How Big Is the American Dream House?

Time-Travel ThursdaysHow Big Is the American Dream House?It’s smaller than you think.By Lily MeyerIllustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani / The AtlanticApril 30, 2026, 2:10 PM ET ShareSave This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic’s archives to contextualize the present. Sign up here.“When I was nine or ten and lived in a dark fourth-floor apartment in a building that had seen better days, I fantasized mansions that were more suited to my romantic nature,” Linda Lewis wrote in The Atlantic in 1978. In adulthood, she got only more covetous—of friends’ gorgeous houses, of French castles, of architectural marvels such as Monticello and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West.As a fellow house envier, I sympathize.

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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The Atlantic.