.
CW
By cjm, at
Sat Dec 15, 11:24:00 PM:
and that's why the northeast is dying.
By , at
Sat Dec 15, 11:32:00 PM:
Whew. Is that what acreage is going for in the township now? In 1979 I sold my Princeton township house with three wooded acres on Mt. Lucas Rd. for $90,000. I'd purchased it in 1974 for $40,000. The house was 1865 vintage and had belonged to Bryce Thompson who used it as a gambling den and house of assignation for Princeton students in the 1950s. Somewhere in its journeys it had been sawn in two and moved to its present location. In fact many of the houses on Cleveland Lane were moved from Nassau Street.
JLW III
By , at
Sun Dec 16, 03:38:00 AM:
When I was a struggling Architect with a family to feed I received a huge commission at the time to redesign a tract home with a 180 degree view of the Pacific Ocean. The house had 5 bedroom, but because it was built from a plan book, only two bedrooms faced the ocean, the other three faced the street. It would have cost the owner hundreds of thousands to adjust the plan and he was more than eager to get started. Then the lawyers mugged the project. I received $1,500 for the preliminary design work, his lawyer got $6,000 to defend it. The other six lawyers got an undetermined amount. The project was canceled, and the owner eventually sold the house and bought a golf course in Florida with the proceeds. Everyone got something except for me, the poorest one of the bunch who was never able to break into the big time with my designs due in part to lack of opportunity to get them built. More than once I have regretted my choice of career, as that type of NIMBY thought did not exist when I started my studies.
By , at
Sun Dec 16, 06:52:00 AM:
I don't think I've ever read a cogent explanation of what a "McMansion" is, let alone why they're bad. Can somebody help me out, or is this yet more politics-of-envy drivel?
By TigerHawk, at
Sun Dec 16, 06:59:00 AM:
I don't think I've ever read a cogent explanation of what a "McMansion" is, let alone why they're bad. Can somebody help me out, or is this yet more politics-of-envy drivel?
I always thought that it described a certain kind of development that really first got going in the late 1980s. It used to be that tract houses were fairly small and aimed at the real middle class. Then, somewhere along the way, people decided to build much bigger houses with imposing appearances and "luxury features" and such. When you see a long line of these in a row the term McMansion seems at least apt. However, I have also heard people use the term to describe any one-off large house, such as the center hall colonial we are building on our lot. To me that makes no sense, since the "Mc" prefix is usually meant to imply an assembly line or mass production. The indiscriminate use of the term probably is politics-of-envy drivel.
By Country Squire, at
Sun Dec 16, 07:00:00 AM:
TH,
Congratulations on your new home. I hope that you will continue to keep us all updated on its progress since I am sure many of us share your fascination with new construction. As for the Old Gray Witch; just leave it to her to get the lede wrong every time.
By TigerHawk, at
Sun Dec 16, 07:02:00 AM:
JLW III - An acre in the township goes for $400,000 or more, or at least it did last spring. It may depend on the location. Our two acres are not far from the Borough border, so they are quite close in and may therefore been more expensive. But the land you describe is probably worth a million smackeroos even before you get to the house on it.
By , at
Sun Dec 16, 01:15:00 PM:
When I referred to a McMansion, I was referring to a house that is over-sized for its lot, that has been built from a plan that was intended for new developments, rather than old neighborhoods and that has little about it of architectural interest. This describes the vast majority of tear down new construction where I live. There are exceptions - houses that are built to be consistent with the housing stock around them or that have interesting design elements - and I do not object to those at all.
By Charlottesvillain, at
Tue Dec 18, 09:27:00 AM:
TH, wasn't your new house built in a factory and delivered in 6 pieces? Did you not choose it from a catalog? (I wasn't actually there but the rumor is that, when delivered, they were actually encased in giant styrafoam clamshells.)
Sounds like McMansion to me!
(Hey, what are comments sections for if we can't quibble about BS like this?)
