Houses of a Different Color

I have an odd appreciation for mid-century architecture, so I found this assignment very exciting. I selected two variations of a ranch house and then I photographed a small neighborhood of new houses to examine the difference between the two types of houses. All of these houses are in Tucker, just off the Brockett Road, Coolege Road exit on Highway 78.

In the time when ranch houses were popular they offered new homebuyers a sense of freedom they did not have before; this was achieved not only from the rustic design but also through the affordable layout and construction. The lay of the land played into this, as often the homes were set on hills or in valleys, within the rolling and contoured landscape. The two houses pictured below seem to be inviting in a way that a new house isn’t, at least in my opinion. Although they are set back from the street and don’t have a large, inviting porch that you might find on an older house, they remind you of a simpler time, when you didn’t need a four-car garage and 15-foot ceilings to make your house a home. They both look very different and not at all mass-produced like new homes do. They were probably constructed as part of larger developments, but they don’t look much like the houses around them of the same type. Plan-books and magazines offered ideas for the types of new homes to construct, but home-owners could add their own taste and style to the design to really make it their own. The split-level home has a barn feel to it, while the “regular” ranch has a fancy look to it. These are just two options of how people were able to take a basic floor plan and dress it up to match their style and needs. These houses look to be in very good condition, which suggests that whoever purchased these homes after the original owners likely took pride in keeping them in good condition.

These new houses however, pictured below, do not give off that same sense of individuality. If you notice, they all look very similar, possibly even having the same floor plan only with minor changes here and there, like a different paint scheme or a garage on a different side of the facade. These houses do look mass-produced and almost cookie-cutter like. They do give the same freedom to homebuyers that the ranch houses did in their day, but they now offer the size and space that have become required with the new generation of first-time home buyers. People need more space it seems than they did in the past to house all their accumulated stuff. Houses today are produced in a way that will allow for fast construction and easy selling points; many new homes allow the buyer to choose their own appliances and floor plan from a stock list. They are sometimes made with pre-assembled parts that are put up like the houses in Levittown. This is similar to plan-book houses of the mid-century, but people had much more say in the arrangement and design than they do now. The basic design and the exterior are already determined, you just get to choose if you want a finished basement or a larger master bedroom when you “customize” your house. These houses will likely fall apart faster than the ranch houses that are all around this area, which suggests that there is a reason that people may want to preserve the unique mid-century neighborhoods that can be found across the country as opposed to these new neighborhoods that don’t seem to have the same appeal and cause for excitement that came when ranch house neighborhoods were developed.