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Another entry for the architectural round of "Journalistic Intentions"  [18+]Carson Mansion Ever wonder what makes a house a mansion? I know I have. You expect that houses exist on a continuum, from those trendy one-room trailer dwellings all the way up to, I don't know, something that burned down outside L.A. earlier this year. At some point on that continuum, it stops being "house" and becomes "mansion," like a high enough hill becomes a mountain, or pond to lake to sea, or pebble to rock to boulder. Well, unless you're in a profession that needs to strictly define ranges within that continuum, it turns out it's not that simple. The Great Salt Lake is, for example, larger than the Dead Sea. Perhaps, then, what makes a house a "mansion" isn't size (after all, there are castles which serve as homes but aren't called mansions), but appraised value? Or perhaps the presence of servants' quarters? Or is it some distinguishing architectural feature? But then you also have words for similar things like "manse" or "manor." Those are, perhaps obviously, derived from the same Latin root word, one which also evolved into the French word that translates to house, "maison." So, apparently, if you call it a mansion, and enough people nod and say "Yep, that's a mansion," then it's a mansion. Not everything has to fit into neat little boxes. One can imagine a scenario where, upon measuring someone's expensive and recently-built abode somewhere in the US, an inspector might say, "I'm sorry, ma'am, but your dwelling comes in at 14,999 square feet, and, as you know, to be considered a mansion, it must contain at least 15,000 square feet." On the plus side, that could be amusing and I'm going to have to work it into a story at some point. It's not always straightforward to measure the area of a house, though, whether you're measuring in square feet, square meters, or, in the case of some mansions, acres or hectares. You'd think it would be easy, but often, it's not. Obviously, if the house is a rectangle, like mine, you can just measure the long side and the short side, multiply them together, then multiply by the number of floors. Right? Wrong. What you're really measuring is floor space, so you have to account for wall thickness. Also, interior wall thickness. Also, stairs, which, well, which story do you count them in? And what about bathtubs, sinks, kitchen cabinets? They count? But then you get weird old houses or mansions or castles, for instance the one featured today, for which I can just imagine some intern getting sent out to measure its livable area as part of their hazing. Er, I mean, training. Even that Wiki page provides only approximations and hedges them: "In excess of 16,200 sq ft (1,510 m2) on 3 floors (excluding basement) plus 103-foot (31 m) tower."As an aside, I always wanted a house (or mansion; I'm not picky) with a tower. Still, even if I were wealthy enough to afford one, I wouldn't want to be the one maintaining it. My own relatively simple house is hard enough to keep up with, and I'd feel bad having servants to do it for me. They can be cool to look at, though, and us peons will just have to settle for admiring the exterior. At least until the owner's goons chase us off the property. |
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