Numbers like 50,000 are not currently used on Block Island. 50,000 is the volume, in cubic feet, of a large house. If you think back to high school algebra class, the cubic volume of a solid is calculated by measuring its width times its depth times its height. Take a good-sized 12×16 bedroom with a 9 foot celing. Its interior volume is 12 times 16 times 9, or a bit over 1,700 cubic feet. Add in the volume of its floor and its share of the walls and we might get up to, say, 2,500 square feet. So three of these large bedrooms, plus a bath or two, would be 10,000 cubic feet. Historically, island bedrooms are much smaller: 10×12 with an 8 foot celing is perfectly servicable. If you do the math, these are roughly half the cubic footage of the 12×16s. In fact, there are dozens, perhaps as many as a hundred, full houses on Block Island that are in the 10,0000 cubic foot range.

There are also a growing number of island dreadnoughts in the 50,000 to 110,000 cubic foot range, where the cubic footage includes all the volume from a roof or deck down to the ground, but excludes anything below ground level. If there is a 10,000 cubic foot detached garage with “bonus room” above ( you can see a mainland one at http://home.earthlink.net/~grleone/house/bonusroom.htm ) it is counted. But a garage below ground level is not. So cubic footage is quite a good predictor of the visual impact of a proposed house. And it is a good measure of the gratuitous bulk of such a house. A three-bedroom house can be quite comfortably put together in 20,000 to 25,000 cubic feet. The odds are good that such a house will be respectful of the island. Volume above that level is unlikely to look or feel respectful.