In 1953, my dad bought his first new car, a 1953 Mercury sedan. We were a one-car family, and he joined a carpool with other downtown workers in the neighborhood so that my stay-at-home mom could have a car for her activities during several days of the week.
Today, young parents of comparable economic footing to my parents would shop for a "North Dallas Special." Cynical homebuilders and realtors know they only have 20 minutes to establish curb appeal and other warm status fuzzies to potential buyers. Gaudy McMansion architecture, with complex, ornamental roof structures, "grand" entrances, and cheapness hidden in sides, rear, and general home engineering are what will make the sale to the three-SUV families.
$207,990, 3,277 sq. ft. Fox & Jacob (Centex) home in Rowlett, TX. Available with no-down-payment, no principal payment, adjustable, Wall Street "guaranteed" mortgageThe crosses indicate a family moved by the Holy Spirit lives in this home
North Dallas Special
A type of house laden with the architectural symbology of upper class inhabitation, displayed in grossly exaggerated form for the purposes of marketing. The term refers to the particular concentration of this mutation in the suburbs north of Dallas, although the phenomenon is by no means confined to this region. The manifestation consists of a very complex roof form, a great deal of articulation in the plan ("breaking the box"), the use of a great variety of window shapes with arches in abundance; a double height portico ("entry feature"), a more expensive material on the front facade (brick, stone) with cheaper cladding (vinyl) to the sides and rear, and a thin veil of classicism (coins, entablatures, pediments, columns) following no known canon. Certain compositional flaws are the consequence of the attempt to incorporate the variety of a large mansion into a house of middling size. The marketing is referenced as "Curb Appeal" which thrives on first impressions projected onto the approach of the customer. The negative consequences of curb appeal are first, that the spatial enclosure is dissolved by the excessive articulation of the facade, and second, that the construction budget is exhausted by the semantics with scarce resources remaining for articulation at the rear yard where it might create some privacy by deploying a back building.
http://parole.aporee.org/work/print.php?words_id=515
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=North+Dallas+special
The North Dallas Special: a single home attempts to create the skyline of an entire village. It is meant to stand alone.
Homebuilders at the upper end of the market appear to be equally misguided in their approach to building design. Pictured here is what has come to be known as the “North Dallas Special,” or, less affectionately, as a “house on steroids.” Despite all its cartoonish qualities—its variety of window types, it overwrought trim—this house represents the industry standard for luxury. The design technique is straightforward: concentrate the budget on extra corners and exaggerated historical references, all in the name of “curb appeal.” Never mind that one practically needs a Ph.D. in physics to assemble this roof; this technique is what developers learn at homebuilding conventions, and what realtors have come to call the “twenty-minute house,” . . . refers to the fact that a house has only twenty minutes to win the affection of a potential buyer, since that is the average length of a realtor visit. The building industry is at its best for the first twenty minutes that one is in it. Specifically, the house is usually organized around a tall “great room” from which, immediately upon entering, the potential buyer is astounded by partial views of almost every room in the house. The disadvantage of this organization is that there is no acoustical privacy for the individual rooms, something that is not discovered until after moving day. Similarly, because so much of the budget is spent on the front of the house (much to the detriment of the street space), the back of the house ends up being a few sliding glass doors in a dead-flat wall, such that the backyard offers no privacy either. You exit the rear door to find yourself completely exposed in a windswept lot, directly visible to the occupants of the five other houses identical to your own.
Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck
Through the fifties and sixties, white flight to the suburbs laid waste to our inner urban centers, creating a "white noose." Dallas has fared better than many due to Texas laws allowing municipalities to aggressively annex outlying suburbs.
Anybody who travels back and forth across the Atlantic has to be impressed with the differences between European cities and ours, which make it appear as if World War Two actually took place in Detroit and Washington rather than Berlin and Rotterdam
James Howard Kunstler, Home from Nowhere (1996)
