Crime of the Week

Larchmont-adjacent gemisch.

The taste for pre-fab Corinthian columns is not limited, it seems, to Encino's nouveau riche enclaves. This house is Larchmont-adjacent (to use the parlance of real estate agents) and on a street with many nicely maintained cottages and bungalows.

Here, however, the builder opted for an inarticulate stucco box with a hodge-podge of mail-order "features" slapped on: skinny, entasis-free fluted columns which, fortunately, don't really have to support anything; an off-the-shelf Georgian-style door surround, surrounding a vaguely Mediterranean door; a crude balcony befitting a '50s public housing project; an afterthought of an oeil-de-boeuf; prison-like gratings on the lower windows.

When it tuned out that this malproportioned mess lined up perfectly on the grid with the unattractive (although better designed) office building behind it, I felt I had to include the latter as well.