Ordinary Homes of the United States

Time period: 2010s to present Location: Suburbs and rural areas The modern farmhouse has its roots in the late 1980s, starting out as a down-to-earth interior design trend for people tired of or turned off by the shiny glitz of 1980s conspicuous consumption. That said, the farmhouse is also a a status symbol. The gilded penthouse condo stands for financial and industrial wealth, the farmhouse stands for wealth from land ownership. Farmhouse style is based on the farm owner's house, rather than the shacks and labor camps of tenant farmers and migrant farmworkers. Farmhouse style grew in popularity in the 2010s, through the popularity of home improvement TV shows that showed how old farmhouses could be modernized from merely rustic, to rustic but with modern comfort and style. Compared to the 19th-century and early 20th century farmhouses that serve as inspiration, modern farmhouses are much larger and have modern floorplans.  Modern Farmhouse design features - Interior and exterior ...

  Time Period: 1980s to present Location: Suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas nationwide Mass produced mansions for super-sized American dreams Key features - Over 3,000 square feet with 4 or more bedrooms - Designed to impress: double height entrances and other decorative features on front of house - 2+ car garage While houses have always been a way people show off wealth, and owning a house has been central to the American Dream since the beginning of this country, several factors came together in the 1980s to create the McMansion. Clothing, which had traditionally been a primary way of showing off wealth, was becoming less important, outside of a handful of places such as New York City. Casual fashion had gone mainstream, and a drop in clothing costs relative to income meant that even the middle class could afford fancy clothes if they wanted. Homes, though, were still expensive enough to remain a status symbol. Another factor was the 1986 Tax Reform Act, a Reagan-era tax cut for t...

  Time period: 2010s Location: New York City How to get better views while staying under the floor area limit. Key features - Extra-high mechanical rooms on lower floors, with ceiling height of 100 feet or more. - Upper floors of multimillion dollar views. While supertall towers are extraordinary buildings, I have included them in this survey of housing as they come from the same roots as a stucco box apartment or suburban tract house: they are not custom homes designed by the future resident. They are a commodity, designed to make money. The history of zoning in New York is a constant back-and-forth between an economy that makes tall buildings profitable, and zoning laws that limit their height and bulk. The mechanical void ban is one of the latest chapters of this story. The modern skyscraper dates back to the invention of the elevator and the Bessemer process,which made it possible to mass produce steel.  Both were invented in the 1850s, and together they made taller buildi...