According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a McMansion is "a modern house built on a large and imposing scale, but regarded as ostentatious and lacking architectural integrity." This lack of integrity is most evidenced by an uninformed attitude to architectural style. In this house, for example, there are numerous architectural bits and pieces: a portico, classical columns, two Palladian windows, dentil moldings at the eaves, even quoins (the stone trim at the corners). They all add up to—what? No style that I can identify, like a badly mismatched outfit. Builders and their clients were once content to follow the simple dictates of the American colonial style—center halls, clapboard siding, shutters, regular window arrangements, porches. The results were satisfying, if not earthshaking. The builder of this house, who had the architectural ambition but not the skill, has produced a caricature instead.