I don't think liking or disliking the design of something has much to do with being open or closed minded. Either you like it or you don't,it's just one's own taste. It doesn't appeal to me and nothing they could do to is would ever change that. Here's the house.

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I've seen castles smaller than that. Structures of that size demand to overpower the ambiance of any countryside. It's like putting a huge billboard on the moon. If they have the money, I guess it's their call how they wish to spend it. However, as the whole country is wondering how they'll pay their heating bills this winter, and nobody even whispering the word 'conservation' it sets an example for people who can't afford it to emulate. That's one reason we are in this foreclosure mess.

That is close to obscene.

Looks like one of those "dormitory" houses from the polygamist's ranch. Anyone checked on who will be moving in?

Sick - and in bad taste, too
If I had that sort of money (or credit - or?) I may want to have a big house, but it would not be that type of ugly pile o bricks or whatever that is...

I lurk hither and yon on various owner-builder forums and see quite a few of this and similar styles. No, I don't care for the style -- inappropriate to an extreme. Of couse, there really isn't *anywhere* outside of the Swiss mountains which is appropriate for fake castles, and the Swiss don't need any fakes. I always think the lady of the house apparently never grew up beyond wanting a fairy-tale castle and I can just hear her whine about all the work it is to keep clean.

And that's not a joke... over time one can read about Ms Xzy's desires for a house of 4 or 5 thousand square feet -- it'll have three or four areas to eat, closets the size of a bedroom, bedrooms with sitting areas and coffee bars. One will sympathise with her struggles finding good workmen (a problem for builders of smaller homes, too) and cheer as she finally decides what flooring, etc. And the house gets built, and she raves over the joy of living in it... and a few months or a year later, she'll be posting to another thread and comment how much more time the new house requires for cleaning and maybe even a wish that she had built a smaller house.

A cousin is a designer-builder. Lots of projects from everyday houses to a humongeous retirees' tower. The day came when his wife decided they should move from their small (6-bedroom) house to a manor-type dwelling in horse-country. Visiting them one time, I listened to her go on and on and on about how much longer it took her to keep clean the manor than it took when they lived in "the little house". Well, eventually the moment came when my big mouth took control of my brain and I commented, "Ann, even I can understand that it takes twice as long to clean 6,000 square feet as it does to clean 3,000 square feet. If you didn't want to spend the extra time cleaning, why on earth did you get such a big house?" She looked at me and I looked at her, and that's when I realized that extravagance and practicality are two different languages, with no words in common.

Not sure if I buy into the suggestion that this house is the product of some woman's desire for a bigger house, as if the man in the picture, if there is one, is just an innocent bystander.

But that aside, it's very much in the style that passes for "domestic architecture" these days. I wouldn't have to drive 5 miles to see its cousins all over the landscape. At least this one occupies a large space. It's almost comical to see some of these huge houses with barely 50' between them and yards not much bigger than my little one.

I wonder if these are the SUVs of houses and will prove to be a glut on the market for speculators. There was a development started very near me--land cleared, grading started--that simply stopped. Now the land is fenced off, weeds sprouting where a small woods once stood, nothing has happened there for about six months. My dream for the space: townhouses or semi-detached houses that would make better use of the space than big sprawling piles like the one pictured. I'd move into one in a heartbeat, especially if the technology was on the "green" side. Dream on, I guess.

Looks more like a hotel or rehab center for addicts of some sort than a home.

Reminds me of a house down the street from me. It's on the market for 2.8 million. The couple selling it don't seem happy with the neighborhood. They tore down a small cottage to build this lovely (and it is a beautiful five or six bedroom, three car garage, den, playroom, etc, etc.)LARGE house, with big porches all around. Great landscapping. The problem is that ALL of the house around are small 3 bedroom ranch style houses on small lots.

Guess what.... no one seems to want to fork over 2.8 million for a house in a 150,000 buck neighborhood.

Ive been in these houses and the one thing that always crosses my mind is there is no "cozy nesting space". That small cozy room for curling up in when you come out of the hectic world and just want to relax.

No reading areas, either.

Although now that I think of it, I did see one with a library. About 18x20. That would hold a lot of books, but they had a work table and a big desk. Me, I'd want a lounge, soft and puffy and with extra pillows to prop under my head as I stretched out with a good book.

One of the neatest rooms I've ever seen was in a huge house,a little smaller than the one shown here. You walked in the front door and then to the right,you went down a couple of steps into a paneled library,while the rest of the hosue was all white,wide open..the typical Mcmansion. The books were floor to ceiling on 3 of the walls,and there were a couple of sofas and big chairs in there. There was one large oriental rug and all the colors were earth tones which are my favorites. There were no windows and it was almost like a cave. I wanted to go in there and never come out. I would love to have something like that.

Showing my prejudices here, but my first thought is that the kind of people who would build a house like this are the kind that if a library ever entered into their heads, it would be the kind of library that they would fill with "books by the yard."

This house looks totally inappropriate for where it's situated.Its Mediterranean/Italianate looks to my mind would be more appropriated in a coastal area of Florida or California. However, that's just my take on it.

And I have to agree with Agnes, that my first thought on looking at thte picture was that it was a hotel.

You see a lot of that going up in the newer neighbourhoods in Huntsville and environs. Monstrosities all. I will admit, though, at least they are building with real bricks and not some faux facade. It were the little piggie who built with bricks that withstood the big bad wind. Maybe the lesson is finally getting around.

I lived in a minor mansion once. Back in the early '60s large piles in the Kenwood neighborhood were pretty affordable and we bought what was known as the Loeb house. It had been owned by the uncle of Loeb of Leopold and Loeb, but the kid actually lived there after his parents' divorce. On the first floor there was a small cozy room called the music room where you could stash the musicians who could play for your guests at parties without having to rub up against them. In the basement was a walk-in safe.

The (rather fishy) story was that during prohibition speedboats from Canada would offload cases of hooch nearby and folks would store them down there. I don't think the Loebs would have to go to that much trouble.

Adjacent to the safe was a room that had a narrow counter running all the way around it at desk height. My mom was concerned that we might not be able to have telephone extensions in a place built around 1900, so she asked a man from the phone company to explore. He ended up in the room with the counter, rather shaken. "Lady, you can have anything you want. You've got a trunk line in here." After the Loebs, the house became the dwelling of one of the South Side "Policy Kings," and the room had apparently been the heart of his numbers operation.

There were drawbacks. There was no central air conditioning, for example. The first summer we were there, my father has in the hospital getting a hernia fixed and my mom found it was much more comfortable sleeping on the sofa in the living room because it got better ventilation. One night she was awakened by a crack-of-doom crash because the plaster-coated-canvas ceiling in the adjacent dining room fell, pretty much demolishing the dining room table and coating everything including my mom with white dust..

After fixing that, it was clear that other rooms might need pre-emptive renewal, and then we discovered some leaks in the roof and were told that it needed new flashing and that there was only one guy left who did that sort of work in copper, and he charged...

So we ended up selling the joint to a wealthy doctor who collected modern art and who could afford the repairs and building a nice, small, modern house a few blocks away.

Today, I live just a block and a half away, but in a small townhouse that was just being built when we had our brief experiment in mansiondom.

I'm putting in a link to msm.com maps, which has an aerial photo view. The address was 4060 S. Kimbark. If you scroll to the left along 49th street, you'll see Elijah MuhammadÂs/Louis FarrakhanÂs little bungalow at the corner of Woodlawn

Here is a link that might be useful: 4860 S. Kimbark

In all fairness, I don't think just looking at this house tells me anything about the owner's tastes. personality or values. For all I know they may be a patron of the arts or literature, or a philanthropist.

I like stucco homes in this style, and would be quite satisfied to live in it if they could maybe take a big cake knife and whack off all of it but the one small section where the cars are parked.

When people own a piece of land and decide to build on it, I don't think, unless forced by codes, many think of the impact it makes on other's sensibilities who like the area for what it is. One house sitting on the top of a hill will be visible for many miles surrounding it. If it's out of character with the rest of the landscape, it's going to stick out and be seen and people are not going to be ambivalent about it.

Most people do not own their views unless they can afford to own all the land within sight. Our intent last year when we purchased property adjacent to us was to guarantee the ambiance of our home. The new property extends to the top of the crest of a rolling hill and by buying it, I can look out across that lay of land, and nobody will ever put a structure on it in my line of vision. Likewise down our country road, somebody just built a structure very similar to the one referenced in this thread. All the area around it is farmland and bucolic. It's a beautiful home, but I'll always feel that a part of the reason I live where I do is gone, as it is totally foreign to country living. But, hey, I am not rich and they were, so it's their call. That's why I think so many people resent some new structures. Has nothing to do with the structure, or the people who built it.

We have a blue million of these obscene houses on Woodmont Boulevard. I've always thought, I'd like to be able to build whatever I liked, but it wouldn't be this one or any of those as far as I can tell from the outside.

There are lots of those around here.
One is listed with that big time company that starts with an S for over 9 million.
He has a rat's chance in you know where of selling it
and while I am usually sympathetic for one's misfortune,
I'll probably get a chuckle if he gets stuck with a mortgage
he can't meet.

No two people are going to have the same taste so I agree with Suzy completely in that you can't make value judgements on someone's life just because you don't like the design of their house. Besides..extravagance is in the eye of the beholder and I'm sure there are many people living in this country who would think that having 2 tvs was an extrvagance..right? I think these big houses are pretty ugly,just like someone driving down the road and seeing the sunflowers growing right in my front yard in front of the front door is pretty ugly ( some birds dropped their seeds there,) Anyway...the part about these houses I don't understand is what do people do in them? Here is a photo of a house which is the next one down the road from a good friend. Look at the size of this house. A couple in their late 30s or early 40s live there..no kids,just them. I am in every room of our house every day so can't imagine being in all the rooms of this house every day.

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Obscene.

My husband is a county building inspector who sees these McMansions springing up all around us (and has for the past 17 years). Trust me; the people building them are very, very rarely philanthropic types.

Oregonians have spent 40 years watching in the influx of Californians who come up here to retire and move into huge houses like this; often in areas that were recently natural and beautiful. Now our housing prices are sky-high, cost of living here is ridiculous, traffic is horrendous, pollution, crime, overcrowding, ad nauseam. And now and then, I'll still hear one these recent California transplants complain about our weather, traffic, crime, cost of living....

This native Oregonian's opinion of the houses pictured here? Hideous. And a damn shame.