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In the historic districts, we already sort of are, and I think planning departments in a lot of beautiful cities are really aggressive about aesthetics.

I think the planners in Jersey City are timid because they still think of the city as a low-income pit that's lucky to get any attention from builders.

Anyhow, if it's not practical or ethical for the planners to ban fake bricks, what about this:

If builders are building a bunch of hideous bricktorians just because the plans are cheap, why doesn't a Jersey City civic group pay the Bricktorian King to work with top designers to figure out ways to make the basic bricktorian more attractive?

That, way, we'd have a voluntary program using market forces (free or cheap plans) to get builders to build what many people believe to be more attractive homes.

can somebody post a picture of one of these italianate bayonne bricktorians?

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ianmac47-

i don't see any reference in this thread to legislating "taste". i agree that's not very american, and could easily result in unanticipated consequences. Rather, i think the bigger issue with these houses, as you'll see by the passages i bolded above, is the fact that they almost uniformly do not comply with existing zoning laws in JC. We have a plan, we have zoning restrictions. It just seems that we have zero enforcement coming from the zoning/planning/building offices. That seems to be what mia's program is about.

the way i look at it, so long as you are observing all applicable zoning ordinances that i am forced to abide by as well, you are free to build as ugly a house as you like across the street from me. that won't make me stop calling that house ugly, but i won't argue with your right to do it, so long as you do it within the laws that govern us all.

A lot of these houses would look ok (not great, but ok) if they'd use red brick and plainer black-painted metal work on the railings. The cost would be the same if not lower.

I totally do not get the appeal of the pinkish brick. I get especially annoyed when someone with an old red brick house puts on a new patio with the pink or otherwise oddly colored bricks. Do they do it on purpose? Or does the contractor just buy whatever's available or cheapest? I'm sure an exact match with old brick is very expensive, but I'm sure you can get close enough at a reasonable cost.

Going kind of off topic, but I've seen a lot of new modern condos in downtown NYC using a very dark purplish brick, which I actually like for those applications, but it would probably look quite horrendous on a Bayonne Box.

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I prefer "Bayonne Boxes".

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There are several problems with all this. For one thing, one person's aesthetic values are different from another's. Sure, many people might find the Bricktorians hideous, but other folks might think they're beautiful. I personally think modern McMansions are awful, but apparently people keep buying these starter castles out in the 'burbs. Even if you think the Bricktorians are awful and rather see them wiped from the city, do you really want to live in a place where government is passing judgment on your aesthetic values? If you outlaw the Bricktorians, there is nothing stopping a change in the zeitgeist from outlawing Victorian brownstones or colonial row houses or Modernist glass houses or art deco or romansque or gothic revival or post-modern.

A better solution is amending zoning laws to promote certain traditional features of urban communities. But amending zoning laws piecemeal and without the assistance of planning professionals -- an more importantly, on the whim of elected officials -- can be equally problematic. Just look at what happened with the whole car port / lawn driveway debacle. A number of otherwise well intentioned, if self-interested, individuals want more curb cuts for private parking on cart ports. Yet curb cuts every few feet for driveways is fundamentally inconsistent with an urban neighborhood. Just look at the few places downtown where there are some existing curb cuts, like the western end of the number streets, 3rd, 4th, 5th. Or the section of York between Barrow and Grove. No doubt the owners of these houses love their car ports, but they are also depriving their neighbors of public street parking while defacing the the facade of their buildings with 8 foot wide garage doors.

Zoning guidelines can be used to define certain attributes without defining architectural style. The most exaggerated example of might very well be Seadside, FL. Technically, this was not zoning but condominium association rules, but the de facto result was essentially zoning. Coincidentally, Duany Plater Zyberk, the master planners of Liberty Harbor North, created the zoning rules for Seaside. In essence, the zoning in seaside stipulates particulars of dimensions, setbacks, volume, and lot placement, but not architectural style. In this way, multiple architects were able to design a unified community with individual architectural styles. LHN is similar in that there are certain rules which the architects followed in designing buildings.

The advantage that Seaside of LHN have over a regular city is two fold. One, both are being built from the ground up, and two, there is no need to kowtow to constituents who are self interested. This is evident when it comes to the car port debate. Most people will agree that they don't want their neighbors disrupting street parking and the aesthetics of a neighborhood with curb cuts for parking lots, but at the same time those same people want to be allowed to have a private parking space for their own use. And the trouble is its not just car ports. People want to expand the volume and the footprint of their house, but not let their neighbors do the same thing. They want to change the setback of their structure, but not let others do it. The end result is political leaders try pleasing everyone and create weak zoning that doesn't really accomplish anything.

I agree that the bricktorians are ugly, but I think the problem is that trying to build houses that "blend in" with homes built in the 1800s or early 1900s is either going to be very expensive or lead to terrible results.

Maybe the Liberty Harbor North homes are going to look OK, for example, but I think the most of the fake old homes in Paulus Hook are hideous.

I think the best approach to putting a new home in a historic neighborhood is to do what the designers of the addition to the Louvre did and put up a modern, metal and glass building, without any use of bricks or fake bricks.

If there's some reason not to use metal and glass, then the builder should use old real bricks, or concrete or ceramic tiles. But never, ever modern bricks or fake old brick siding.

maybe it is because i am italian and from secaucus where they are a favorite.
they are gross, and they usually have that glass panel in the front door with the gold scroll inset and the ugly white or brassy iron railings. uggh.
someone told me the reason they are so popular is that an architect in bayonne sells the plans super cheap.

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the best name i've seen for them, on another website i think, was "bricktorians".

what exactly is "italian" about them, newlafayette?

I call them italian specials. the brick ones right?

New In-Fill Housing, future blight to our neighborhoods?
TONIGHT AT 9:30pm
Take a tour of the new in-fill housing, those pink and white houses, scattered all over the city. Learn that they do not comply with the zoning laws nor fit in with their neighborhoods. Charlene Burke, President of the West Bergen - Lincoln Park Neighborhood Coalition educates us on the zoning laws and points out all of the non-compliance with the zoning laws. Who's minding the store here?
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