Architecture and Books -or- How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Tract Homes (and Harry Potter)

by Robison Wells

It's a six hour drive from Minneapolis to Nauvoo, if you take the interstate. My wife and I don't like the interstate, and so it took us nine hours to get there and ten hours to get back this weekend.

I've always loved small towns and small roads, and Minnesota has been a delight. Not only are the rolling hills green and dotted with forests, but the towns are beautiful. And the architecture is amazing.

While driving through the tiny town of Owatonna (population less than 20k) we turned a corner and came across this. I wasn't familiar with the building (it's the National Farmers Bank), but I know the architect well. He's Louis Sullivan, one of the fathers of American architecture. He was one of Frank Lloyd Wright's mentors, and it was while working for Sullivan that Wright created his first significant designs. And here it was, absolutely gorgeous in every detail, in the middle of nowhere.


And, while driving through the tiny town of Mason City, Iowa, we chanced upon an actual Frank Lloyd Wright, the Stockman House. I got off the main road and followed the signs, and my wife insisted I go on the tour. I'd never actually been in a Frank Lloyd Wright home before, even though I have several books on the subject. And the home was amazing. Each detail was important to him: the horizontal mortar of the fireplace was lighter than the vertical mortar, because he wanted to draw the eye from side to side. The gap between the windows was almost eight inches instead of the usual three and a half because he wanted to maintain the distinct exterior while allowing more freedom for room placement inside. This was a home that was finely crafted, seriously contemplated, and artistically magnificent.


I'm an architecture snob. My first college major was architecture, and, when my eventual degree in political science didn't get me anywhere, I fell back on my architecture classes and designed homes for four years. (I was a structural designer, unfortunately, and not an architectural designer. That basically means that instead of designing what a house looks like, I was designing the structure of it: how far apart do the floor joists have to be; how big does the ridge beam have to be.) I designed homes for all of the major builders in Utah, and many of the tiny ones--and I hated almost all of what I was designing.

Utah homes follow two major trends. First, Utahns (for whatever reason) are as cheap as the day is long. One major goal of home design in Utah is get the biggest freaking house possible for the smallest amount of money. What this often translates into is stretching an enormous, gaudy home to fill almost the entire lot--the homeowner bought an eighth of an acre, and by George he's going to use an eighth of an acre. Often, these homes are boxy and square, with the only architectural elements on the front, while the back and sides are flat and lifeless and beige. I hate these homes. As my wife can attest, every single time I drive past I tell her that those people should be ashamed of themselves. (Or, perhaps, I fear for the future of the country?) (More on this in a moment.)

Second, Utah homes (and most homes, really) lack craftsmanship. I can forgive this with smaller, lower-income homes. Those people just want a place to live. But it's the larger homes that annoy me. Attention homeowners: it is painfully obvious that your stone/brick fascade is only one inch thick, rather than that you actually built the house out of stone. It doesn't look nice; it looks fake. It looks like a theme park--like Disneyland's Fantasyland. Case in point, look at this absurd offering from Utah's largest home builder. This isn't an ugly custom home--it's a tract home! Imagine an entire neighborhood of ugly little cookie-cutters, each with their own medieval tower!?


(Utah law doesn't even require an architect to touch most of these homes. They're designed by committee, always with more concern for business than for art. If stucco is cheaper than siding, slather that sucker in stucco. If square foundations are faster to dig and pour, then square it is!)

I've actually been thinking about writing a blog like this for some time: the architecture here in Minnesota is often quite beautiful, and it warms my little snobbish heart. But the recent debates (about great literature vs. the lousy tastes of the unwashed masses) have gotten me thinking.

If you'll pardon my French, who the hell cares what I think about architecture? I hate massive tract homes with little yards and stone fascades--but what does that have to do with you? I like what I like, and that's fine. But why do you have to care what I like?

The people who live in these "ugly" houses can lead very happy lives. They have Thanksgiving dinner in their "ugly" dining rooms, and they have their family photos taken on their "ugly" front porches, and they play catch with their kids in their "ugly" backyards. Whether or not their house is what I would deem to be architecturally great doesn't affect their enjoyment of the house in any way whatsoever.

In fact, I'm 100% positive that people are going reply with a comment that says they hate the Stockman House. Do I think that it is in fact architecturally superior to the tract home with the tower? Yes. Do I think that any eight-year-old kid could resist a house a with a frickin' tower on the front porch? No. It'd be an awesome house to grow up in.

In other words, my enjoyment of architecture is not diminished by the fact that less artistic, less finely-crafted homes exist. And someone else's enjoyment of their home is not dependent upon how architecturally significant it is.

For crying out loud, people, it's okay to like different things.