October 2008 | Eyesore

Commentary on architectural blunders in monthly serial.

Behold the Ghost of Halloween Future! The rural byways of America are littered with little raised ranches and "Cape Cod" specials from that strange moment in American history when the working classes were well-paid and enjoyed limitless supplies of cheap gasoline and heating oil. Farmers sold off little out-parcels of road frontage here, there, and everywhere, and the rural landscape became semi-suburbanized, even in the faraway backwaters. People thought nothing of a 100-mile-a-day commute when gas was 38 cents a gallon. Now, history is sweeping away this mode of existence. These things will not occupy the landscape very long. Eventually, they will be stripped of even their marginally useful components until nothing is left but the foundations. This one has been decrepitating only a few years.