[Jackim]

Are you saying that Victorian homes, as a rule, are aesthetic disasters? I'm curious to learn more about this as it's not something I've heard before. If you have any recommended reading about that I'd greatly appreciate it.

[nemo44x]

A lot of people refer to them as the "late 19th century McMansion". They were built with intricate looking woodworking which was available suddenly to a lot more people due to the mechanization of woodworking tools. It didn't require a craftsman to spend days carving things like it used to which made those types of details only available to the truly wealthy.

The beginning of 20th century was a complete rejection of this aesthetic because it's really just trying to come off as something it isn't really. So the Arts & Crafts movement began where simplicity and high quality became more important. This was a complete rejection of victorian aesthetics.

Saying that, many examples of Victorian styled homes in pre-war towns are beautiful and far more appreciated today. Even still you see some that are just confused in what they're trying to be (we might call them "eclectic" today), similar to many McMansions today where they use ideas out of context.

[bombcar]

In support of this, actually doing detailed tours of many "victorian houses" and then compare them to actual mansions of the era shows significant differences.

Like our McMansions of today, the houses often combine aspects that on their own can be nice in ways that don't quite "fit".