FAR Beyond Remuddling Versus Remodeling

I was curious a month or so ago when I noticed a neighborhood house, built in 1932, had suddenly disappeared. The lot was now just that: an empty flat, dirt lot. Silly me, I hoped another older house would be moved onto the lot, but the photo directly above shows what's going up on that long, narrow lot (lot extends all the way to the adjacent parallel street) now.

The very first photo is the view of the back of it from the other street (also flanked by pre-'50s houses.) The middle two photos show the 1937- and 1940-built houses--granted, neither of which is the most outstanding examples of WWII-era residential architecture--flanking the front of this unfinished monster duplex: these two neighboring houses average around 1,200 square feet, and the duplex will be 3,727 square feet, according to its current tax appraisal.