I hate to do this........but

NEW HABITAT HOUSE ON COLUMBIA TERRACE

While I appreciate all of the time that the retirees devote to Habitat for Humanity, it would be nice if they could get a retired architect to assist the retired engineers and electricians who put these houses together.

There is nothing structurally wrong with houses. In fact the care and quality put into the labor, on these home may rival million dollar homes. But architecturally, they could be compared to a Mr. Potato, head, where someone put different sized ears, different shaped eyes and body parts with no blending of any color scheme.

And when you go to all the trouble of putting a new house in a Victorian neighborhood that is trying to stabilize itself..........and is improving...why not blend the functionality of the structure with architectural style that is compatible with the other houses in the neighborhood.

University East has many fine examples of Craftsman architecture, from which some of the following "stylistic errors" could have been avoided:

1. Craftsman's rarely have shutters. But if they do, the shutters are of the size that actually (could) cover the windows. The decorative aspect of shutters, originated with the functionality of shutters which required that the shutters could actually cover the window. These shutters look stupidly mismatched to a window of this width, to anyone that ever actually paused to think about this.

2. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER.........have a porch railing that reaches up over the base height of the window. When you are sitting in your house, looking out your front window, the view out of that window, and of that window from the street, should not be obstructed by ballusters and a rail.

3. LIKEWISE WITH PORCH SUPPORTS. You don't put them where they would obstruct the view from the picture window!

4. BALANCE THE WINDOWS...especially in the front of the house. Look at the windows on the left. They are too small and too high up. Windows are the eyes of the home. This Houses' face has one large eye and one small eye. Think of how stupid you would look if you had one eye that was twice the size of the other. Well, that is how stupid this house looks. Notice that the door, as is a persons, nose or mouth, is centered on the "face" providing a symetry that then gets screwed up by the mismatched sizing of the windows.

5. If you are going to go to all of the trouble to have symetry in the structure, put a railing on each side of the steps. Here it looks like someone just quit before the job was done. And what if someone with the use of only one arm moves in???? Hello?!

6. Minor decorative points: You don't see fish scaling so much on craftsman. usually the craftsman had narrow lap siding or wood shingles. The gridding skirting the porch is diagonal....which is all wrong.....to be consistent with the period, it needs to be vertical. The half height porch posts.......they mess up the symetry of the porch. There is something wrong with the shape of the porch posts...oh yeah....they are plain square and the ballusers are turned and victorian style.

Here are appropriate examples of craftsman, and a victorian cottage, that ironically enough is just across the street from the Habitat warehouse on Main Street.