I recently managed to make a covid-safe (I hope) road trip to northern Virginia. The weather was over 60 degrees and sunny while I was there, so on one day we visited Great Falls National Park, which lies along the Potomac River about 15 miles west of Washington, D.C.
To get to the Virginia-side of the park, you travel on a two-lane county or state road past a number of fancy houses, some with horse fencing. At one point, there's a new side street called, amusingly, Ad Hoc Road. I didn't get a photo of the street sign, unfortunately.
But I did get photos of the three McMansions that were nearby. One, which is closer to the main road, is fully built and looks occupied. The other two, nearing completion, are slightly off the road on a cul-de-sac.
Each is a fine example of McMansionism, as far as I could see from the street.
Some have worse things wrong with their design than others, but the thing that gets me about all three of them is that their scale is wrong for the setting. They're "meant" to emulate English or French country houses, isolated in a green landscape with gardens and rolling lawns as far as the eye can see, with a winding drive maybe leading through a woods. But instead they each have an acre or half-acre with a cul-de-sac in front.
Ad hoc indeed.
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