and McGwire had used steroids while teammates in
Oakland. At a congressional hearing, McGwire’s re-
fusal to answer questions about his steroid use left
many fans and sportswriters suspicious about his his-
tory with performance-enhancing drugs. Although
considered a future hall of famer upon his retire-
ment, McGwire was not elected to the National Base-
ball Hall of Fame during his first year of eligibility.
The taint of steroid use has made him the only eligi-
ble player with five hundred home runs to not be a
member of the Hall of Fame.
Further Reading
Fainaru-Wada, Mark, and Lance Williams.Game of
Shadows: Barr y Bonds, BALCO, and the Steroids Scan-
dal That Rocked Professional Sports. New York:
Gotham Books, 2006.
Golenbock, Peter.The Spirit of St. Louis: A Histor y of
the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns. New York: Spike
Books, 2000.
Paisner, Daniel.The Ball: Mark McGwire’s Seventieth
Home Run Ball and the Marketing of the American
Dream. New York: Viking Press, 1999.
Jacob F. Lee
See also Baseball; Baseball realignment; Baseball
strike of 1994; Home run race; Griffey, Ken, Jr.;
Ripken, Cal, Jr.; Sosa, Sammy; Sports.
McMansions
Identification Large mass-produced houses for a
family market
The growth of entire communities of large faux-luxur y
homes during the 1990’s drew withering criticism for the
houses’ mixed stylistic elements, wasted space, and high en-
ergy requirements. Their popularity, however, showed the
extreme home centeredness of many of the decade’s families,
seeking ways to incorporate indoor leisure pursuits with in-
dividuals’ needs for “personal space.”
When the first mass-produced housing develop-
ments appeared after World War II, the typical tract
house was small. Levittown, Long Island’s 17,500
new houses averaged only 750 square feet each.
With two bedrooms, one bathroom, a small living
room, and kitchen, these quickly sold out to young
families as new home owners. As prosperity spread
and baby-boom children became teenagers and
then adults, the average home size also increased,
although not dramatically. As late as 1984, the first
New American Home, an ideal model sponsored by
the housing industry, still contained only 1,500
square feet and two bedrooms, although with two
and a half baths.
In the preceding forty years, however, residential
construction had changed from the bailiwick of in-
dividual small builders and contractors to an indus-
try dominated by large-scale corporate builders.
Aided by new techniques such as five-way wooden
trusses (allowing larger open interior spaces to be
built cheaply), such builders adapted tract, pre-
designed methods to larger, upscale housing. The
1990’s growing prosperity, falling mortgage rates,
and new cultural patterns brought eager buyers for
such new, lavish “McMansions.” Their most usual lo-
cale was the outer suburbs of American cities. The
name comes from the word “mansion” with the use
of “Mc,” which conjures the common concepts sur-
rounding the McDonald’s fast-food franchise—
assembly-line process, quick and generic, mass ap-
peal.
Most McMansions featured striking front facades;
they might mix styles and decorative elements such
as gables, stone inlays, and lavish windows. Inside,
two-story entrance atriums allowed light to flood
into the house for immediate impact. The ground
floor typically included little-used formal living and
dining rooms, a large open area incorporating a gi-
ant kitchen flowing into an informal dining area
and/or a family room, and perhaps special purpose
rooms. Upstairs, a master suite usually included a
lavish bathroom and multiple closets, and there
were additional bedrooms and baths. Attached ga-
rages provided space for at least three cars.
These homes were roundly condemned for their
heavy energy demands, for using unneeded space,
and for the aesthetic imbalance between large house
“footprints” and small surrounding yards. Reasons
for their popularity were less remarked. Besides serv-
ing as a status symbol, the new space possibilities
appealed to extreme commuters, blended families,
and immigrant extended families. Seldom-used for-
mal living areas were not a new phenomenon. Since
the advent of family rooms, most Americans have
preferred to concentrate the messy activities of ev-
eryday living and television watching in a kitchen-
family room nexus and to keep the front areas pris-
tine for important visitors. Except for gardeners,The Nineties in America McMansions 539