the jalop house

"OPPOsaurus WRX" (opposaurus) 05/12/2015 at 12:55 • Filed to: None

10

11

I posted this photo of a house I saw while out at a site visiting a new client. I instantly recognized it and was curious if anyone here would as well. It sits in a Lexington neighborhood with a bizarre mixture of Carftsman, Victorian, and Bauhaus architecture.

Well no one recognized it, although !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , made a comment and probably had no idea how close he was to what makes this house so unique and Jalop. So back in the day Boston looked this:

There was a massive elevated highway which split the city in half. The waterfront and North End was cut literally cut off from downtown. You can still see buildings that had the ends cut off to make way for the new highway. Then one day someone came up with the idea of burying the highway and replacing the old one with a park system. IT was this little project called The Big Dig which went extremely smoothly, was loved by all Bostonians, and was fairly cheap. In reality it cost a fortune and a ton of headaches but it was an engineering marvel. It was on a scale which had never been done before in a major city using a variety of revolutionary tunneling techniques. The end result was beautiful.

So back to that house. Take a look at the columns in the picture of the elevated highway. Architects SsD salvaged various parts of the old elevated highway and used them to create a kit of parts / prefab system to cut the structural system construction time from 2 weeks to 12 hrs. Since the structural system is far beyond what a typical residence requires they were able to integrate roof gardens into the design

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Many people suggested the most jalop house as having lifts, turntable displays and a 10 car garage but in my opinion, this is more jalop than that. This house is made of the highway on which millions of cars had driven.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

check out the architects website for more pictures, a gif and more information.

!!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!

McMike > OPPOsaurus WRX 05/12/2015 at 13:32

0

That’s kind of neat. I was wondering what the hell that structure was for.

Looks like it might be tough to powerwash, tho...

OPPOsaurus WRX > McMike 05/12/2015 at 13:54

0

The large columns hold up the second floor and roof

MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner > OPPOsaurus WRX 05/12/2015 at 13:55

0

That is in fact - pretty fucking jalop.

Quite cool.

When was the original pre-bigdig-raised highway constructed?

OPPOsaurus WRX > MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner 05/12/2015 at 14:00

0

50’s

MontegoMan562 is a Capri RS Owner > OPPOsaurus WRX 05/12/2015 at 14:10

1

Alright, so my Grandpa most likely drove on part of this guys house when he was alive in a 69 SS Camaro.

Sweet.

Rainbow > OPPOsaurus WRX 05/12/2015 at 14:16

0

I think the most Jalop house is... really any house, as long as you take care of it and enjoy it. Pretty much the same as our cars; I’ve owned two $600 cars and nothing else, and people like BTU probably have a Scrooge McDuck money pool and a million McLarens in their private warehouses. (Or not... unless BTU is secretly Donald Trump) But we’re all here because we love and appreciate all cars.

This house is too fancy to truly be the most Jalop house since it’s just not that attainable and we can’t all potentially own it. It has to be something made cheap in clever ways.

jmedarts > OPPOsaurus WRX 05/12/2015 at 14:22

0

A Jalop house? Hmm.

Brown (check).

Wagon (?) It can carry a lot of stuff and has a long roof, so we’ll go with (check),

Do we know if it is oil-heated? How many of the house’s controls are manual?

OPPOsaurus WRX > jmedarts 05/12/2015 at 14:45

0

well it has a bunch of natural heating and cooling elements, rainwater collection, natural lighting so maybe consider it the Telsa of houses? oil heating isn;t the most efficient/cleanest for house heating.

OPPOsaurus WRX > Rainbow 05/12/2015 at 14:48

1

your probably right, that the house cost a bunch, but you could also think of this as going to the jumkyard and coming home with a new frame from a stripped out car. Makbe they did get the frame for cheap. since it was basically scrap metal at that point

someassemblyrequired > OPPOsaurus WRX 05/12/2015 at 16:35

0

Most Jalop 80s downtown Boston picture ever. Plus extra props for the Spuds MacKenzie billboard upper left.

jmedarts > OPPOsaurus WRX 05/12/2015 at 19:46

0

Agreed, but we aren't talking rational, we're talking Jalop. It's a brown diesel manual wagon or it's not, no matter how cool a house it is (and it is!)