March 2005 | Eyesore

Commentary on architectural blunders in monthly serial.

Reader Wes Baker ( misirlou@cox.net ) sent us this interesting speciment with the following note

This monstrosity is situated in a new subdivision in northern Virginia called Lorton Station. It’s part of a group of huge townhouses that are built close enough together to be considered condos for government accounting purposes, yet far enough apart to be sold as single family houses. It went up maybe two years ago, and cost about $500,000. The strange thing is that I think the bricklayer aligned the bricks inside the window openings with the brick courses in the wall facade, rather than just stacking bricks in an empty window space. In other words, this was probably intentional, and not the result of the buyer complaining about not wanting windows facing the street or something like that.

The real genius touch was putting those shutters on! It really puts across the idea of warm cozy domicile here!