Ugly Houses 1/14/08

I'm supposed to be working but thoroughly bored with what I'm doing, so I thought I'd use the rest of the day productively and write a long overdue blog.

Ugly Houses-Chapter One

As you can imagine, there are many ugly houses in my little corner of the world; something about building a shore house makes people of questionable taste in the first place go absolutely nuts. They just can't seem to pick an architectural style and go with it; so what happens is they pick elements of several (or many) styles and glom them together to make a monstrosity of enormous proportions. (Enormous because of course all the new houses fill their lots up to the absolute limit-the more square footage the better!)

I really shouldn't complain too much about these uglies because my husband makes much of his living fabricating custom doodads for them, but I'm not too worried because the ugliness will go on and on no matter what I say.

I was inspired to blog about this by a couple of houses right on the boardwalk at Annapolis Ave; I see them all the time because this is where we start and end our Sunday boardwalk bike rides. Both were constructed by the same builder and are basically the same box, but the details are very different and looking at them side by side made me wonder-what makes a house ugly?

The house on the right is actually ok-even though it has a bunch of elements going, they don't compete against each other; the place is actually kind of quaint looking-like one of the older houses on many Atlantic City and Ventnor beach blocks. I don't know enough about architecture to explain it, but it's so much easier on the eyes than the one on the left (which is still unfinished and unsold!!) Right away this thing assaults my eyes and sensibilities-there's no attempt to make it interesting-the windows are ugly and the roof line blech-it looks like what it is-a box.

Now don't get me wrong-the house on the right is not my dream house, but it is certainly closer to what I would build on the lot if money was no object. The reason I felt compelled to take the pictures and write this is the marked difference between the two.

Ugly Houses-Chapter Two

We took a little different route through Ventnor Heights on our last bike ride; we're always checking out the houses sold in the area and it took us off our normal route. Well, after scoping out the sold house we turned the corner and a bit down the street what should appear but a house that put the boardwalk ugly to shame!

I'm sure it has a beautiful view out the back with lots of windows (it's right on the water-here's the view from the vacant lot two doors away)

but this is so ugly that it's almost surreal! The people on either side

(this one new but not so bad), and

the cute cottage on the left (it's completely dwarfed but I assure you it's a normal size cute-as-a-button shore cottage)

must be mortified. I hope the cottage-dwellers build themselves a large fence so they don't have to look at the ugliness next door.

I'm sure they have a beautiful view out onto the intracoastal and maybe that side of the house is not as bad (we'll have to get a look from the water), but this is such an eyesore that no redemption is possible. I don't expect them to have big windows on the street side, but just about anything would be better than this. Of course if you have the money to buy two houses on the water (this is clearly a double or even triple lot), demolish them and erect this thing, I guess you get to do whatever the hell you want and everyone tells you it's beautiful.

Thanks for the opportunity to vent-I'd love to hear any opinions on my ugly houses-what do you think?