John Edwards’s Shantytown House
John Edwards has a funny house.
Besides being the most expensive house in Orange county, North Carolina, having indoor basketball and handball courts, a parking lot bigger than my middle school’s, and the obligatory indoor pool, it also has one super strange design element.
Click to big-ify.
This is John Edwards’s house from afar. It looks as though it was constructed in two parts. On the left is a mansion-like, green-roofed home, and on the right appears to be a red barn.
Clearly the barn isn’t a traditional barn. If it ever was a standard, horse-bearing barn it has long since been remodeled into something more fitting the modern politician. One would obviously guess that that’s where the Edwards family keeps the basketball and handball courts (who even plays handball?). The truly odd part of this house, however, is what’s between the house and the barn… can you see it? I’ll make it a little bit more obvious.
That. What the heck is that? John Edwards appears to have connected the house to the barn by building a series of sheds, each immediately next to the one before it, of varying sizes, shapes, colors and angles. Who would build that? It’s like there’s a shantytown connecting the house with the barn.
It looks like he had the house and the barn, but didn’t have enough money to connect them so he built the connection in installments. Every time he got a paycheck, he had the builders throw another extension onto the house, knowing that eventually they’d make it all the way to to the barn. When they had more money, they built bigger sheds; when they had less, they built smaller ones.
Do you think it’s all one big hallway in there? Or is it a series of small, oddly shaped rooms? I’d love to take a tour.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
i looked at the bigified photo before reading further. here’s what i noticed:
if you trace the driveways and the lawn area around the main part of the house, it sort of looks like U.S.!
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November 14th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
you’d think for all that money, he could afford some landscaping. what’s the big divot in the woods for? an extended parking lot for several hundred cars?
that connection is really odd, especially the last red sections before the big red barn. two slanty roof parts and even better.. a segment that doesn’t appear to have a foundation. rather, it’s just hanging out above a nonexistent creek.
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November 14th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
The part hanging out in mid-air is pretty good. The whole thing is good.
When I was growing up we had neighbors who built an entire fence, several thousand feet long (maybe more than a mile in total liner distance) out of twigs. It was like a mile-long birds nest. Whatever they found lying around got thrown into the nest/fence and just got bigger and bigger over time.
If they were rich, John Edwards’s crazy connection is what they would build.
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November 15th, 2007 at 2:40 am
Reminds me of the uffizi gallery in Florence. They built a series of buildings to connect their offices with their castle.
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November 16th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Cool. I’ve always wanted a barn, and I’m just thinking about all the large scale paintings that I could do there!
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July 6th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
as much as I dislike the Edwards family, what he’s done here is not all that unusual. In New England, it is commonplace to build “connected” farms, where the outbuildings and house are connected with a variety of different looking sheds and outbuildings. It’s the style and probably serves them very well in the frigid winters of New England… go to all the shops and barns without braving the freezing ice and snow storms. In Edwards’ case it serves to provide much desired privacy from airplane photographers such as the one who hovered around and took the pictures used in this article.
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March 4th, 2010 at 9:47 am
Is there enough room to hide from Elizabeth?
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