Why Men Build Mansions
His grandparents' house was an understated work of art. But the new owner tore it down. Why would he do that?
By Oliver Broudy, illustration by L-Dopa
Muehler crossed his legs and interlaced his fingers as he awaited my questions with a pleasant smile. I had come believing there was only one issue to discuss—namely, why would anyone build such a big, honking house—but there in the living room, I realized that my question really had two parts: the size of the house, and the style. In my outrage at having lost a beloved home, locus of many memories, the two questions had appeared to me as one.
Muehler was quick to point out that the old house was simply never a candidate for preservation. “You may recall one of the guest rooms had sloped ceilings where the low end was 6-foot-3,” he said. As a child, of course, I’d noticed no such thing. But then there were the tiny bathrooms—my grandfather could never fathom the cult of the bathroom, and the temple it made of the place you emptied your bowels. For him, the model bathroom remained the outhouse: You went in, expedited your business, and rejoined the public world with all possible speed. Why tarry?
“There were some issues,” Muehler concluded, “which were maybe fine in the 1950s, when it was built, but by today’s standards . . . it was difficult.”
There is, in fact, a great deal of truth to this. Home sizes have been increasing steadily over the past few decades, although square footage receded a bit when the housing bubble burst. Still, the number of four-bedroom homes built nationally between 1987 and 2007 almost doubled. One in five homes built in 2007 had a garage big enough for three or more cars. And more than a quarter of new single-family homes sold in 2007 had three or more bathrooms—a fact that would have astonished my grandfather.
It’s hard to know how to respond to this data. Are we supposed to feel compelled to somehow reverse the trend, like auto industry standards on fuel efficiency? Even if it were possible to legislate ourselves back to the low ceilings and tiny bathrooms of the 1950s, is that really a solution most freedom-loving Americans could live with?
As it happens, regulations on house sizes in Muehler’s neighborhood are among the most aggressive in Illinois. “They have a formula,” he told me. The formula, though, has more to do with maintaining a general sense of proportion between a house and the lot it sits on than with preventing the spread of mansions. And even within these relatively restrictive guidelines, there’s still plenty of room for absurdly large homes. Technically, Muehler’s 4-acre lot would have allowed him a 19,000-square-foot house, so I suppose he should be congratulated for his restraint.
Even so, the house has six full and two half bathrooms, and a separate wing for his four kids. (One of Muehler’s children left home before the house was built; two others left a year later. The youngest, when I visited, lay alone on his bed in the otherwise deserted wing, sorting through college acceptance letters.) You could drive a Mercedes down the hallways, and last winter the heating bill approached $3,000 a month.
In the living room, I endured Muehler’s cheerful explanations for all this—for the turrets and the wings and the gaping rooms. He spoke calmly and smoothly, and it almost began to seem reasonable, this château in the suburbs. And then I began to think about my grandparents, and the rooms I had loved as child. I began to think about the humility of their house, its gracefulness. Finally, I grew impatient and lobbed the question I had traveled across the country to ask: Why on earth did he build it so big?
“That’s a good question,” Muehler said, laying a finger across his upper lip. He reminded me of a hardware-store clerk, a middle-aged guy in a blue apron, trying to remember which aisle the mousetraps were in. But Muehler seemed genuinely perplexed. How could that be? As the silence dragged on, I bit my tongue, fighting the impulse to make it easy for him.
“It just . . . evolved,” he said, finally.
I expected as much. I could even understand, in a way. After all, once you’ve committed yourself to the design process—once you’ve found the money and hired the architect and taken the leap—why not make the hallway a little wider, or the ceiling a little taller? Why not add a guest room, or a guest wing, for that matter, so that, even if it’s used only rarely, you’ll never find yourself regretting not building it? How many times, after all, does a man build his own house?
Such is the peculiar, escalating logic of “feature creep.” I’m guilty of it myself, on a more modest level. We all are. The relevant mechanism is what you might call marginal entitlement—that extra measure of value that you feel entitled to when considering a replacement purchase. Let’s say your 26-inch TV breaks. At the store, you find several models: 26 inches, 32 inches, 37 inches. You’re accustomed to the smaller model, but as long as you’re here, why not upgrade to the 32-inch set? (The jump to 37 inches would obviously be excessive.) That 6 inches is your marginal entitlement—the additional value you allow yourself without feeling obliged to totally reassess what will actually suffice. It’s this ingenious cognitive loophole that allows us to replace the vexing question why? with the carefree why not?
Exceed your marginal entitlement and you expose yourself to pangs of guilt—even, perhaps, spiritual unease. Muehler hadn’t entirely dodged the bullet. “When the whole structure went up,” he told me, “it maybe made a little bit more of a statement than I had expected. Some people would love that. Other people might be a little uncomfortable with it. I suppose I was a tad uncomfortable with it.”
Of course, you can return a TV. You can’t return a French château. So, what choice did he have but to get used to it? “This is a large home,” he said, finding his feet. “But I’ve been in some homes that are considerably larger.”
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