Personal Blog 1- American Dream Houses

During our units on houses and neighborhoods, we learned about different stylings and layouts used for houses, and how different areas will have a different kind of format for the neighborhood. Some neighborhoods are on the grid system, each have a similarly sized plot of land divided off in squares. In these areas roads are straight, direct, and easy to follow. Other neighborhoods will be built on larger scales in a more freelance system. Roads will be long and winding, often containing smaller alleys or side roads that can get confusing for people unfamiliar with the area. My group went on a few walkabouts looking at different houses and neighborhoods in parts of Salt Lake City, something I thought was quite fun. I was enthralled by the differences in all the houses in areas like Liberty Park. Each one was very attractive, with its own little designs on the doors and windows, its own styles for roofs and porches and chimneys, a lot of them reminded me of little dollhouses. One of the reasons I think that I was so captured by the large variety in Salt Lake houses is because of the houses and neighborhoods I grew up around in Sandy, Utah, before I moved up to live at the University. Many of the houses built in the suburban city of Sandy are the classic cookie cutter American dream style houses. This I felt would be a good topic for a personal blog as the groups looking at neighborhoods in Salt Lake City didn’t visit many true cookie cutter style houses.

The neighborhoods I spent most of my time in as a kid contain what most people would consider to be middle to upper-middle class houses. They most often are filled with a good number of regular Ranch rambler houses (like the one to the right) at the less expensive housing level, but are dominated by what I at least would think of as truly the classic ‘American Dream’ style house. What this basically entails is a two story house with a fair sized front yard, a patio, and a two-car garage. The top half of the house is slightly larger than the bottom half, and so an overhanging roof is set up over the garage, which juts out in front of the rest of the house. The front rooms that can be seen from the window are almost always public rooms like living rooms or entryways, except for the rooms on the second story, which are usually bedrooms. There is also a large back yard where the children can play and adults can visit in private without being disturbed by passersby. They even have the triangular pediments over many of the windows that are characteristic of American Dream houses. The layout of just about all of these houses is the same, something I was always quite aware of as I often visited the houses of friends in my neighborhood that were designed almost exactly like mine. For the most part in these neighborhoods, large areas were contracted by a single builder, who created three or four different housing designs that buyers of the land plots could choose between in creating their houses. This resulted in neighborhoods where you could find a house of the exact same design within a block of your own. While maybe not necessarily original, it was practical and usually money saving, which is likely one of the reasons why this style suited American families best, bringing about its name as an American Dream home. There are many other reasons of course why it is named this, one being that it is very suitably sized for the typical four or five person American family, and is located in safe suburban areas.

One interesting thing about the American Dream house is the way that the style seems to impact the neighborhood itself and the interactions of its inhabitants. American Dream houses seem to be designed to highly privatize family life, the result of which seems to be that not a lot of people are seen out in the front yard during the day- the backyard is a much more common place for families to spend time together at. And yet even while there may be few people outside, the neighborhood still seems welcoming and safe to its inhabitants and to visitors. Sandy neighborhoods are often secluded, bunched together in a group of houses away from main streets, giving them a safer feeling. People are also always sure to decorate their houses in welcoming ways to make the neighborhood feel comfortable. American Dream houses also have very large living rooms and family rooms. Neighbors are often quite friendly with each other, but it is most common for hosts to invite them or other guests inside to chat or spend time together, rather than remaining outside on the porch, as people can often be seen doing in Salt Lake neighborhoods.

It can be quite interesting to examine the cookie cutter houses of Sandy neighborhoods if you really pay attention to them. One thing that’s interesting about them is the attempt of buyers to make their houses different from the ones next to them despite having only a few building mold choices for their home. There are many slight variations on the design, where the garage will be switched from the left to the right side, or the main overhanging section of the roof is moved from the side to the center of the top story. Different types of building material were also used, with some buyers using brick, others wood or stone. Slight color changes also differentiate the houses. Despite all this however, if you really look you can easily tell how one house is the same design as another, all taking the same three or four cookie cutter molds to create a neighborhood. Some people may consider these cookie cutter style houses to be boring, but they do tend to give a sense of strength and security, and seem to be quite common in many suburban neighborhoods.