Crime of the Week

There's generic ugly, and then there's very special ugly. Stop-the-car-and-take-a-picture ugly. This house on the Westside is that kind of ugly.

Just what were they thinking?

But am I more aghast at its ugliness or at its pretension to elegance and style? There is much to abhor here: those gigantic, misshapen "eyebrows" that burden the elevation; the paneless (and painful) windows that seem destined never to be opened; the half-round columns that support nothing, added in a vain attempt to lend some authenticity to the proceedings; the garage door that mars an already crudely conceived façade; the blotched (and botched) faux-patina of the paint job; the pathetic garden "bridge to nowhere"; the Beaux Arts lamppost stranded in the midst of a desert xeriscape.

What I most abhor, however, is the utter lack of historical—or, for that matter, futuristic—tradition in this monstrosity. It is a very sad building of breathtaking naïveté.

I can't offer the the architect (if indeed one was involved) an education, but I can at least point the perpetrator to the book What Not To Build (see link to the right), before he or she commits another crime of this nature.