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HOUSES FOR TOWN
OR COUNTRY
A NEW-OLD DOORWAY
HOUSES
for |H|
TOWN or COUNTRY
BY
William Herbert
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
Duffield & Company
1907
COPYRIGHT 1903, 1904, 1905, 1906, 1907,
BY THE ARCHITECTURAL RECORD Co.
COPYRIGHT 1907, BY
DUFFIELD & COMPANY
Published August, 1907
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE OF TO-DAY . 3
II. THE TYPICAL TOWN HOUSE .... 39
III. THE AMERICAN COUNTRY ESTATE . . 63
IV. THE TYPICAL COUNTRY HOUSE ... 89
V. THE HOUSE FOR ALL THE YEAR . . . 105
VI. THE HALL AND THE STAIRS . . . . 126
VII. THE LIVING-ROOM 145
VIII. THE DINING-ROOM . . . . . .158
IX. THE BEDROOM 177
X. THE KITCHEN 192
XI. THE HOUSE IN RELATION TO OUT-OF-
DOORS 203
XII. NEW USES OF OLD FORMS 222
HOUSES FOR TOWN
OR COUNTRY
CHAPTER I
AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE OF TO-DAY
THE United States has of late years passed through
a period of significant activity in house-building.
Beginning with 1899, Americans began to realise
that their stock of buildings of all kinds was inade-
quate or superannuated. Increased volume of busi-
ness, improved standards of living, higher aesthetic
ideals all demanded more buildings, in some cases
larger buildings, and buildings of a different type.
Railroads found their stations cramped and ill-
planned, their bridges too light to carry the heavier
rolling stock they were using. Inn-keepers discovered
that their patrons wanted larger and more sump-
tous hotels, and at the same time they wished to take
advantage themselves of recent improvements in the
mechanics of hotel arrangement and outfit. The
growth of cities and the increase in the wealth of
their capitalists and banks encouraged as never before
in so short a period the erection of huge office build-
ings; factories and warehouses of greater dimensions
and superior equipment were demanded in even
larger numbers; western and southern cities as well
as New York found apartment houses paying specu-
lative enterprises; and finally, all over the country
rich and moderately well-to-do people were stimu-
lated either to build new and larger dwellings, or to
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HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
remodel and redecorate, with the guidance of the
best contemporary standards of design and embel-
lishment, the dwellings which they already had. A
complete set of new architectural mechanism and
scenery was required; and it is not too much to say
that in constructing it the American people accom-
plished in a few years an amount of building quite
unprecedented in the history of the world.
What dominant tendencies are traceable in
this miscellaneous mass of new construction? Which
of these tendencies are new? Which significant?
Which wholesome? What vitality have these
wholesome tendencies?
The tendency best worth remarking is the increas-
ing influence of a few general types of design.
American architecture is still heterogeneous and in-
discriminate enough; but not nearly so much so as
it used to be. Certain solutions of special problems
have been worked out, and largely adopted ; and it is
even more encouraging to note that these special
ways of treatment and types of design, while open to
many serious objections, have all some measure of
propriety. Architecture in America, in other words,
is becoming nationalised in very much the same
way, if not to very much the same extent, as in mod-
ern England or France.
The more complete nationalising of American
architecture in this limited sense may not seem to be
a very important or desirable achievement; but from
the point of view of the history of American archi-
tecture, it is both. There can be no doubt that the
process in question is one of improvement, and
4
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
promises, by giving some coherence and definiteness
to a collection of designs formerly much more in-
coherent and dubious, to make the long and devious
path of American architectural experimentation end
in some genuine local architectural types.
It is a singular fact that American architectural
practice was most uniform at the time when Ameri-
can social life was most completely divided by
local and provincial traditions and customs. Not-
withstanding differences arising from the contrast
between the manner of life of a New England mer-
chant and a Virginian planter, the larger Colonial
building was surprisingly the same in all parts of
the country, just as it was also surprisingly similar to
its prototype in Georgian England. In the same
way the architectural pseudo-classicism of the early
days of the Republic, as soon as it was sufficiently
introduced and properly familiarised, was used al-
most universally in buildings intended to possess any
considerable architectural quality. In both these
cases Americans were content to imitate a habit of
design which originated abroad and was authorised
by the respectable critical opinion of the day. They
were frankly Colonial in their practice, untroubled
by any aspirations after originality, diversity or pic-
turesqueness.
As American life became more thoroughly nation-
alised, American architecture lost its early innocence
of imitation, and consequently its early uniform-
ity. It abandoned all touch with the respectable
critical opinion of other countries; and it was
quite without any definite critical opinions, respect-
6
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
able or otherwise, of its own. In fact it had no
leading strings, except certain blind but significant
NEW YORK HOUSE FRONTS
instincts. The practice of imitation was deep-
rooted; but it was the practice of imitating foreign
models exclusively. There was never any thought
8
AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE OF TO-DAY
of working over, or of really appropriating the
forms already nationalised in this country. The
period of American architecture meant merely the
RENAISSANCE FACADES
substitution of indiscriminate habits of imitation, for
the selective imitation which had up to that time
prevailed. The idea apparently was that the United
States had inherited, architecturally, all the styles of
9
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
the present and of the past, of the East and the
West; and that the best way to use this heritage was
to transplant to American soil as many samples as
possible of these various types of building So, dur-
ing the twenty years preceding the war, American
architecture showed how disinterested and impar-
tial it was by becoming responsible for a surprising
collection of Greek and Egyptian temple-residences,
Italian villas, French chateaux, Oriental padogas
and Gothic cottages. If there was any style of
building which the American architect of that
period missed, its omission was assuredly due to
ignorance rather than to intention. Of course, this
ignorant and riotous copying was to be found chiefly
in the design of private dwellings. The official
architecture of the whole of this period tended to
be very conservative; and while New York did not
avoid the anomaly of an " Egyptian" prison, Wash-
ington was spared the misfortune of any precisely
analogous absurdity.
Without going into the details of our architectural
history, it is sufficient for present purposes to say
that design in this country has retained ever since to
a greater or less extent this habit of indiscriminate
imitation. Its occasional attempts at originality
have been limited either to mere exaggerated dis-
tortions of conventional types, or to the incongruous
mixture of several different types in one building.
There has, however, been a constant improvement
in the quality of the imitation, owing to the im-
provement in the training and equipment of the
American architect and a number of special archi-
10
AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE OF TO-DAY
tectural movements have at different times had a great
deal of influence. During the seventies, for instance,
the attempted reform of the methods of interior deco-
ration, which originated with Charles Eastlake, had
considerable popularity. Next the powerful per-
sonality of Richardson printed the Romanesque Re-
vival upon many of the most important buildings
erected during the eighties. Since then the cur-
rent has been running toward several different dilu-
tions of the Italian or the French Renaissance styles.
All of these architectural tendencies are embodied in
a greater or smaller number of buildings; but the
point is that the particular tendencies now prevailing
are embodied in a greater number of buildings than
ever before. The Eastlakian reform and the Roman-
esque revival affected different parts of the country
very unevenly. The tendencies now at work are
more evenly and generally effective ; and if the
larger of the new buildings could all be grouped
together they would show both fewer architectural
types and a wider geographical distribution of
them.
Take, for instance, the designing of tall office-
buildings. When steel construction began to have
its effect upon the height and the looks of office-
buildings, two tendencies were traceable in their
design. In New York there was no attempt, as there
should be in any kind of building, to make their
appearance express their structure. A convention of
treating them as columns with a decorated capital,
a long plain central shaft, and a heavier base, was
early adopted ; and within the limits of this general
ii
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
A PHILADELPHIA HOUSE FRONT
idea, the regular architectural, structural and deco-
rative forms were used regardless of their ordinary
structural functions and associations. In Chicago,
12
AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE OF TO-DAY
on the other hand, while many buildings were de-
signed along the same lines as New York, there was
a tendency towards a franker expression in the
design of these buildings of the plain facts of their
steel structure. Such is no longer the case. The
new sky-scrapers, which have been, and are being,
erected in large numbers in Chicago and Pittsburgh,
as well as New York, almost all conform to the con-
ventional treatment, long since adopted in the me-
tropolis— and this in spite of comparatively good-
looking attempts to solve the problem within the
limitations imposed by the structure. Whether or
not the American architect has, in this instance,
chosen the wrong alternative, he has at any rate, for
the time being, adopted a comparatively uniform
type for the design of the " sky-scrapers."
Very much the same inference can be drawn from
the manner in which the later hotels have been de-
signed. Until recently the larger hotels of the
United States did not in their appearance embody
the remotest approach to a convention. Except in
one or two instances they were ugly and incongruous
hodge-podges of worthless architectural motives.
Apparently nobody cared very much how a hotel
looked or what atmosphere it exhaled. The early
big American inns, such as the Astor and Palmer
houses, were morose and heavy but grandiose build-
ings, embodying, one might infer, the idea that
hotels were a kind of public penal institution, from
which guests must be denied escape. Even the
Auditorium in Chicago belongs in this respect to
the earlier type of American hotels. Although
17
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
architecturally of the highest interest, its fagade pos-
sesses none the less a grim and forbidding aspect,
which is out of keeping with the uses to which the
building is put. It was the Waldorf-Astoria which
changed all this and started hotel fagades off on new
lines. By reason of its magnitude, its conspicuous-
ness, its success, and even, with all its faults, of a
certain propriety in the design, its architect has
really established a fashion in hotel fronts. Since
its erection both architects and proprietors of these
buildings have come to realise that one means of
attracting the custom of rich and " smart" people is
to put up a "smart" appearance on the outside as
well as on the inside of their hotels; and ever since
some such attempt has been made. The big new
hotels, both in New York and the other leading
cities, are revised versions of the Waldorf-Astoria or
the Manhattan or both. Specifically French char-
acteristics have in most cases been intensified; but
the parentage is unmistakable, and is traceable in
the Hotel St. Regis, the Hotel Astor, the Knicker-
bocker, in the larger apartment hotels of New York,
in the New Stratford in Philadelphia, the New
Willard in Washington, the Belvidere in Baltimore,
and even the Lafayette in Buffalo. While one may
or may not like this sort of thing, one must admit
that it has an appropriately festive appearance, and
that it affords an excellent illustration of the
increased prevalence of certain specific types in
American architecture.
The two foregoing instances suggest that perhaps
the secret of this increased prevalence of specific
14
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
types is the growing assumption by New York of an
actual metropolitan function in the social economy
of the country. From this/ point of view American
architecture would be obtaining certain definite
general characteristics, because the smaller cities
were looking to New York for leadership in matters
of taste. There is undoubtedly some truth in this
interpretation of the facts. New York is more the
leader in matters of taste than it ever has been before.
It does a great deal, and is constantly doing more to
fix the standards, such as they are, of the rest of the
country. But the extent to which other cities look
to New York for their architectural conventions
has some obvious and significant limitations. New
York in its relation to the rest of the country has two
distinguishing characteristics: It is the city, on
the one hand, of the rich man, the national corpo-
rations, and the big buildings. On the other hand i-t
is the port of entry of the latest foreign artistic in-
jection. It so happens at the present time that these
two different characteristics of New York have a
very unequal effect upon the rest of the country. In
all showy and costly structures, such as office build-
ings, hotels, and " palatial residences," the general
standards and conventions are for the most part de-
rived from New York; and this current of imitation
of some part of the latest foreign architectural in-
jection, gives an impetus to a kind of Beaux-Arts
movement over the South and the West. For the
most part, however, the Beaux-Arts influence is con-
fined to New York. It has had practically no effect
upon any but the biggest residences and apartment
16
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
A TYPE OF INEXPENSIVE DWELLING
houses. The smaller dwellings in the other cities
owe little to New York, while in the western cities
an interesting and in some respects excellent local
type of apartment house is being developed.
The comparative lack of influence of New York
over the design of middle-class residences and
apartment houses is partly due to the peculiarly
local conditions which determine such designs in
the metropolis. New York is cramped for space and
will remain so until subways, bridges and tunnels
abolish the impediments to free communication re-
sulting from its insular situation. Western cities, on
18
AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE OF TO-DAY
the other hand, can expand in almost any direction
with the utmost freedom, and a comparatively poor
resident of one of them can afford to buy as much
land in an eligible location as a very rich man may
in New York. In consequence the detached resi-
dence still prevails in the West and even in certain
parts of the East, whereas the block residence,
whether private or multiple, prevails and will con-
tinue to prevail in New York. New York has, of
course, its suburbs; but its suburban residences, ex-
cept in a few choice locations, belong to an inferior
type. Its typical dwelling is that erected on a lot
measuring from twenty-five to fifty by one hundred,
and covering as large a portion of that lot as the law
allows; and the successful solution of the architec-
tural problem offered by such a fagade contains little
that is useful to the designer of the detached resi-
dence of the West.
The influence of New York consequently on resi-
dential design does not cover either a very consider-
able area or very many instances. Some large seven
and eight-story apartment houses have recently been
erected in Washington; and these buildings, deplor-
ably out of keeping with the general atmosphere and
appearance of the city, might very well have been
situated in those parts of the West Side of New
York most dominated by the speculative builder of
flats. Outside of Washington, however, apartment
houses of this type are a rare and insignificant ex-
crescence. In the same way the millionaires' resi-
dences of the West are frequently nothing more than
vulgarised imitations of some of the "stunning"
19
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
dwellings designed by New York architects for rich
New York clients, which instead of being " stun-
ning " are more often stupefying. The resemblance,
such as it is, is much more a matter of the interior
than of the exterior. Their detachment so com-
pletely alters the conditions under which they are
designed that there is a corresponding alteration in
their appearance.
The suburban apartment house of the West is a
type of residence almost unknown either in New
York or its vicinity. The New York apartment
house has none of the characteristics of good do-
mestic architecture. At its best it tends to become a
copy of the corresponding French type, and obtains
some of the same effect of festive publicity; but the
speculative builder very seldom allows it to appear
at its best. It is a kind of residence which no man
of taste would choose unless he were obliged to do
so. The better suburban apartment house of the
West, on the contrary, is obliged to make itself at-
tractive. People of moderately respectable means
are not forced to live in a flat. If they choose to do
so, it is not because they could not afford a house;
it is merely because they find a flat for some reason
more suitable to their particular needs. Flats and
dwellings, that is, are more nearly on the same eco-
nomic level, and compete freely with each other;
and as an incident to this competition, the builders
of low-priced flats try harder to retain some of the
advantages of private residences without surrender-
ing the advantages of all multiple residences. Con-
sequently the suburban apartment house of the
20
AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE OF TO-DAY
West is frequently built free from neighbouring
buildings, is surrounded by open spaces made at-
tractive with shrubbery and flowers; is generally
designed in a distantly Georgian and Jacobean man-
ner, and so presents the appearance of a domestic
building; and each apartment is often supplied with
a pleasant roomy piazza for the exclusive use of its
occupants. It is also easier under such conditions to
plan the flats so that the rooms are larger, better
lighted, and more effectively distributed. It is evi-
dent that residential buildings of this type will be-
come still more important in the future, and are
destined to be more numerous than they now are
in the New York suburbs.
In the design of private dwellings, New York has
no more general influence upon the South and West
than it does in the design of apartment houses. In
this respect the West is adopting a tradition which
has been better preserved in Boston and Philadel-
phia than in New York, the tradition of the good
brick styles. The advantage which it derives from
possessing an abundance of comparatively cheap and
Accessible land cannot be overestimated. The pri-
ate dwelling which forms a part of the block and
tends to become taller and deeper constitutes a muti-
lated and discouraging architectural problem; and
it is particularly discouraging in cities, such as those
of England and the United States, wherein archi-
tectural ignorance and caprice have not been regu-
lated by convention or law. We believe that the
better contemporary New York dwelling is a great
improvement upon the corresponding grade of
23
mam
m
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HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
London dwellings, as well as upon the better New
York dwelling of ten years or more ago; but it has
little interest from the present point of view, because
it has not as yet succeeded in reaching the respect-
able routine that would be its best merit, which is
the line of development we are now seeking to trace
in American design.
Th€ West, however, is emancipated from these
disadvantageous conditions. Its new urban dwell-
ings, costing from $40,000 to $200,000, are designed
under very favorable circumstances. The avenues
and boulevards upon which its handsome houses are
situated are broad and well-shaded and admirably
adapted to the use of automobiles — a conveyance
which will be extremely effective in confirming the
use of this type of dwelling. Each house is a unit,
and is generally surrounded by sufficient land to
enable the architect to enhance his design by appro-
priate landscape arrangements. It is possible under
such conditions to give a personal and domestic at-
mosphere to the individual house; which is just
what is happening in the West — particularly in the
large Middle Western cities.
The design of these buildings is beginning to show
certain definite characteristics. The use of brick is
very general except in a few of the most expensive
houses, and in many cases even these expensive
houses are no exception to this rule. Wherever
brick is used, it is generally well used. The historic
domestic styles appropriate to brick construction
are, of course, the Georgian and Jacobean, so that
when it is asserted that the great majority of these
26
AMERICAN COUNTRY HOUSES
AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE OF TO-DAY
RESIDENCE ON FERRY STREET, BUFFALO
houses are modifications either of the Georgian or
Jacobean types of dwelling, they have been placed
in an excellent stylistic tradition. Of the two the
Georgian predominates, both because of its Ameri-
can associations, and because it is better adapted to
the comparatively modest dimensions of the great
majority of these houses. The Georgian is also
treated with better effect because its forms are less
difficult to handle than those of a transitional style
like the Jacobean. The only other historical domes-
tic form found in a sufficient number of examples to
demand notice, is the Elizabethan timbered gabled
29
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
dwelling. This type is very popular, perhaps more
popular than the Jacobean, because it also is adapted
to houses of comparatively small cost; and the archi-
tects who use it show much more skill than formerly
in avoiding the mere looseness of design for which
these irregular styles offer opportunity.
The examples given above sufficiently illustrate
the truth of my preliminary statement that American
architects are adopting more than ever certain
stereotyped kinds of design. I have traced the pres-
ence of these types in office buildings, in the larger
hotels, in apartment houses and private dwellings.
Examples might include the best kind of factory
buildings and warehouses, and a large number of
one-story bank buildings. It is unnecessary, how-
ever, to describe in any further detail the existence
of this tendency towards increased definition, and it
only remains to pass a proper judgment upon its sig-
nificance and value.
There can be no doubt that the increasing au-
thority of certain special types of design constitutes
the line of progress for American architecture. The
architect more than any other artist is dependent
upon precedent. The material of his work is not
derived from nature or life, but from the work of
his predecessors. His individual genius counts for
less than in the other arts; the general social and the
particular technical standards count for more. This
was particularly true in the great periods of Greek
and Gothic architecture, whose noblest monuments
were almost literally the work of communities and
certain particular, although flexible, forms were
30
AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE OF TO-DAY
absolutely imposed upon the architects. With the
Renaissance began a period of more conscious
imitation of forms that had already been devel-
oped to the highest degree of perfection. It gave
the individual architect a greater freedom of choice
than he had ever had before, and increased corre-
spondingly his opportunity for merely individual
work. But it did not emancipate him from prece-
dent; it only gave him a larger number of prece-
dents from which to choose. Undoubtedly this very
freedom of choice, which only reached its height
during the last one hundred years, is the chief cause
of the degeneracy of architecture during the nine-
teenth century. It has been most meritorious in those
cases in which certain conventions have been estab-
lished, as in France. It has been less so when the
architect owed no allegiance to any authoritative
forms. The architect can never regain the compara-
tive unconsciousness and single-mindedness of his
Greek and Gothic predecessors; but with the help of
a sound national culture, he can impose upon him-
self conventions that will reduce the area of arbi-
trary choice and enable him to devote himself more
to the adaptation and improvement than to the selec-
tion of types of design.
This is just what the American architect is now
doing. He is imposing certain types of design upon
himself, and is concerned more in appropriating
these types and in developing them to a satisfactory
finish than in borrowing or trying to invent new
types. In using the phrase " the American architect "
in the description above, I do not mean all Ameri-
31
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
AN OLDER TYPE
can architects. I do not mean even all the good
American architects, but only the better and younger
Americans whose work is becoming more conspic-
uous every day, and to whom belongs the immediate
future of American design. The older architects,
whose work during the past twenty-five years has
been so valuable and who have done so much to
raise the technical standards of the profession, were
essentially eclectic, and experimented freely with
many different types. Their achievements were of
32
AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE OF TO-DAY
A DIFFERENCE OF LEVELS
the utmost value in making the transition from an
ignorant and indiscriminate to an intelligent eclecti-
cism. They served to educate the clients for whom
they built, the mechanics who carried the designs
out, and the pupils who continued the professional
tradition. Most of all they have succeeded in edu-
cating themselves, for their work has shown a con-
stantly growing tendency toward the adoption of
certain specific types. It is not to be supposed that
the eclecticism of the past will disappear during the
period of American design now beginning. The
process of education is incomplete. The formative
33
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
influences are still weak and uncertain; a vast ac-
cumulation of bad habits, indifference, low and easy-
going standards remain to be reduced. Yet un-
doubtedly the younger men are conscious of the need
of giving consistency and effect to their work by the
persistent use of certain particular architectural
types, and by the persistent attempt to give to those
types a value that is both newer and more complete.
I have described the growing popularity of special
types of design for special kinds of buildings as the
increasing " nationalisation " of American architec-
ture, but probably that was going too far. The
phrase is intended to express a desirable issue faintly
promised rather than particularly achieved. Before
we can speak of the " nationalisation " of American
architecture we must not merely be able to trace the
constant use of certain special types of design, but
show that without losing their traditional dignity
those types are being given an appropriate local ex-
pression— that they are living types constantly gath-
ering a complete consistency, a better adaptation to
the structure and the service of the building and a
finer aesthetic propriety. In this sense of the word
" national" American architecture can only to a
limited extent be described as in the way of national-
isation. The long and difficult task of adapting the
traditional styles to the peculiarities of American
structural methods and utilitarian requirements is
being more frequently ignored and evaded than reso-
lutely faced.
The structure of our buildings and their design
are so far almost completely at cross-purposes; and
34
AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE OF TO-DAY
any one who defines good architecture in terms of
congruity will find few signs of improvement in
recent buildings. But while we may not look for
any advance in this very important respect, our
architects are nevertheless succeeding in giving their
buildings an ever-increasing propriety and consist-
ency of appearance. When they design a hotel they
use a style that harmonises with the way we feel
when we are living for a few days away from home,
freed from routine and responsibilities. When they
design a private dwelling they seek to give the build-
ing a style that is homely, domestic and refined.
Furthermore these styles are carefully studied and
are treated generally with an eye to strictly archi-
tectural effects. The persistent attempt is to get a
building in which the mass, the proportion, and the
detail each has its proper value, and this is a con-
siderable gain over the past when architects sought
merely picturesque effects by almost ignoring pro-
portions, and conceived their building as a collection
of detail on a large scale.
In another respect, also, American architecture,
particularly in the case of dwellings, may be said to
have grown more idiomatic. If structure and de-
sign remain very much at cross purposes, plan and
design are becoming friendlier. The plan of the
modern American dwelling differs in some impor-
tant respects from that of any historical type of
residence. These variations frequently lead to inter-
esting modifications in the designs, and consequently
to desirable departures from mere stylistic purity.
The piazza, for instance, which is so necessary in the
35
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
AN AMERICAN PIAZZA
American summer climate and which has been an
architectural excrescence on the majority of country
houses, is now frequently treated as an outdoor
room, in strict subordination to the main design.
Sometimes it appears as a narrow gallery on the face
of the house, more often a place is found for it at
one or both ends, its lines being used either to con-
tinue those of the house or to vary them in an inter-
esting way. This is only one illustration out of many
which might be used, but it is typical of the more
conscientious manner in which the architect attempts
to render in appropriate architectural terms the
novel and local conditions given in the plans of his
buildings.
36
AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE OF TO-DAY
It should be added that the adoption of certain
definite and appropriate types of design by the
better American architects should help not only to
raise the standard of American architecture, but
increase its popularity. In the past our architects
have apparently sought to make their work im-
pressive chiefly by making it striking; but if the im-
pression is to be widespread as well as deep, it is
rather the familiar than the "stunning" thing that
counts. The " people " are merely confused by an
art and architecture to which they are unaccustomed.
They may be " stunned " for the moment, but next
moment they forget all about it. On the other hand
they are pleased and convinced by a kind of art that
finds its way to their apprehension by means of their
memories. In the representative arts, the subject-
matter represented must appeal to their common ex-
perience. In the more formal and decorative arts
form must have the confirmation of association. The
difficulty with modern American architecture is
that it started with nothing but vicious associations,
and the good architects have been confronted by the
enormously difficult task of substituting the com-
paratively good for the comparatively bad associa-
tions of the past. In so doing they have depended
too much on obtaining an interesting variety of
effect, and too little upon the value of repetition as
an advertisement. Architectural repetition is in bad
odor in this country, because in the past it has been
applied chiefly to such dead and dreary material as
brownstone fronts. Nevertheless the one sensible
course for the future — the one course which will
37
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
provide both for a better quality of design and for
a completer understanding between architect and
client — is to make out of repetition a conviction
and ideal. If the opportunities for repetition are
studied with sufficient care the necessary variety and
novelty of effect will take care of themselves.
CHAPTER II
THE TYPICAL TOWN HOUSE
THE typical town house may be defined as the sort
of house one is compelled to build on a narrow city
lot unlighted on either side; for though in many
American cities there is vastly more room than in
New York or Boston or Philadelphia, the metropoli-
tan type has a tendency to stamp itself on smaller
towns with all its inconveniences. By a process of
evolution all houses of this sort are built nowadays on
the so-called American or English basement plan,
the stairs midway between front and rear, an " exten-
sion " in the back for bulter's pantry on the din-
ing-room floor and bathrooms above, and all living
rooms taking up the entire width of the lot. It is
interesting to note the variations achieved within
these limits.
The architect of even handsome and costly dwell-
ings in a city like New York is confronted by these
extremely difficult problems. Land in the best resi-
dential districts is so expensive that a man willing
to pay, say, $100,000 for house and lot is frequently
obliged to put up with very inadequate space. In
any other city in the world, a sum as large as that
would secure a desirable site of ample dimensions
and leave at least $70,000 to be spent upon the house,
but in New York, a man who wishes to live in a
39
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
choice location and does not wish to pay extrava-
gantly for it, must be satisfied with a lot measuring
not more than twenty-five by one hundred, and
frequently not even as much as that. The architect
consequently is obliged to plan a house on a site
which is very narrow and very deep; and he must
at the same time so dispose his space as to afford his
client every convenience and a spacious as well as
a handsome architectural appearance.
It was this familiar problem which confronted
the architect in designing the house illustrated on
page 41. The lot, situated in a very desirable loca-
tion, measures twenty feet on the street by one hun-
dred feet deep, and on this narrow area, five times
as long in one direction as it is in the other, the
architect had to plan a house which was to be both
good-looking and comfortable. Of course, the neces-
sary room for comfort must be obtained by occupy-
ing as much space as possible in every available
direction. The house could not be more than
twenty feet wide, but it had to be as much as that.
It could not be more than one hundred feet deep;
but with the extension it runs back ninety-three feet,
which makes the back yard nothing more than a
court. It could not be more than five stories high,
because the owner did not want an elevator, but the
five stories project higher than any other five-storied
house in the vicinity. Finally this particular house
not only has a basement, but a sub-basement as well,
which is unusual in a dwelling of this size. Thus
by obtaining as much space as possible in every direc-
tion, and by the ingenious management of the space
40
j^gr •^^•^^ «^2«
filjp
FACADE FOR A TOWN LOT
I
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
so obtained, the architect has succeeded in designing
a residence conveniently planned, fully equipped,
comparatively well-lighted, and spacious in interior
effect.
In designing the fagade he departed in several
important respects from customary arrangements.
In spite of the fact that his lot was only twenty
feet wide, he was not afraid to make his front almost
ten feet higher than the fronts of the neighbouring
buildings. The proportion, consequently, between
the width and the height of his fagade was the same
as that between a building which is forty feet wide
and eleven stories high. The building was by way
of being a tower, yet it could not be treated as such
and keep its proper domestic effect. The architect
was obliged to adopt a scheme which would serve to
make the height of the building less rather than
more conspicuous; and this obligation carried with
it the necessity of strong horizontal projections
dividing the fagade into three members. The usual
result of such a division is that the lowest member,
consisting of the ground floor, is insignificant in
architectural effect compared with the upper mem-
bers, each of which consists of two stories. But in
this house this difficulty has been avoided by making
the ground floor much higher than is customary, as
may be seen by comparing it with the ground floors
of the neighbouring buildings. A large part of the
extra height is thrown into this division of the fagade,
which occupies a place in the composition corre-
sponding to its functional importance.
In other respects, also, the architect has managed
42
THE TYPICAL TOWN HOUSE
AN AMERICAN STREET
his design very cleverly. The three members of the
fagade are distinguished by marked and significant
differences of treatment. On the ground floor the
43
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
rustication of the stone work, the strong arch of the
doorway, the stoop with solid posts on either side,
and the marquise — all combine to give the story an
individual character appropriate to its special func-
tion. In the next division, including the second and
third stories, the treatment looks towards a certain
grace of effect, which is obtained by the flat masonry,
the balconies and windows suggesting handsome
interiors, and the motives of the ornament. The
upper stories are, of course, treated as a roof with
a dormer in the centre and with a bull's-eye above
on each side. Different, however, as are these three
members, they are tied together by the stone frame
of the sloping roof, and by the downward droop of
the prominent decorative details. The only instance
in which the detail has been used in a very question-
able manner is that of the consoles carrying the lower
balcony, which give too much the appearance of
being externally applied to the heavily rusticated
masonry behind. The whole scheme, however, is
extremely compact, considering the ornate character
of its design, and is at the same time full of signifi-
cant detail. The architect is to be congratulated on
his careful and skilful disposition of an intractable
group of architectural elements.
The unusual height of the first story has made it
possible to obtain an entrance hallway of extraordi-
nary dimensions. It is hard to believe as one enters
this hall that it is in a house only twenty feet wide.
This hallway is finished in Caen stone, and is elabo-
rately ornamented — perhaps rather too much so; but
it makes a handsome approach to the house. On
44
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
leaving the entrance hall the visitor mounts four
steps to a higher level, which in turn leads to a stair-
way, and the first landing of this stairway gives
directly on a room of some importance. This room
is the dining-room, the situation of which in this
particular place is the peculiar feature and virtue of
the plan of the house. It is the height of the first
story that has enabled the architect to raise the level
of the dining-room above the level of the entrance
hall, and by this means to give it both a good archi-
tectural approach and convenient arrangements
below. Beneath the hall there is nothing except the
boiler-room, but beneath the dining-room are two
rooms, one below the other. The first of these rooms
is the kitchen, and the second the laundry. In this
way the architect has given the housekeeper a spa-
cious kitchen and a spacious laundry both on a
twenty-foot lot, while between the kitchen and the
boiler-room he has found an opportunity for a serv-
ants' dining and sitting-room. Both the kitchen and
the laundry are equipped with the best machinery
in the way of ranges, refrigerators, clothes-dryers,
and the like; and the whole arrangement is an excel-
lent example of ingenious and economical house-
planning.
In other respects also the plan is well considered.
The house measures seventy-four feet from front to
rear, omitting the extension. This area is occupied
by spacious rooms back and front, and in the middle
by some debatable space, which varies in amount and
use on each floor. On the first floor the doubtful area
is comparatively small, because the drawing-room
46
UPPER HALL IN HOUSE OF M. NEWBORG, ESQ., NEW YORK
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
in front is thirty-five feet deep, and the library in
the rear is twenty-eight feet deep. The hall takes
up most of the remaining area, but space is found
for the servants' stairway on one side and a small
retiring room on the other. The hall is lighted and
aired by a court, measuring four by seventeen feet,
which is unusually large for a house of this size in
New York. On the floor above, which contains a
large bedroom back and front, it is natural that
space should be taken from the bigger apartments
and devoted to humbler but no less essential pur-
poses. Thus there are two bathrooms, a shower, five
or six closets, and the servants' stairway, all tucked
into the space between the two rooms, while the
extension on this floor naturally becomes a boudoir.
On the floor above, the area is, of course, still more
subdivided. In the rear there is a nursery and in the
front a bedroom, the intermediate space containing,
besides the usual appurtenances, a large linen-room.
The architect has even managed to provide an out-
door playground, for inasmuch as the extension does
not run through this story, its roof can be used as
a sort of elevated yard. On the top floor there are
not only four servants' bedrooms, but sewing and
storerooms besides. Throughout the whole house
every inch of space is used, and the housekeeper has
not been obliged to forego any facility or comfort
because of the narrow limits of the site.
One peculiarity of the plan, which makes for
admirable interior effect, is the octagonal shape of
the rear rooms. The corners of the body of the
house have been cut off both for the sake of the light
48
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
BEDROOM WITH PLATFORM
and because of the more interesting shape which
certain important apartments would obtain thereby.
Both the dining-room and the library are octagonal
in shape, and this fact has had an important effect
upon the design of these rooms. For all the interiors
of the house are as thoroughly designed as the exte-
rior. That is the difference between this house and
the majority of modern New York houses of the same
class. As a usual thing the rooms of these houses
are only decorated. In the present instance they
have been, as we have said, really designed. More
50
THE TYPICAL TOWN HOUSE
BEDROOM WITH OCTAGONAL END
or less appropriate historic styles have not been
adapted to the several different apartments; but the
purpose has been to make each room look as if it
served its purpose, and at the same time look
well.
In carrying out this idea, the mantelpieces, the
panelling, the ceiling, the rugs and the furniture are
all of the architect's own selection or planning; and
in his dispositions he has sought for simplicity as
well as propriety. It is all very vigorous work with
plenty of depth to the treatment of the surface detail,
51
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
and the result borrows nothing from upholstery or
hangings of any kind.
Such is the way in which the interior of houses
should be handled, and in this particular instance
the architect was as fortunate in his client as the
client in the architect.
Another dwelling illustrated herewith is similarly
typical of the narrow-lot house, and yet shows the
divergence possible from difference of feeling in
design and style. It is arranged, as usual, with the
entrance on the ground floor, with the dining-room
in the rear of the ground floor, and with the front
and back rooms of the second floor occupied respec-
tively by the living and drawing-rooms. The house
is only a little over twenty feet wide; but, owing
to the economical distribution of the space, the im-
portant rooms are all large and well-proportioned
apartments. It is a remodelled building, with a
singularly successful combination of simplicity of
form with vivacity of effect.
The house is entered on the street level through a
hall which is particularly worth attention, because
it deserves to be taken as a model treatment of an
entrance hallway to a house of this size and plan.
An entrance hall is, of course, fundamentally a pas-
sageway between the street and the living rooms of
a house; but in many New York dwellings it serves
the additional purpose of providing a place in which
guests remove their coats and wraps. In the present
case an alcove, occupying the space not required
by the outer vestibule, offers a sheltered corner in
which ladies may lay aside their cloaks, and thus
THE TYPICAL TOWN HOUSE
HALL IN MR. NORMAN HAPGOOD'S HOUSE, NEW YORK
it serves excellently its secondary purpose. But it
serves its primary purpose still better. A successful
room is at bottom an embodiment of good man-
ners; and this hallway introduces a visitor to the
house in a manner that is at once discreet, sincere
and cordial. The room is treated with the utmost
sobriety and with a complete lack of decorative
superfluities and affectations; but it is as far as possi-
ble from being chilly and dull. In spite of ,its
53
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
marble floor and stone walls, it is a gracious, almost
a habitable room, in which one likes to linger; and
this pleasant propriety of aspect may be traced as
much to the poise with which the room carries itself,
as to the agreeable anticipations it affords that a
further acquaintance with the house will be equally
pleasant.
The room has the air of receiving its visitors gra-
ciously because its colour tone is warm and positive.
The artificial Caen stone with which the walls are
finished has been subdued to a slightly deeper yellow
than is usually the case, and its tint harmonises ad-
mirably with the warm grey of the Italian mantel-
piece. The plaster above the stone shows somewhat
too white; but this is a blemish which the New York
atmosphere will quickly cure. On the other hand,
the reserve which is mixed with this graciousness of
demeanour comes chiefly from the avoidance of orna-
mental irrelevances. There is indeed very little
detail of any kind. The east and west walls are
relieved by two large flat panels. The Caen stone
is appropriately capped by a moulding, which on
the piers becomes capitalised, and a simple plaster
moulding marks the curve of the wall into the ceil-
ing. The room can stand this absence of ornament
because it depends for effect upon the primary
sources thereof — upon its interesting plan, its correct
proportions, and its fitness to its purpdse. What we
have called the sincerity of its demeanour is the out-
come of this aesthetic integrity.
If the reader would like to appreciate how much
of an achievement this is, let him compare the pho-
54
PLAN FOR A NARROW LOT
55
BEDROOM FLOOR FOR A NARROW LOT
THE TYPICAL TOWN HOUSE
tographs of this hall with those of similar rooms
in houses of similar size and plan. While the other
rooms all have their points of interest and excellence,
their deportment is in each case injured by some
intentional or unintentional impropriety. It would
be invidious to name the owners of these other rooms ;
but it can do no harm to catalogue a tew of the ways
in which the designers of entrance hallways impair
the aesthetic integrity of such apartments. In one
case the hall of a house rather smaller in size has
been made charming with a number of amusing
decorative episodes; but these incidents are so promi-
nent that the total impression is that of a room which
is rather affectedly pretty. In another the scale of
the hall was such as to constitute an introduction to
a large and " palatial " house rather than one erected
on a twenty-foot lot. In another instance the walls of
a very carefully designed hall were disfigured with an
eruption of bloated ornament positively distressing
to anybody whose eye has not been perverted by false
training. In a fourth instance, a very reserved and
gentlemanly room, finished in the same greyish tone
as that of the house in question, was marred by the red
brick with which the chimney was lined. In still
another the integrity of the effect was injured be-
cause the entrance hall was separated from the stair-
way landing by a wooden railing of Colonial design,
which was totally out of keeping with the stone
panelling of the hall and its marble floors. The
catalogue might be continued ; but the foregoing will
give the reader some idea of the mistakes which have
been actually made in the halls of houses, all of them
57
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
about twenty feet wide and all of them designed as
a transitional apartment between the street and the
living-rooms.
One of the happiest features of the hall in the
house under discussion is its method of communica-
tion with the stair-landing and with the passageway
to the dining-room. On that side of the room the
wall is broken into three arches, through one of
which passage is obtained, while the other two are
enclosed up to a height of about three feet by a con-
tinuation of the wall. Thus the identity of the hall
is preserved, while at the same time one's eye is
tempted to look into the rest of the house. The
passageway to the dining-room, which is reached by
walking up the two steps and through the arch, is
paved with Moravian tiles, and the railing of the
stairway is an excellent example of modern wrought-
iron design. The stairway itself is of wood. Stone
would have been more in keeping; but there are
obvious reasons why an architect cannot use as much
stone as he would like. The iron railing does not
rest upon the wooden stairs, as a wooden railing
might, but maintains its character by being fastened
into the sides of the stair treads.
I have dwelt chiefly upon the entrance hallway,
because the illustrations of this room show the reader
really what it is, and he can check my observations
with his own. In the other rooms there is very little
design which does not depend chiefly on the use of
colours; and illustrations in black and white cannot
help the reader to appreciate a scheme of decoration
which depends so largely upon what the reproduc-
58
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
tion fails to show. A reproduction of one room in
colours would supply a fair notion, not of the quality
of the different tones in which the room is finished,
but of their relative value. The effect is derived
from the rich red pattern fabric on the wall, the grey
of the mantlepiece, and the dull blue with which
the spaces between shallow beams of the ceiling have
been filled.
It should be remarked also that in this house the
error of overcrowding the rooms with furniture and
ornaments — the besetting defect of the great major-
ity of contemporary houses — has not been commit-
ted. The sense of space and the proper relative
importance of the architecture of the room are
always preserved.
60
CHAPTER III
THE AMERICAN COUNTRY ESTATE
WITH a few exceptions " great American estates "
are the creation of the past twelve years. The major-
ity of them are probably not more than five or six
years old. Formerly the well-to-do American satis-
fied his craving for country residence with a villa
at Newport or elsewhere. These villas sometimes
assumed "palatial" dimensions, and were decorated
on a scale of princely splendour; yet they remained
none the less villas — country houses erected for habi-
tation during a few months in the summer and
generally surrounded by a comparatively small
amount of land. But of late years Americans who
could afford it have been showing a disposition to
live in the country for more than a few summer
months and to take more pleasure in the character-
istic occupations of country life. The villa with its
few acres of land no longer satisfies their needs.
They want big country places, equipped with all the
conveniences and properties belonging to the great
English estates. A survey of great American estates
would show the manner in which they have satisfied
this want, and give one the opportunity of making
certain general comments on the tendencies exhib-
ited by the design of these country places.
The most obvious comment would be that these
63
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
" great American estates " are estates more by way of
assumption than of architectural achievement. They
are, indeed, large enough and conspicuous enough
to be called without exaggeration an estate of the
country; but in certain other respects they have
failed to qualify for that dignity, and have remained,
from the point of view of architectural design, more
in the lowly position of villas. When a villa is being
built upon an acre or two of land, the house is,
of course, the thing, and whatever treatment the
grounds receive is wholly subordinate to the situa-
tion, the scale and the composition of the building.
On the other hand when a residence is erected on an
estate of five hundred acres, the house should become
merely an incident in the layout of the whole estate.
The land should be planned in reference to all of
the requirements of the owner, and the location and
the design of the house should be subordinate to the
exigencies of such a plan. The layout would bring
with it inevitably a certain treatment of the grounds
in the immediate vicinity of the house, and of the
flower-garden, into which the house, like any other
architectural feature, would be settled. It is evident,
however, in the case of these American " estates,"
no such course has been followed. They have been
laid out much as the villa plots of two or three acres
used to be laid out. No sufficient advantage has
been taken of the fact that the owner of the estate
controls probably all of the surrounding landscape,
and is in a position to take the whole of the estate as
his unit of treatment. The design of the house is not
adjusted to the layout of the land. On the contrary,
64
THE AMERICAN COUNTRY ESTATE
THE END OF A GARDEN
the layout of the land is adapted to the location
and the design of the house — both of which arc
selected or prepared without much reference to the
plan of the estate considered as a whole. It is the
house which the American considers first, last and
always — no matter whether the house be a villa or a
palace in a park.
65
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
The overwhelming majority of American house-
owners would undoubtedly fail to appreciate the
force of any criticism of American methods of design
based upon the foregoing limitation. They would
take it as a matter of course that the house was the
thing, and that any landscape treatment should be
subordinated to the design of the house; and the atti-
tude which they have instinctively taken in this
matter is the natural result of their whole point of
view towards country life. The owners of the big
English estates live in the country, and sojourn for
some months of each year in the town. The owners
of the large American estates are still essentially
townsfolk, who are only sojourning for a few months
of each year in the country. The period of this
sojourn is longer than it used to be; their houses are
kept open all winter, and are occupied frequently
for week-end parties. Still their relation to the
country remains essentially casual and artificial.
They raise a few vegetables for their own table, a
little corn for their stock, as many cows and horses
as they need for their own use, and flowers enough
to decorate their houses. These things are merely
the conveniences and properties of country life, the
care of which is turned over to hired employees.
The point of view is as different as possible from that
of an English country proprietor, who generally
derives an income from his estate, and is attached to
it by all sorts of family and personal ties, and whose
house has settled down into an architectural efflores-
cence of a neatly parted and combed landscape.
To the well-to-do American, on the other hand,
66
THE AMERICAN COUNTRY ESTATE
PAVILION AND GARDEN, ' FAULKNER FARM
his estate is only one of the spoils of his financial con-
quests. He may take a genuine interest in certain
country sports; but beyond that in " returning to the
country" he is merely adapting himself to a tradition
which his common sense tells him is a good thing for
himself and his children. The country means to
him a country house within an hour or two of New
67
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
York; and the architect whom he employs inevitably
adapts himself to his client's point of view. The
estate generally contains a hill overlooking the sur-
rounding country, which is the inevitable site of the
dwelling, because our American barons, like the
feudal nobility of old, prefer to perch their castles
high, and have their domains at their feet. They
wish to see, and to be seen. The house becomes the
most conspicuous object in the landscape, and the
pervading purposes of the landscape design will be
to give access to the house, and when there to com-
mand, the view. Indeed as a rule nothing more than
this is possible. The crest of the hills rarely contains
enough space for any very elaborate and well-organ-
ised landscape treatment. The garden is merely an
incident to the view, and its minor beauties cannot
compete with the great effects of distance, of sun-
shine and shadow, of cloud and foliage, of varied
colours and solid form, which a fine big view offers.
Of course there are many estates the residences
whereof are situated on comparatively level ground,
and in which a better opportunity is provided to de-
sign a house and garden the aesthetic purpose of
which is less spectacular and more domestic and sub-
stantial; but these opportunities betray just as plainly
the pre-occupation of the owner and the architect.
The grounds are generally slurred. The garden and
the other landscape accessories are inadequate to the
scale of the house. The buildings and the architec-
tural " features " and furniture are too conspicuous
in the total effect. The planting is for the most part
ill-managed and insufficient. One rarely gets any
68
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
sense from these estates, as one does from the Italian
villas and their gardens or from the English country
mansions, that the architecture belongs to the land-
scape. In the case of the Italian villas, their propri-
ety as country houses is fundamentally a matter of
intelligent design. In the case of English mansions,
it is fundamentally a matter of persistent and whole-
some country life on the part of their proprietors.
But whatever the cause, the result is a harmony be-
tween the house and its environment resulting neither
from a mutilation of nature on the one hand, nor
from any architectural irregularities on the other.
The comparative ill-success of American land-
scape design is partly due to the artificial point of
view toward country life that takes it as a Saturday-
to-Monday variety-show; and it is partly due to the
.inexperience of American architects in this branch
of design. They fully intend to tie their houses well
into the landscape, and give the immediate and natu-
ral surroundings of the house a pleasurable and
habitable form; but they have to contend with many
difficulties. The American landscape, even in the
older parts of the country, is generally unkempt, and
does not lend itself as readily to formal treatment as
does the typical English or Continental landscape.
The owners of the big estates rarely appreciate the
scale on which the landscape architecture should be
laid out, and the patience necessary to obtain a com-
plete and consummate effect. They want ready-
made estates. Finally the leading American house
architects have, with a few exceptions, a good deal
to learn about the technique of landscape design.
THE AMERICAN COUNTRY ESTATE
A GARDEN PATH
So far as the large house itself is concerned, a con-
vention has been established which is in the main a
good one, but the designing of gardens is still in an
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
early experimental stage. The stage properties are
collected in abundance. There is no lack of per-
golas, fountains, well-heads, gazebos, statuary, and
pottery; but as like as not they are indiscriminately
placed. The architectural features, are, however,
generally somewhat better managed than the plant-
ing, which frequently looks as if an Irish gar-
dener had been given some vague general direc-
tions, or as if the lady of the house had considered
that it was a woman's business to make the garden
green. As a matter of fact, however, the lady of
the house, in case she has her own way, generally
paints the garden yellow and red rather than green.
Her idea usually is merely to get as much bloom as
possible; and this she does at a sacrifice of those
masses of foliage which are absolutely necessary to
give mass, body and depth to a large garden.
We Americans are too apt to believe we can
achieve a complicated and admirable result merely
by virtue of good intentions. We assume that because
the owners and the architects of these large estates
have sought in good faith to rival the classic exam-
ples of landscape architecture, and because in so
doing they have created houses, gardens, and estates,
according to some sort of general plan, they have
already succeeded. But these first attempts should
be regarded not as successful achievements, but as
well-intended experiments. Before the experiment
can reach the stage of mature and finished accom-
plishment, the owners of these estates must have
learned to live in the country, and have come to
regard their estates as something more than the spoils
72
A TERRACE, FAULKNER FARM
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
of their triumph and as the scenery of their social
exploits; they must have learned literally and meta-
phorically to cultivate their gardens. Country life,
if it means anything except a vacation or a shifting
of the scene for a round of city sports, should mean a
patient, leisurely, submissive, and even a contempla-
tive habit of mind. Nature cannot be hurried or
bullied or bought into yielding her fruits, intellec-
tual or material; and the owners of these country
estates have hitherto been as a rule trying to buy their
way into her treasure-house. With the help of their
architects they have made a fine show of succeeding;
but no matter how much the owners of these houses
mistake the appearance of success for its reality, it is
very important for American architecture that dis-
interested observers should not make the same mis-
take.
It would be equally a mistake to believe that the de-
sign of American country estates has made an entirely
false start. Undoubtedly the chief concern of their
designers, both as regards the interior and the exterior
of the houses, is to make a fine big show — and once
this show has been obtained they do not stop to con-
sider how far this splendour of appearance is likely
to prove permanently satisfactory. As a matter of fact
it is sure to be as little satisfactory in the long run
as any other stage-setting. Life in a millionaires'
" colony " at Newport may be turned into a spectacle,
but genuine country life must become something else.
None the less it has for the present a certain kind of
suitability. It pleases the tastes and meets the needs
of the people who own these estates; and it performs
74
PAVILION AND RESIDENCE
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
these services in a way which is on the whole aesthet-
ically meritorious. The American business man
wants the strong sensation of magnificent domestic
surroundings; and he believes that he can make this
magnificence authentic by deriving it from the forms
and relics of European palaces. Neither are the
fruits of this conviction so inappropriate as they
seem. The American millionaire sometimes controls
resources as large as the personal revenues of a Euro-
pean prince; and he possesses by right an analogous,
if not a similar, social outlook. If he has no social
inferiors, he also has no social superiors. He is free
to express his tastes without the fear which a Euro-
pean "bourgeois" must always feel of being pre-
sumptuous and ridiculous. When such a man finds
himself in the possession of more money than he can
spend it is no wonder that he adapts his habitation
to his income rather than to his occupations and cus-
toms. He is full of the pride of life and the self-
confidence of success, and has no one to consult but
his wife.
Of course he may have to consult his architect too;
but the architect has no call to pluck the aesthetic
ambition of his client. He can only accept a condi-
tion of this kind and make the best of it. His first
duty is to design and decorate a house which will
please and interest its owner not only because he has
no chance of personal success on any other footing,
but because it is right and appropriate that a man's
house should be the sort of thing a man likes. If the
sort of thing a man likes is hopelessly meretricious,
an architect can decline to fill the bill, but if he
76
THE AMERICAN COUNTRY ESTATE
agrees to fill the bill, he is also obliged to cut the
clothes to fit the man. Then the architect himself is
not prone to be a person of ascetic tastes. As like as
not his preferences will run in the direction of the
"stunning" thing; and if his client wants a howling
palace, why should he deny the demand? As a
matter of fact, of course, he does not deny the de-
mand; he merely fills it to the best of his ability;
and his ability is frequently very considerable — par-
ticularly so far as the design of the house alone is
concerned.
The demand of the rich American that his house
and its surroundings be made interesting to him is
perfectly legitimate; and in the long run it will be
a good thing for American domestic architecture
that a positive and lively standard of aesthetic effect
has been thereby popularised and established. No
matter what the penalty, we do not want in this coun-
try a prevailing convention of house embellishment
whose greatest merit consists in a sort of unobtrusive
refinement. Since we are young, it is better to be a
little barbarous than prematurely sober. Assuming
that the better Americans will be capable of assimi-
lating a sound sense of the aesthetic proprieties, the
barbarism may become informed without any loss of
vitality. Indeed the " palatial " period of American
domestic architecture is already on the wane. The
newer houses, while they still proclaim loudly their
owners' opulence, indicate the influence of better
ideas of propriety, architectural and social; and it
may be confidently expected that the future move-
ment will run in the same direction.
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HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
While, however, the " palatial " house is losing
some of its noisier improprieties, it is not the houses
of the very rich which constitute the best contempo-
rary achievement of American domestic architecture
or its best hope for the future. These houses receive
most attention because they are the most spectacular,
and because their proprietors are the financial heroes
of the day; but they are not intrinsically the most
interesting. Their owners frequently want a good
thing, and their architects are skilful; but both good
intentions and skill tend to be vitiated by the fact
that whatever else the houses express they must inevi-
tably express superabundant wealth. Americans do
everything with their wealth except " forget it."
The result is that there is too much of everything —
too much gilt, too much furniture, too much uphol-
stery, too much space, too many styles, too much
ceiling. What these houses and grounds require is not
a negative refinement, but a thoroughgoing simplifi-
cation. In many cases comparatively simple archi-
tectural schemes have been smothered by a multitude
of irrelevant and unnecessary trappings; in other
cases the design itself needs simplifying. Wherever
the over-richness and elaboration comes in, the great
necessity with which every collection of these houses
impresses the observer, is this necessity for more
simplicity; and in houses built by the better Ameri-
can architects for well-to-do people who are not
inebriated by their opulence one is much more apt
to find designs that are simple without being atten-
uated.
The most interesting contemporary American
78
THE AMERICAN COUNTRY ESTATE
AN EXAMPLE OF TRUE STYLE
country houses are apt to be those which cost be-
tween twenty thousand and one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars. When their owners spend less
than twenty thousand dollars, it is rare that an archi-
tect in good standing is employed, because his fees
are proportionately larger for an inexpensive than
for an expensive job. The small house-builder has an
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HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
impression, not altogether erroneous, that the modest
house does not get its fair share of attention in the
big office; and even in those offices which do give
their best services to the small client it is unusual that
a really complete house and garden design can be
realised for twenty thousand dollars. On the other
hand, as already pointed out, the owner of a country
place that costs several hundred thousand dollars or
more, generally wants his money to make a big show,
with a result, which, however admirable and inter-
esting in certain respects, betrays its hybrid origin
in its flamboyant appearance. The formula for
this result is a million dollars of building enriched
with historical relics and tempered by architectural
academies, but the house which costs between twen-
ty-five thousand and one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars has a fairer chance. When it is given to a
good architect, which unfortunately is not often the
case, it at once provides a decent opportunity without
dispensing with the salutary necessity of economy.
Such a house is more likely to be thoroughly de-
signed than is the bigger or the smaller house —
designed, that is, without reference either to irrele-
vant and oppressive superfluities on the one hand or
mutilating omissions on the other. The economic
scale of a house of this class harmonises with the
normal life of a well-to-do American family; and it
has the chance at least of reaching the final grace
and propriety of a domestic building — a propriety
which is constituted as much by integrity in the own-
er's tastes and manners as by the strictly architectural
skill of its designer.
80
A PERGOLA
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
It should never be forgotten that the making of
the consummate residence depends as much upon the
prevalence of right ideas and good taste among
house-owners as upon the ability of the architect to
design a good-looking and appropriate house and
grounds. The future of American public and com-
mercial architecture rests chiefly with the architects.
Limited as they are in many directions by the igno-
rance of politicians, and the indifferent or meretri-
cious taste of business men, they are gaining authority
which will enable them to make American public
and industrial buildings edifying and beautiful or
the reverse. But in the case of residences, all that
the architect can do is to supply a well-formed and
fitting frame and scheme to a picture which must be
finished by the people who live in the house. No
matter how intelligently the designer may adapt a
dwelling to its inhabitants' manner of living it will
not aesthetically belong to them until they have added
to its effect the imprint of the kind of life they lead
and the sort of domestic appurtenances they prefer.
This is not so much the case in a country the finest
dwellings of which belong to an aristocratic class
with certain common traditions, as to the manner
and symbols of their domestic life. In such cases the
house will require only an impressive impersonality
of effect, which is attainable by an architect. But
Americans are individuals before they are members
of any class or social group, and the individual note
is necessary to any American dwelling that is all an
American dwelling should be.
The difficulty with many interesting residences is
82
HOUSE AND TERRACE, FAULKNER FARM
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
that a good architect has either had too much or too
little to do with them. In the former case the effect,
however beautiful, is necessarily impersonal and
perhaps a little frigid, — as if the fire had gone out
on the aesthetic hearth, or the family were afraid to
warm their hands at the blaze. A man should not
be afraid of his house any more than he should be
afraid of his butler. A house with which its owner
dares not be familiar may be good-looking but can
hardly be gracious and charming. On the other
hand there are many houses the owners of which
have insisted upon planning and decorating the inte-
rior and laying out the grounds with only clerical
assistance from an architect; and it cannot be too
emphatically asserted that this is not the proper way
to secure an excellent, much less a consummate re-
sult. Remember that I am confining this part of my
discourse to " interesting residences." Houses which
express merely vulgar or commonplace proprietors
are excluded. The point is that even people of good
taste and genuine likes and dislikes about the appear-
ance of their homes probably make a mistake in dis-
pensing with the services of a good architect. It is
possible, of course, that an amateur may have a natu-
ral instinct for design that will enable him to do
better for himself than anybody else, however skil-
ful; but ninety-nine times out of one hundred the
training, the experience and the gift of the profes-
sional man is necessary to give any complete form to
the result. Without the architect the result may be
individual and charming; but it can only rarely pos-
sess that highest quality of style.
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HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
This quality of style is of all aesthetic qualities the
most difficult to describe. It is so simple and un-
mistakable in its effect, yet so complicated and
evasive in its origin. I cannot attempt to define it,
but perhaps some idea of its meaning can be inferred
from the enumeration of several- important elements
of effect, the omission of any one of which would rob
a dwelling of true style. It implies for one thing a
certain integrity in the formal design of a building—
the working out of an appropriate architectural idea
in a manner both consistent and interesting. It im-
plies in addition to this fundamental correctness of
design the power to awaken relevant and suggestive
memories. A " stylish " house must express the deri-
vation of our own good domestic manners from cer-
tain former distinguished ways of living by recalling
without necessarily copying the architectural forms
and materials associated with these desirable man-
ners. All this can be contributed by an architect;
but he cannot contribute the final touch of propriety
— the sense that the house is a house in which an
individual with some integrity of life and taste has
dwelt. The inhabitants of the house must complete
the picture planned, framed and sketched in by the
designer; and the fact that the designer has contrib-
uted so much need not diminish in any way the ulti-
mate individuality and charm of the result. It
merely gives to the total effect style as well as
expressiveness.
A house and garden can hardly be permanently
satisfactory without some such quality. Americans
build, it is true, for only one generation ; and the
86
THE AMERICAN COUNTRY ESTATE
children destroy or neglect the structures which their
fathers have reared with labour and love. But it
may be hoped that the better country residence of
to-day will commend itself to the next generation
by its power of satisfying certain permanent domestic
and aesthetic demands. This power cannot be granted
to houses and gardens which are intensely and exclu-
sively individual. Such a house dies with the man
or woman that makes it. Indeed, frequently its pro-
priety, the mood which it embodies, no longer pleases
even its owner, and consequently instead of being
mellowed and confirmed by the dignity of years, it is
totally transformed. But a house which possesses
style, which answers permanent aesthetic needs by
the use of appropriate and pleasurable forms — such
a house may be perpetuated by its own perennial
value, and by its own flexible charm. The so-
called " Colonial " house has been the only type of
American residence to possess anything of this qual-
ity; and " Colonial" houses are preserved for this
reason. On the other hand the neo-classic temples
and the Gothic villas which succeeded the " Colo-
nial " house appealed only to an arbitrary and evan-
escent architectural whim, and survive only because
of possible economic value. In regard to the houses
of the present day, it looks as if many of the most
expensive "palaces" will fail to be interesting at
the end of thirty or forty years. I certainly hope that
such will be the case, because these houses, whatever
their architectural merits and temporary propriety,
are places in which a man not stupefied by his own
opulence could not possibly live. Nevertheless there
87
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
are some dwellings planned upon a smaller scale
which may prove to be permanently satisfactory; and
if the good American architect, in building such
dwellings, will only keep in mind the fundamental
necessity of simplifying both the design and the orna-
ment, the proportion of the permanently satisfactory
houses will increase.
A BOUDOIR
88
CHAPTER IV
THE TYPICAL COUNTRY HOUSE
IN the preceding chapter I declared that the better
American work in domestic design is being achieved
in houses which cost somewhere between twenty-five
thousand and one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
An illustration, if not a proof, of this statement may
be found in the pictures of the house at Mount Kisco,
New York, to which we may now give our attention
(pages 88, 91, 95). It is distinctly a medium-priced
building, although it tends towards the upper rather
than the lower end of the limit. The scale of the
place is precisely that which should commend itself
to a well-to-do gentleman in search of a country resi-
dence. It is not so large that its inhabitants become
insignificant compared to their appurtenances; yet
it is large and handsome enough to give an effect of
ease, good taste, hospitality, and well-favoured abun-
dance. The people who occupy it at least have a
chance of living a country life for its own sake; and
if in the present instance the surroundings suggest
an interest in sport rather than an interest in the
more fundamental rural amusements, that is merely
a matter of individual preference. The fact remains
that the house starts on its worldly career in a right-
minded condition, and does not betray either an in-
congruous pretension or a self-conscious humility
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HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
and reticence. It is what it pretends to be, and it
pretends to be something good and appropriate.
The exterior is in no particular style, yet it imme-
diately arouses associations with a sound and attrac-
tive style of domestic architecture. It is a balanced
composition, well scaled in its subordinate members,
frank and simple in its detail, and both picturesque
and vigorous in its total effect. The design of the
interior possesses similar characteristics. The liv-
ing-room is not only spacious and comfortable, but
what is a very different thing, it gives the sense of
being spacious and comfortable. It is not filled with
irrelevant and futile properties and adornments. It
is simply a fine large room, panelled to the ceiling,
in dark wood, and furnished in any style you please.
It is large enough to hold the two Davenport lounges
—an article of furniture which is as modern as it is
excellent in the right place — and some good solid,
comfortable chairs. For the rest its very bareness is
attractive. There are not many things, but whatever
is, is right — among which may be mentioned the
snug way in which the book-shelves are fitted into
the walls. Some objections may be taken to the scale
of the very beautiful mantelpiece, to its relation
with the panelling behind, and to the brick lining of
the chimney, which would have looked better in a
greyish tone; but these are minor blemishes. They
diminish by very little the substantial value of this
unusual example of a living-room in which one
might like to live.
Neither is this favourable impression disturbed
by the glimpses which we obtain of the other apart-
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HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
ments. The stair-hall is as plain and businesslike as
a stair-hall ought to be; while the boudoir is charm-
ing in spite, or rather because of, its refreshing sim-
plicity and its perfect fitness. The little dark cabinet
and desk are not in keeping; but even they do not
detract very much from the integrity of this pleasant
little room.
Inasmuch as this house is only recently finished, it
still requires the confirmation which comes from
several years of use. The grounds have not received
the attention they will eventually get, and the rooms
are still of course aggressively new; but the occu-
pants of the house are to be congratulated upon the
start towards a most satisfactory result.
Similar in type is a house at Parkersburg, West
Virginia, in which the architect has chosen a treat-
ment with characteristic flat, hipped roof, far-pro-
jecting eaves, cemented panelled walls, separating
timber work, sharp projecting towers carried up in
bold dormers; low smooth chimneys and generally
clear-cut silhouette. It is the design of one who
seems to delight in sharp contrasts as between differ-
ently coloured materials, and makes frequent use of
wood and cement on the exteriors. Deep and lumi-
nous shadows, too, seem to have exerted strong fasci-
nation.
The often excessive projection of the eaves gives
a chiaroscuro effect, and reveals in a diffused
light the mottled texture of the cement work in con-
trast with the well-shaped and finished timbers that
divide the wall space. The house is well developed
aesthetically; has something to stand on, grows
92
FIRST-FLOOR PLAN FOR A COUNTRY HOUSE
93
COUNTRY HOUSE BEDROOMS
94
STAIRCASE IN MR. J. BORDEN HARRIMAN S HOUSE
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
naturally from the soil, and does not give the ap-
pearance of being dumped down.
The illustration shown on page 98 shows particu-
larly well what is meant. Here we have a foun-
dation of perfectly plain, but well-shaped brick, with
a smooth bevelled cement water table which is car-
ried around the retaining wall of the steps, broken
out in a platform in front of the door and topped
with a brick parapet in rough cement treated simi-
larly to the surface of the walls. Potted plants and
vines form very useful accessories in the treatment,
deftly softening the otherwise hard lines where the
masonry penetrates the ground.
The house being but one story high, naturally pre-
sents, with its deep shadows, bold tower dormers and
well-grouped windows, a very charming little home.
A nearer view of one of the doors (page 97), the
one which is shown on page 98, reveals in the deep
shadow of the eaves several interesting features of
decoration. A simple but very effective lamp is
suspended from the endmost rafter by slender
chains; the glass of the door, as well as of the high
square windows on either side, is attractively treated
in lead strips and colour; the panels under each of
the windows are framed with a delicate raised
moulding, the field being beaded and occupied by an
ingeniously conventionalised plant ornament in
delicate relief. Even the leaders which conduct the
rain water from the eaves back to the wall and down
into the ground hardly offend one's sense of pro-
priety by cutting, as they do, through the air and
across the panels between door and windows. On
96
DETAIL OF A DOORWAY
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
A SIMPLE TREATMENT OF BRICK AND PLASTER
the contrary they seem quite proper and intentionally
a part of the decorative scheme. The interiors offer
less of interest, the variety of fireplace treatment
being the most inviting detail.
The illustration given on page 99 is worthy of a
passing note. The frame panelling of beautiful
bird's-eye maple is well managed, and shows wood
used in a proper and very successful way; the panels
98
THE TYPICAL COUNTRY HOUSE
A WALL TREATMENT
are happily composed, the rails and stiles forming an
effective border around the chimney opening, which
is further softened by a parallel ring of metal over
the arched top and domical hood, which besides its
ornamental function, is also useful for preventing
99
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
smoke from easily blowing into the room, as well as
for shielding the woodwork before mentioned. Al-
together it is a very successful fireplace obtained by
simple means, which, with our gaudy and vulgar
tendencies, is something rare and cannot be too
highly commended. The broad flower frieze run-
ning around the room is an ingenious device for
cutting down the height of the ceiling, and gives
scale to the room. The other interiors show similar
treatment of the walls with simple frieze decoration.
In the dining-room we have a highly decorative glass
and metal lamp, but much richer than the one that we
noted over the entrance. It starts rather abruptly
from the perfectly plain ceiling and is, perhaps, a
little vigorous in design for its purpose.
In another house by the same architect, we im-
mediately recognise many similar characteristics.
The front of the house stands on a very low cement
base, so low that one is compelled to look at the
nearer views to make it out. It is nevertheless there,
and serves its purpose well. Compared with the
Parkersburg house, this is a really large establish-
ment, but lacks somehow the picturesque charm of
the smaller one. This shortcoming is, however,
amply compensated for by an air of repose and
dignity, due largely, no doubt, to its sharp, clean-cut
masses. Except on the back where several small in-
consequential dormers modestly proclaim the exist-
ence of 'attic rooms, the roof is broken by chimneys
only, and in an unemphatic way. The two towers,
which are coupled together over the entrance in a
balcony, though appropriate and attractive enough
100
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
themselves, do not combine happily. They give the
effect of two columns whose bases are not on the
same level. The architect has evidently tried hard
to make them as different in shape and treatment as
possible; in the octagonal one the vertical lines have
accordingly been emphasised and continued to the
base, while in the rectangular one the vertical lines
are abruptly terminated at the second floor in the
form of a heavy horizontal timber and a floor, which
throws the first story of this mass into the entrance
porch. A large screened veranda is a useful, as
well as an effective, architectural appendage to the
house.
Another view shows a simple, but very admirable
wooden stair, in which the characteristics of the
material are satisfactorily brought out. It runs up
in the octagonal tower of which we have just spoken ;
this accounts for the curving inside string which
conforms in its rise to the general shape of the mass
in which it mounts. If we go back to our peculiar
tall tower, by the way, and regard it as a staircase
enclosure, it explains itself more to our satisfaction,
even if we do not altogether approve of the treat-
ment that has been accorded it in the massing of the
composition.
102
A SIMPLE STAIRCASE
CHAPTER V
THE HOUSE FOR ALL THE YEAR
OF all the types of private dwellings now being
erected in this country none presents more features
of interest and promise than the semi-suburban resi-
dence of Western and Middle Western cities. The
suburban house in the East is rarely so interesting
and typical. Of course there have been many expen-
sive and carefully designed dwellings of this class
erected in and near New York and Boston; but the
immense majority of suburban and semi-suburban
houses along the Atlantic coast line are cheap
houses, designed by local builders, while the more
well-to-do generally live in houses that lose their
individuality in the block. On the other hand, in
cities like Buffalo, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit,
Milwaukee, and even Chicago, the comparatively
excellent means of communication and cheapness of
accessible land have encouraged a much larger pro-
portion of families to live in detached houses, and
the popularity of motor-cars has rendered houses of
this kind still more practicable and accessible.
They have certain definite characteristics. They
are built by the owner from designs prepared by the
best architects in the vicinity. The amount of land
by which they are surrounded varies from a hundred
feet to several acres. As they cost on the average
105
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
somewhere between twenty-five thousand and fifty
thousand dollars, they represent precisely the ideas,
the tastes and the standards of the prosperous Ameri-
can business man. Such a man cannot afford and
generally does not want the exotic splendours of the
Eastern millionaire, but he does want a comfortable
house, the looks of which are, as they should be,
subordinated to convenience, but which, neverthe-
less, is supposed to have some aesthetic merit; and
this comfortable atmosphere is largely derived from
the modest and unambitious scale of the whole per-
formance. In the big house of the East comfort and
propriety are sacrificed to the "stunning" effect.
In the better Western house of the prosperous busi-
ness and professional man the intention of the owner
is to build a dwelling in which he and his family
shall be both in the picture and thoroughly at home.
The aesthetic quality of these houses may perhaps
best be described as containing the usual American
mixture of excellence in intention coupled with
miscellaneousness of effect. These houses are emi-
nently comfortable, " homely," and " bourgeois."
One can trace their descent unmistakably from the
mid-century residences of the Eastern part of the
country, which embodied the taste of the average
well-to-do American of that time, rather than the
taste of specially trained and instructed people. But
there is one important difference between the two
types of dwellings. The mid-century dwelling was
rarely the work of a well-qualified architect. The
contemporary dwelling of the Middle West is the
work, so far as design and plan are concerned, of
106
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
RESIDENCE OF SAMUEL CABOT, ESQ., NEAR BOSTON
the qualified architect, but an architect who is rarely
in a position to do a completely finished job. He de-
signs, of course, the exterior and proportions of the
openings, the disposition and the detail of the vari-
ous rooms; but beyond that the decorations and the
furnishings of the dwellings are the work either of
the head of the house or of some decorating com-
pany. As in the latter case the decorating company
adorns and equips the rooms to suit the taste of the
client, the total effect is one which represents the
average taste of well-to-do people rather than
the higher taste of those specially trained.
108
THE HOUSE FOR ALL THE YEAR
DOORWAY AND APPROACH
The total effect consequently is apt to lack the
architectural quality, the quality of careful compo-
sition, of the subordination of detail to a single
dominant idea, and of careful search for stuffs and
furnishings. The impression is too apt to be one of
upholstery — of apartments overcrowded with big
stuffed chairs, heavy, spacious tables, curtains and
coverings that jump out in large flowery patterns,
and many other comfortable and commonplace
things; and such is the effect, in spite of the fact
that the intention evidently is to do something good.
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HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
Indeed, the rooms, in spite of their homely appear-
ance, have also the air not only of trying to be
artistic, but of seeking to conform in their artistry to
the latest aesthetic ideas. The result of these con-
flicting tendencies is colonial rooms without a trace
of the Colonial reticence and distinction, with Colo-
nial furniture that is machine-made, too clumsy or
too cheap and fragile. In spite of the considerable
sums of money spent on some of these houses, the
effect is generally that of a very commercial decora-
tive art — commercial not in the excellent economic
sense of obtaining a good result at small cost, but in
the unfortunate sense of obtaining a poor result at
comparatively high cost.
The employment of professional decorators is
partly responsible for this result. It is very rarely
that effective interiors can be obtained by making
different designers responsible for the architecture
and the decoration of a room. One man or one firm
should do all the necessary designing, and the func-
tion of the professional decorator should be to carry
out the architect's ideas. Within these limits the
decorators can perform an important and indeed an
indispensable work, because by their control of capi-
tal they can collect large amounts of good deco-
rative material which the architect can use. But
American interiors will never be what they should
be until it becomes customary for the architect to see
the design through to the end; not only because there
is no other way of obtaining unity and integrity of
effect, but because the architect, whatever his limi-
tations, alone represents a good aesthetic tradition.
no
THE HOUSE FOR ALL THE YEAR
The American business man and his wife have, of
course, no aesthetic traditions at all, and no inform-
ing attitude towards such matters, except the wish
for cheerful and comfortable surroundings. The
professional decorator may have in his employ de-
signers as competent as the average architect, but he
has the fatal defect, for the purpose of good aesthetic
results, of lacking the professional tradition of dis-
interestedness. He is in the business to make money,
and in order to make the money he cannot run ahead
of his clients' tastes. Neither can he sacrifice, as a
designer must occasionally do, the profit on a job
to the necessity of repairing a mistake or reaching a
better result. He may know better, but he cannot
afford to risk his business and time taking care of his
clients7 aesthetic education. He works entirely by
routine, and he accomplishes the sort of thing we
see.
Nevertheless, whatever the defects of this kind of
dwelling, the prospect for a gradual improvement
of design is full of promise. The architect is con-
stantly growing in authority, and in time he will be
able to control the planning of dwellings from the
foundations to the finish. Wherever he succeeds in
accomplishing this the result should be good both
for him and for his clients. His clients have every
right to insist that their houses shall be not merely
conveniently planned, but shall also be pleasant to
inhabit. We have no sympathy with the aesthetic-
ally austere and ungracious rooms which some archi-
tects seek to force on their clients. The demand for
a cheerful, comfortable and homely atmosphere in
in
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
ill I
HOUSE WITH UNENCLOSED GROUNDS
a dwelling is absolutely legitimate, just as the de-
mand that the interior should be thoroughly de-
signed is legitimate ; and it is the action and reaction
between these two demands which will most effec-
tually serve to give American interiors the mixture
of propriety and distinction which they need. At
present distinction is too often obtained at the ex-
pense of propriety and comfort, and propriety and
comfort too often obtained at the expense of dis-
tinction. In order to combine distinction with pro-
priety the architects will have to educate their clients
to add to their houses a pervasive individual and
familiar atmosphere without interfering with the
integrity of the design ; and he will also have to live
112
THE HOUSE FOR ALL THE YEAR
HOUSE WITH GROUNDS ENCLOSED
up to the highest standard of professional and tech-
nical rectitude. His great advantage consists or
should consist in the fact that he wishes to control
the whole design in the interests of his client. If he
swerves from this high technical and professional
ideal, he will not obtain his full rights.
In the East well-to-do families generally have
both a city house and a country place, which archi-
tecturally are sharply distinguished from each other;
but in the West this is much less frequently the case.
There are, of course, many fine country houses in
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
the West, such as those grouped around the shores
of Lake Geneva, in Wisconsin; and particularly in
Chicago many of the older families occupy houses,
which, although detached from their neighbours,
are substantially urban rather than suburban dwell-
ings. Nevertheless, on the whole, the well-to-do
Western business man, in building a new resi-
dence, will probably choose a site for all the year,
containing two or three acres abutting on a
street and surrounded by the grounds of similar
dwellings.
Such a house is planned as a permanent residence.
It is situated in a neighbourhood accessible from the
man's place of business, and is occupied both sum-
mer and winter. It has enough land around it to
permit the enjoyment of some of the pleasures of the
country, and to afford an opportunity for a certain
amount of landscape treatment; but not so much as
to be any more than the front and back yard of the
house. As an architectural type it is intermediate
between the town and country house.
We give in this chapter a typical example of this
class of dwelling, and it is also an excellent example
thereof. It exhibits some of the best tendencies to
be found in the design of such buildings. It is a
fine, large house, surrounded by abundant land, and
treated in a manner appropriate to its location on a
street. The house itself has been situated as near the
street as its height would permit, and consequently
much the larger part of the grounds are available
for a garden and tennis court situated in the rear.
This arrangement gives the inhabitants a pleasant
114
THE HOUSE FOR ALL THE YEAR
playground, partly screened from the street, and
spacious enough for all kinds of country sports and
pleasures.
The fact that this outdoor play-room is only partly
screened from the street suggests one of the most
interesting and important questions connected with
the design of houses of this class — the question, that
is, whether the grounds should or should not be en-
closed by a wall. There can be no doubt that from
the point of view of the most interesting and com-
plete architectural treatment of these places, there
should be an enclosure. That is the one way in
which the house and its grounds can be architec-
turally united, in which irrelevant and incongruous
surroundings can be shut off from the garden. With-
out the enclosing wall the occupants of the house
can never come into complete possession of their
grounds; and the architect can never tell how soon
his most carefully-designed landscape scheme will
be spoiled by the architectural performances of some
neighbour. The preservation of the aesthetic indi-
viduality of such a suburban place demands the en-
closure of the grounds.
In a great many cases these enclosing walls have
been constructed, but in more instances they are
omitted. They run counter to the popular Ameri-
can preference for a semi-public private life. To
shut your neighbours off absolutely from the yard of
your house strikes the ordinary American as ex-
clusive and " stuck-up " ; and it is not an easy matter
to wean him from this conception. Of course, as a
matter of fact, there is no more reason why an out-
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
door playground should not be kept as private as
an indoor living-room; but so far the practice of
walling in the grounds around a house has the force
of custom against it. Whatever the motive in the
present instance, the architect has managed to secure
a fair amount of privacy without the use of an en-
closure. Not only are the garden and tennis court
screened by the house, but the shrubbery at either
end of the building will, when it has obtained its full
growth, still further protect the " backyard " from
a passer-by on the street. The treatment of the
garden back of the house is adapted to the absence
of any enclosure. In fact, it can hardly be said that
there is any garden at all. In the middle of the
large stretch of lawn, and on an axis with the en-
closed porch, a rectangular space has been sunk;
and in the centre of this space is a pool with a flower-
bed at either end.
The house is plain and even severe in treatment,
and it has dignity without the slightest pretension.
It is simply an interesting and very careful piece of
brick-work, without any of the stone trimmings
with which so many Eastern architects like to spot
and line the surface of their brick walls. A single
course of stone marks the line of the ground floor,
and the window sills are similarly distinguished.
The windows are small and not capped by any orna-
mental members whatsoever. The only important
ornamental feature of the building is a strong string-
course of terra cotta, cutting off the top floor; and
this is well, because the top floor evidently contains
a large number of small rooms, and is consequently
116
THE HOUSE FOR ALL THE YEAR
A WESTERN ENTRANCE
distinguished from the other floors by the numerous
windows which its plan demands. The entrance
porch is treated with the same simplicity and the
same respect for the dominant material. Its ap-
pearance is not complicated and falsified by any
scheme of applied decoration; and the two columns
which hold the lintel have a structural function.
Its whole effect would perhaps be a little austere for
the majority of Eastern house-owners; but it is a
117
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
salutary thing that the Western architect can some-
times dispense with the decorative irrelevancies so
often demanded in the East.
The architecture of the interior is characterised
by the same plain consistent treatment. There are
no imported mantelpieces, no white paint, none of
the carpenter's version of classic and Renaissance
detail, no Gothic ceilings, and no " period" furnish-
ing. The finish is simple and substantial through-
out. All the rooms are more or less completely
panelled, and when the panelling does not cover the
walls, the intervening spaces are treated generally
with a solid colour. The lines of the beams and of
the cornice are very strong, and the different parts
are tied well together. The wood-work is stained
a dark brown; none of the ordinary classic mould-
ings are used; and no doors are hung between the
principal rooms. One apartment opens into another
without the interruption even of " portieres," and
the reader will notice that no curtains keep out the
light from the windows, which serves to explain the
smallness of these openings. A pleasant sense of
being spacious, conveniently planned, and well con-
nected pervades these apartments. They are a
worthy example of an architect's interior; and if the
effect of the inside is like the effect of the outside, a
little austere, it is, on the other hand, not in the least
negative, or flat, or attenuated.
Similar in intention of design are three houses
which are good examples of Western work of the
better sort, combining a certain freedom of treat-
ment not so often found in the East, with a dispo-
118
AN EXAMPLE OF SIMPLE BRICK WORK
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
sition to remain faithful to desirable traditions of
residence design.
The problems presented by the several houses are
very different; but the several treatments of these
problems possess much the same qualities. In each
instance the forms used are simple and straight-
forward and well adapted to the peculiarities of the
site.
The house in Minerva Avenue, Chicago, is a
modest two-story and attic building, situated im-
mediately on the street, and especially designed for
this location. The architect has taken advantage of
every opportunity for variety of effect and for
saliency of treatment. The entrance porch instead
of being merely applied to the building is really at-
tached to it by its enclosure within a wall running
parallel to the building. This wall is broken by
spots marking the entrance, and is capped by a
course of white stone. The overhang of the roof
with its strong shadow helps the wall of the porch
to line the house up with the street, while at the
same time it assists the white window and door
frames to provide agreeable contrasts on the front
of the little building. The effect of the roof is a
little like that of a man who pulls a broad-brimmed
hat down over his eyes; but such men usually make
an interesting appearance.
The interior of this house is very attractive in its
excellent use of comparatively small spaces, and in
its simple and consistent treatment. The living and
dining-rooms are practically one apartment, sepa-
rated by bookcases that stand out into the room as
1 20
THE HOUSE FOR ALL THE YEAR
AN ALL-THE-YEAR-ROUND HOUSE
screens, but united by similarity in the lines and the
effect of the wood-work, the character of which
harmonises with the " Mission " furniture. It is
very rare to find a house as small as this so com-
pletely designed and finished. Even the tables and
chairs in the " Mission" style are well selected both
for comfort and avoidance of the ordinary uncouth
solidity of this kind of thing.
The house at Milwaukee is much larger, and is
detached from its neighbours. The size of the lot
is, however, not large enough to permit much of any
landscape treatment, and the design, adapted to the
121
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
r '
A SIGHTLY REAR
suburban character of the surroundings, is marked
by simplicity and refinement. It is a plain, honest
piece of brick-work, varied, like the Chicago house,
by white wood-work and crowned by a roof with an
overhang that makes a strong shadow. The upper
story is cut off from the two lower stories and joined
to the crowning member by a string course of white
stone, and by being made of plaster instead of brick.
The arrangement is attractive; but its attractiveness
is diminished by the way in which the upper line of
bay window cuts-off the windows of the third story.
122
THE HOUSE FOR ALL THE YEAR
It would have been better to keep the front flat, and
also, if possible, to have given the plaster some
modest surface decoration. Altogether, however,
this is a very legitimate piece of work, and one
which has a chance of becoming charming when the
bleakness of the surroundings is properly relieved.
It is, however, a residence at Canton, 111., that is
the most conspicuous success. In this instance the
site is large enough to afford a chance for landscape
treatment, while at the same time it is so near its
neighbours that it cannot be considered as an iso-
lated country place. The architect has managed ad-
mirably to adapt the design of the house, and the lay-
out of the ground to a situation which is countrified
without being entirely in the country. The long line
of the house is parallel to the public road, from
which the grounds are separated by a brick wall,
low enough to give definiteness of enclosure, but not
high enough to seem exclusive. The house is ap-
proached by a straight driveway, which turns in to
the back of the house, but which is reached from the
front of the house by a brick walk running the whole
length of the fagade. The building is situated on a
slightly higher level than this brick walk — a level
which is emphasised by a stone terrace, from which
the rooms of the house are entered by a couple of
stone steps. The entrance proper is at some distance
from the road, and is marked by the projection of a
large gabled room over the brick and stone terrace,
carried by plain brick piers. The design may be
classified as a free example of half-timbered work,
which is sufficiently picturesque and irregular to
123
HOUSE OF MR. ORENDORFF, CANTON, ILL.
THE HOUSE FOR ALL THE YEAR
look well in the background of the neighbouring
foliage, but which at the same time is a well-bal-
anced composition. The effect of the place is wholly
charming.
The immediate surroundings of the house have
been formally treated; but the formality has never
for a moment degenerated into emptiness and
rigidity. The house is at home on its site; the land
round about has been kept genuinely natural in ap-
pearance. There are very few all-the-year-round
houses in this country in which such a balance of
desirable qualities has been preserved.
The interiors are, perhaps, less successful than the
exterior. They show a preference for a simple, con-
sistent scheme, which in the case of the living-room
has the appearance of being original as well as at-
tractive; but the value of this scheme has not been
preserved in the somewhat incongruous furniture
and hangings. The dining-room is more consistently
realised ; and the other apartments look as if the
architect had been a little fancy-free in this house,
which is, of course, a good thing to be.
125
CHAPTER VI
THE HALL AND THE STAIRS
THE growth and development of the " hall " in the
American house is rather a curious thing, for
whereas, in the house built previous to 1860, the
hall was in nearly every case an entry exclusively,
it has since become in many cases a recognised sit-
ting room. The entry of the old-fashioned house
was wider or narrower as the dignity of the house
might seem to make necessary, and where wide it
might contain a sofa, and on very hot days of the
North American summer furnish a place to sit in and
enjoy the breeze. Yet it still contained the " hat-
rack " and the " umbrella-stand " ; it still had, to light
it, only the open door and the narrow " side-lights,"
and it was still furnished or left unfurnished as a
passageway alone. The floor would be covered
with oilcloth, the walls would affect a surface of
uniform tint or perhaps imitate in the papering
blocks of stone or marble. The stairs went up at one
side against the wall with no pretence at shutting off
or concealment.
Since the close of the Civil War there has been a
disposition in country houses to make the hall square
and spacious, even if by so doing the other rooms of
the house on either story are somewhat crowded or
are diminished in number. It seems to be assumed
126
MAIN FLOOR FOR A COUNTRY HOUSE
127
COUNTRY HOUSE BEDROOMS
128
THE HALL AND THE STAIRS
that the hall is a sitting-room so desirable in itself
that something should give way to this disposition.
Even in cities and in the deep and narrow houses
used there, with their windows only^ in the narrow
walls of the front and rear, this same arrangement
of a square hall has been popular, and although in
that connection many householders object to it al-
together, many again are found who use it and even
advocate its introduction.
When, however, the hall is to be treated as a sit-
ting-room, it becomes altogether desirable to shut
the staircase off and separate staircase from hall by
a screen or by something more than a screen, namely,
by a solid wall with an opening more or less wide.
The door itself may not be hung in this opening —
it may be better dressed by hanging curtains, or
portieres; but at all events the two apartments are
better when entirely distinct.
The term staircase, I may mention in passing, is
used in the sense given in the Dictionary of Archi-
tecture and Building as meaning " the structure
containing a stair," the "stair together with its en-
closing wall." In this sense it is here maintained
that staircase and hall should be separated as far as
the size of the house and the disposition of the plan
will admit.
Thus in the illustration shown on page 151 there is
indeed no way visible of closing the opening between
the two apartments, but otherwise the plan is an
ideally good one. The hall has windows, it accom-
modates bookshelves, a great fixed sofa, tables and
chairs; and it forms an altogether agreeable sitting-
129
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
A HALL AND LIVING-ROOM
room from which by two steps we mount to a second
smaller sitting-room, a kind of recess with a stand
and a chair and a picture which receives sufficient
daylight, and from which you go up to the first
landing of the stair, upon which again is a fixed seat
and into which opens a window in the rear wall.
There cannot be a pleasanter form of division than
this.
Again, on page 131, there is shown a hall with
heavy oak table and bookshelves; there are steps
which take you up to a dining-room with a recessed
window, and by another entrance you reach the foot
130
THE HALL AND THE STAIRS
A RAISED DINING-ROOM
of the main stair, which in this picture is only just
indicated.
If, now, we consider the stairs themselves, with
the hall as being primarily the place for the stairs
only — that is to say the staircase — one arrangement
is to have the staircase-hall leading directly into
the library, but in itself allowing of access to the
stair and nothing else except a door in the wain-
scoting.
An always attractive arrangement for the hall is in
a strictly Old Colonial fashion with verdures for the
wall hangings, a high and deep Empire sofa, with
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
a mirror hanging above it whose frame with the
hooks smacks of the same early epoch; and the stair
itself with its long and wide landing is an excellent
piece of the stair building of a hundred years ago.
In some instances there is carried out in the best
manner that picturesque and most interesting
scheme, in which the newel of the stair is formed by
a spiral turn of the hand-rail supported by a multi-
plicity of little balusters exactly like those of the
ramp of the stair above. This is, indeed, a most
fascinating device.
Page 133 seems to be a modern composition in the
same spirit, and it must be owned that the soffit of
the stair in its upper part beyond the square " quar-
ter pace" is more strictly true to precedent than in
cases where a continuous sheathing replaces the
moulded underside of each step. Another view of
the same staircase shows a very broad and imposing
set of glazed doors leading from the outer vestibule
to the stair-foot.
The people of a hundred years ago, in the great
wooden houses of Beaufort and along the James
River and more rarely in the North, used to affect
the double stairway, one with a central stair leading
to the " half pace" and two stairs leading from that
platform to the landing above. Good instances are
to be found in many modern houses.
Other halls give, in a pleasant way, memoranda
of the simpler and smaller staircases of our fore-
fathers, showing those arrangements by which the
stair was partly sheltered from draughts and the
persons ascending and descending were partly shel-
132
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
A MODERN COLONIAL STAIRCASE
tered from observation. These are always danger-
ous to the designer, because the raking lines of the
stair are always difficult to manage, and produce un-
gainly spaces, shapes and combinations. The best
are the simplest, and ones closely built in are to be
found in many modern houses, hiding from the spec-
tator all the sloping hand-rails, wainscots, base-
boards and the like. Indeed, the more a stair
can be built in between walls generally the better
it is.
The hall of the Kip house gives the details of an
extremely magnificent dwelling, one built on the
134
THE HALL AND THE STAIRS
AN EFFECTIVE NEWEL POST
lines of the Jacobean houses of Great Britain. In
such a house as this there should be no. elevators nor
other modern conveniences except, perhaps, the
electric light, which may be admitted to noble man-
sions in England, chiefly that it may the better
illuminate the artistic treasures of the building itself
and its contents. The Oriental weapons on the
walls should have a special electric light whose
beams may be thrown full upon them in order that
the admiring visitor may see the details of those
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
A TYPE OF HALL AND LIVING-ROOM
curious arms without asking that they be taken down
for his examination.
The hall of the Clarence Mackay house at Roslyn,
Long Island, has a stair of great splendour, with
parapets filled with Roman scroll-work carved in the
solid wood, pierced through and sculptured on either
side. Such a stair, for richness and brilliancy of
effect, is worthy of Blicking or Hatfield.
There are some interesting bits of hall and passage
which are not at all connected with the stair. Thus
the landing at the head of the stairs may be parti-
tioned off to form a lobby — more enclosed and less
138
THE HALL AND THE STAIRS
A LIVING-ROOM OPENING INTO THE HALL
accessible than an open hall would be — to the bed-
room beyond. Such an enclosed hall is a most at-
tractive and generally simple composition. A
large hall may serve as outer sitting-room, while a
smaller inner room is three or four steps above it in
front.
Page 146 is not attractive from the number of
levels seen in it. The large hall where we stand
leads through a great opening to what seems a din-
ing-room on the left and it is not at all separated
from the hall itself by door or curtain, and on the
right we go up two steps and again three steps more
141
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
to other parts of the house, these connecting in a
way with the stair itself. This hall with its sofa, its
cottage piano, its comfortable chairs and stands
bearing lamps, is evidently a place of habitation, and
the framed pictures on the walls show refined choice
in works of art.
142
CHAPTER VII
THE LIVING-ROOM
THE size and arrangement of the living-room will
of course depend very largely on the foregoing con-
siderations in the matters of the hall and stair: — -
indeed, these three features of the plan of a house of
moderate cost are so mutually dependent that either
one can hardly be discussed without constant refer-
ence to the disposition of the otliers. Much of what
has been said above on the subject of halls will, there-
fore, have more or less weight in deciding on the
placing of the living-room.
When the site is spacious enough — as in the coun-
try— to allow of a certain amount of freedom in the
orientation of the house and its parts, the first con-
sideration will usually be given to exposure and out-
look; and this will be of more especial importance
in the placing of the principal rooms. Thus, in
warm localities it is desirable that the living-room
should face toward the prevailing summer winds;
and, further, if the house is to be occupied through-
out the year, there should be some windows with a
sunny exposure. So in the vicinity of New York,
it is well to place the principal apartments along the
southerly side of the house; and the offices and sub-
ordinate rooms to the north.
The question of the library is for our present pur-
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
MAKING USE OF STEPS
pose connected very closely with the living- room.
What we are discussing is the dwelling in which
the library and living-room will very often be one
and the same. Even in the case of the hard worker
with pen or typewriter, the room where his books
are kept is usually the sitting-room, he being free to
reserve a workroom opening from it, of which he
can shut the door and in which he can arrange
his thoughts undisturbed and construct the lecture
or the article which goes to make him the bread-
winner.
146
THE LIVING-ROOM
HALLWAY WITH BOOKS
There is, however, another side to it, for in some
houses the living-room is also the drawing-room.
Many a family takes nearly this view of the situation
—viz., that there must be a relatively large, airy and
spacious room for the family sitting-room and for
the more intimate guests, while a comparatively
small reception room is used for the visitor who
calls in the way of mere ceremony, or in the way of
business, or on a single occasion without the im-
mediate prospect of intimate acquaintance with the
family. We shall see in our illustrations examples
149
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
A LIVABLE HALLWAY
of both these schemes, but first let us consider those
rooms which are living-rooms and nothing else.
Thus in the room on page 149 the arrangements
make for comfort and convenience; the room on the
right (raised by two steps) is evidently a plant
room, a conservatory of that sort which accommo-
dates itself well to the interior in which the family
are to live ; and this is not shut off by any door, the
connection being by a wide opening, which makes
of the conservatory a kind of bay window'of unusual
size and importance. Then in the room itself there is
THE LIVING-ROOM
HALL WINDOWS
another bay window used as a recess for the fixed sofa,
with the awkward but evidently inevitable device of
a register for the heat and for the ventilation shown
on its upright side. On either side of the simple
brick chimney-piece, — an admirable fixture which
one longs to see more often in these tranquil do-
mestic interiors, — there is a window commanding a
view of trees and open country, and of these win-
dows one is short, with a sill raised very high to
allow of bookshelves below it. The encroaching
radiator is the only blot on this charming compo-
sition. If, as is most probable, the beams of the
MOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
A LIVING-ROOM WITH EXTRA HEIGHT
ceiling are really the working timbers merely boxed
with boarding or finished off with moulding, we
can leave this sitting-room with the feeling thai
nothing more delightful is likely to come our
way.
Something of a similar character is to be found
in the room shown above — a room in that Evanston
which is overshadowed by the renown of its great
neighbour, Chicago. Here the one-story house is
so treated that the low walls of the sitting-room are
helped out by the slope of the roof ; so that the room,
152
THE LIVING-RCOM
AN EFFECTIVE DORMER WINDOW
not more than seven feet in the eaves, rises to eleven
feet or more in the middle. Commonly this arrange-
ment has the unfortunate result that the daylight is
not admitted from a sufficient height above the floor,
but in this case the putting in of a capitally conceived
dormer window on the right remedies the possible
difficulty and gives us in part, at least, a sufficient
lighting for whatever in the room may need to be
seen by full daylight.
Again on page 153 are seen the arrangements
of the same room from another point of observation.
153
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
A DOMED CEILING
This is a noble sitting-room indeed, with windows
in three walls and a great brick chimney-piece.
Other illustrations of the same house will be found
on pages 121 and 122, and the architect is to be
congratulated on his success in designing this
dwelling.
Some rooms carry farther than usual the arrange-
ment of the windows flanking the chimney-piece —
windows high in the wall, with bookcases below
them and, in short, a familiar arrangement carried
out to its logical extreme. There is no doubt about
THE LIVING-ROOM
DRAWING-ROOM OF GENERAL DRAPER, WASHINGTON, D. C.
the advantage of the plan from the point of view of
receiving daylight freely at the most agreeable side
of the room. In many instances, however, there does
not exist that other advantage, the looking out-of-
doors as you sit by the fire, for (probably from dif-
ferent local causes) it is thought best to fill these
windows-frames with decorative glass of a pretty de-
sign. It is a good thought to arrange these windows
as casements with hinges by which they may swing
freely into the room.
This matter of the sitting-room extends itself inev-
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
ANOTHER VIEW OF GENERAL DRAPER'S DRAWING-ROOM
itably into the larger library. But as to the real
drawing-rooms, the rooms arranged en suite, we have
them at their best in long rooms opening into each
other.
One long room with perhaps two chimney-
pieces, may be hung with tapestries with figure sub-
jects on a very large scale, and furnished with sofas,
chairs and fauteuils. Such apartments cannot be
considered sitting-rooms in the ordinary sense, and
yet in summer how delightful to inhabit! There is
no place quite so cool as a very big room with a
156
THE LIVING-ROOM
moderate current of air entering at the windows and
doors. Such a current of air ceases to be a draught-
it does not worry you with fears of to-morrow, it
allows the whole room to remain sweet and pure
with a steady temperature. Give us for our summer
evenings a room not smaller than forty by seventy
feet.
CHAPTER VIII
THE DINING-ROOM
THE considerations of exposure and outlook, dis-
cussed in the previous chapter in connection with
the living-room, apply also to the dining-room.
Here, however, the question of outlook is not of
equal importance, because the dining-room will not
be used habitually for other purposes than the serv-
ing of meals. When it is to be so used — when the
dining-room is also the family sitting-room — the con-
ditions of the two classes of apartment have to be
considered simultaneously; and the case becomes too
complex to be provided for except in connection with
the immediate site and the house-plan.
As for the internal arrangement of the dining-
room in its more usual capacity, this is governed
mainly by the form and disposition of the table —
especially of the dinner-table, which may sometimes
differ in size and arrangement from that used at
other meals. If an extension table is to be used, the
shape of the room will tend to be relatively long and
narrow, especially if it is to accommodate a large
party at certain times. Thus a table for twelve per-
sons needs to be eleven or twelve feet long, and now-
adays not less than four feet wi'de. This will require
a floor space not less than twelve feet wide for con-
venient service, and about twenty feet in length in
158
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
AN ELABORATE DINING-ROOM
the clear between the opposite walls, so that if the
chimney-breast is at one of the narrow ends of the
room this measurement of twenty feet must be taken
between the face of the chimney-piece or of the
mantelpiece and of the opposite wall. Again if
the sideboard is to be put in at the end opposite the
fireplace this also must be considered; for a space
of at least nineteen feet is really needed for the
proper service of the table when extended to a
length of twelve feet. As for the width of the room,
with a four-foot table, eleven feet in the clear be-
162
THE DINING-ROOM
A COMBINATION DINING- AND LIVING-ROOM
tween the walls, between fireplace and sideboard,
between sideboard and service table, between any and
all permanent obstacles must be maintained. This,
of course, is an awkward shape for the room, and
accordingly it is usual to give to the dining-room
greater breadth than seems essential, and then to
occupy this greater breadth with (as above sug-
gested) the mantelpiece and the sideboard, or the
service table, or both; in other words, the room
within the walls may be nineteen feet by fourteen, a
tolerable proportion ; and all the large obstacles,
more than once named above, may be put on the long
163
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
A CORNER CHINA CLOSET
sides. It is here, of course, that the bookcases and the
like will be set in rooms which have the double pur-
pose of sitting-room and eating-room.
The disposition of windows for the proper light-
ing of this oblong dining-room is perhaps more diffi-
cult than in the case of any other apartment of the
average house. The desirability of so arranging the
windows that persons sitting at table shall not
have their backs turned directly to the light, and of
lighting the table equally throughout often bring
about a problem difficult to solve with entire satis-
faction. If conditions permit of placing the room so
164
THE DINING-ROOM
A WELL-LIGHTED DINING-ROOM
that there may be a skylight or a lantern-light over
the table, or across one end of the ceiling — as in the
case of a bay — a very effective interior may be had,
and with but few openings in the side-walls. Ordi-
narily, however, this feature of the plan will be
found impracticable for houses of moderate cost, and
daylight must therefore be obtained from the side-
walls only. Then, obviously, windows in one of the
longer sides of the room will afford the most per-
fectly distributed light, and these windows should
preferably be high in the wall — carried close up to
165
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
A WESTERN DINING-ROOM
the ceiling, as, for instance, to a line twelve inches
below it, and with high sills; the purpose being to
throw the light downward rather than horizontally
—over the heads and shoulders of the diners rather
than directly on their backs. A very good plan has
been made, in which the dining-room, of only mod-
erate height, was unusually well lighted from two
adjoining sides, the windows in each wall being
close to the corners. This resulted in cross lights
passing diagonally over the table from the ends, and
the central position of each wall was available for
166
THE DINING-ROOM
A DINING-ROOM FIREPLACE
furniture. An equally good, and more artistically
effective, design will result by lighting a long room
from the two opposite ends ; but the necessary condi-
tion— two opposite outer walls — will not often be
obtained.
The foregoing considerations, based on the re-
quirements of a long table and a correspondingly
long room, will be found much modified in the case
of the much broader table, in fashion about 1875 to
1890, and of the round dining table, the use of which
appears to be increasing in popularity, and which
167
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
AN OLD-FASHIONED DINING-ROOM
demands less floor space for convenient service than
a long table of equal seating capacity. Thus a round
table five feet in diameter, or thereabouts, will ac-
commodate a party of eight with comfort, while a
diameter of some six feet will allow of ten or more
seats. Hence a floor space of fifteen feet across will
be ample provision for the table of an average house-
hold, making allowance for other dining-room furni-
ture outside of this space. Such a table, then, can
be placed at one end of the room, fifteen feet wide,
and could be well lighted from that end wall, even
with only one or two windows; and the entire room
168
THE DINING-ROOM
A COLONIAL DINING-ROOM
need not be more than perhaps fifteen by eighteen
feet. If that end of the room can be treated as a bay,
projecting considerably beyond the facade, it may be
made a most attractive feature in the design of the
dining-room. For instance, let such a bay have the
form of a semi-circle or semi-polygon, with the table
at its centre. Windows can then be provided all
along the perimeter of the bay, leaving the wall
spaces of the inner portion of the room for other
furniture. This is an especially pleasant feature in
a summer home, for nearly the entire extent of the
169
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
A MODERN COLONIAL DINING-ROOM
outer wall can be made to open, so that the bay
becomes almost the equivalent of a veranda.
It will be readily understood that the conditions
of the room are nearly the same in the case of
the square and of the round table. The point is, in
either case, that the dining-room does not tend to
be long and narrow relatively as in the days of tables
intended to be adjusted in length to the requirements
of a large party. The table of recent years, with its
square or round or — less frequently — polygonal top,
is not an extension table at all, but is fitted to receive
170
THE DINING-ROOM
STATELINESS IN THE DINING-ROOM
tops of different sizes; exactly as in a restaurant a
number of circular table-tops are kept in stock, and
according to the size of the dinner party the largest
(accommodating twenty persons perhaps) will be
put in place — or a smaller one accommodating four-
teen, twelve or ten. Thus in the illustration shown
on page 168 the room, being nearly square in plan,
is so large relatively to the ordinary size of the
dining-table that it would accommodate a round-top
or square-top table large enough for sixteen guests,
and this without causing a derangement of the furni-
171
1
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
ture in the room. Pages 161 and 162 illustrate
similar large dining-rooms.
On page 169 is shown a room in Zanesville, Ohio,
which is frankly designed in a modification of the
Georgian (Old Colonial) style, and is a really excel-
lent composition. The decoration includes the very
obvious protection for the walls — the dado which in
this case is carried up to a height of about seven feet
and corresponds in height to the mantelpiece. The
shelf of the mantel is carried around the room,
though elsewhere it is narrower than over the fire-
place; and this shelf, wide or narrow, affords the
best possible place for exhibiting those bowls, plat-
ters, tea-pots, covered dishes and the like, which are
among the treasures of the true lover of " old china."
Such a collector puts his stately vases into his draw-
ing-room and library; but the majority of the collec-
tor's pieces are not stately vases; and, in a way not
perfectly explicable, the dining-room seems to be
the more congenial home for the covered sugar-pots,
the small tureens, and the huge Persian and Chinese
bowls which, under the general name of " punch
bowl," though not now used for punch, adorn the
rooms of the happy few.
An attractive kind of dining-room is Old Colonial,
in which the panelling goes almost to the ceiling,
leaving only a very narrow strip of flat wall between
the surbase of the woodwork and the plastered " cor-
nice" above. It is not, perhaps, the most happy
disposition; but the very strong and spirited plaster-
work of a ceiling in a modified Jacobean style may
call for the sheathing of the wall with woodwork,
172
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
and suggest this as the most convenient plan. It has
the additional advantage of giving to the ceiling the
full size of the room between the walls; for if the
panelling had been carried up to the flat surface of
the ceiling, the room inevitably would have looked
smaller.
In some modern houses one finds a dining-room
of the neo-classic style, very much such a room as
was devised for the wealthy citizens of 1825 and the
years following. To our modern tastes the fully de-
veloped entablature and columns of composite order,
brought so near to us on the walls of the room, may
be severally a little aggressive. This, however, seems
hypercriticism in view of the fact that the traditions
of our most elegant American life of the time when
men now old were born, all combined to make this
seem the architecture of the Fathers.
One device for the dining-room walls is a simple
dado and very simple woodwork of the character of
our good village houses of the very beginning of the
nineteenth century. The dado may be reduced to
about the usual height of the chair-rail — that is to
say, the wall may be covered with woodwork to a
height of about two feet ten inches from the floor and
from this, as from an architectural basement, rise the
pilasters which adorn the corners of the projecting
chimney-piece and of the recess opposite to it.
The room on page 1 68 is a most attractive room
fitted up in the true taste of one who loves the tran-
quil village life of a century ago. It is in this way
that the dining-room and sitting-room of a prosper-
ous villager of 1800 and the years following were
THE DINING-ROOM
DINING-ROOM CONTAINING LIVING-ROOM FURNITURE
really furnished and adorned; and the architects who
are the most constantly occupied with the dwelling
houses of the children of those prosperous villagers
—the men who build in the towns around Boston
and along the North Shore — those architects tell us
that the old traditions remain, and that the family
who will spend several thousands of dollars for a
painting will not expend money for the adornment
of the interior — for the carving of the mantelpiece,
for the inlaying of the columns — in short, they say
that it is a Puritan tradition to spend nothing on your
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
house, whereas the Puritan tradition has nothing to
say about the separate and portable work of art.
Other illustrations in this chapter show rooms
with the now fashionable square table, rooms with
elaborately carved table and chairs, rooms with a
fireplace of unusual character, and rooms interesting
for their snug compactness. It is an attractive dis-
play, a real picture-gallery of pleasant domestic
interiors.
A BUNGALOW DINING-ROOM
176
CHAPTER IX
THE BEDROOM
THE French lady has always made her bedroom
serve the purpose of a sitting-room. The French
bedroom, at least in the cities, is on the floor with the
salon, the dining-room, the library, and must inevi-
tably form suite with them. The French bedroom,
being a part of the series or group of rooms on one
floor which are run together in a dwelling, has the
same height of ceiling and somewhat the same liberal
decoration as the more public rooms of the apparte-
ment. Indeed, in a reception or entertainment of
any size the bedroom has to be thrown into the other
rooms for a more or less free use by the guests and
their hosts. This however, is done — this freedom of
access is made possible, this employment of the room
as one of a handsome series of rooms becomes natu-
ral— because of the disposition of the bed itself in an
alcove which can be quite perfectly screened. The
accompanying plan shows this disposition as it has
been for many years. The large bedstead nearly fills
the space of the alcove, which is in fact a small room
with two openings in its walls; the one a wide door-
way— for such indeed it is, though not closed by
doors — treated as part of the ordinance of the larger
room without; the other a quite narrow doorway,
with a hinged door hung upon one of its jambs and
177
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
PLAN FOR A BEDROOM
intended merely for the use of the care-taker who
" makes the bed." The alcove may be a little larger
and have a ruelle between the bed and the wall, wide
enough for a piece of furniture, and often in old
times accommodating a chair or even a fauteuil in
which a visitor might sit. It was the place where,
one after another, the guests to whom the lady would
do special honour were received at the time of morn-
ing visits, the lady having first submitted to the
process of the toilet, at least to the extent of having
her hair most elaborately dressed.
This arrangement of the alcove has never obtained
in the United States, the Americans having followed
English rather than French precedent in the matter.
But another tendency is at work which is curiously
178
THE BEDROOM
leading nearly in the same direction as the universal
recognition of the alcove, and that is the banishment
— not of the bed, but of the toilet apparatus gener-
ally, into a separate room well shut off from the bed-
room proper. If we put bath and basin and all the
" waterworks " together into a large and sufficiently
lighted dressing-room, then indeed the bedroom,
having nothing to suggest special privacy except the
bed itself, may become a sitting-room as available as
the boudoir of very large establishments. And, by
the way, has not the boudoir gone out? It does seem
to the writer — who confesses to less constant study
of the modern house plans than of their predecessors
in old times — that the boudoir is not as well recog-
nised a part of the lady's private domain as it was
in England forty years ago, and in America both
then and thereafter in houses of much more than
common extent and splendour. But in any case the
bedroom grows more and more like unto a pleasant
private sitting-room as the modern refinements have
sway. And as to the bed, there is no reason why the
housemaids should not resort to a scheme much in
fashion in Germany and even in Eastern France
when those were young who are now old. The cus-
tom in the " consulate of Plancus " was to do up the
bed in the morning, piling the bed-clothes neatly
folded, and the big soft Feder-bett or plumet togther
in the middle, and draw a "spread" over the whole
in such a way as to disguise utterly the shape and
even the nature of the apparatus below. When
turned up this way for the day the bed looked like
anything but a place to lie upon. At supper time
179
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
A BEDROOM IN CAMBRIDGE
the madchen came and " made the bed " —and then
you saw what was meant by the touching old ballad,
in good English and still better in the original Scots,
by the wail and prayer of the sick or sorrowful young
man:
" Oh, mother, mother ! make my bed,
And make it long and narrow. "
But indeed that way of treating the bed so that it
shall not look like a bed is a device that might be
followed. Far be it from this argument to insist
upon the merits of the enclosed and wood-built stand-
180
THE BEDROOM
BEDROOM AND SITTING-ROOM
ing bed-place like a bunk in an officer's cabin at sea;
but where the bedstead and the bed (the terms being
used in the more usual sense) are enclosed by a house
which reaches the floor and conceals everything
within itself, there is certainly an added freedom as
to the use of the rooms for the purposes of life by day.
None of our examples to-day serve to remind us
of any such possibilities. The twin bedsteads now
and for a dozen years much in fashion appear fre-
quently; also the brass bedstead, which is greatly
valued among sanitary scientists. There is, too, the
181
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
THE INFLUENCE OF L ART NOUVEAU
old-fashioned bedstead built of hard wood in slender
bars, each bar turned in the length into an appear-
ance of a string of beads, and the old-fashioned
double bed as modified by very recent tendencies of
I'art nouveau. And yet in almost all there is evi-
dence that the room is intended for use as a sitting-
room, the room where the proprietress receives her
lady friends to an indefinite extent.
A large bedroom with all its accessories may be
quite a model apartment With its ample fireplace
ready for immediate action; its long and low mantel-
182
THE BEDROOM
A BEDROOM UNDER THE EAVES
shelf with objets d'art ranged along it, pieces which
are perhaps a shade less effective as decorations than
those which the dining-room mantelpiece would de-
mand; its toilet table and large glass, and its addi-
tional Psyche glass in which the whole skirt may be
viewed even to the floor; its dainty little stand having
two little drawers and yet capable of being moved
about the room; its writing table, large enough, solid
enough for the hasty notes to friends which the occu-
pant may choose to indite without going to the
183
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
library below; the fixed seat in the deep-seated win-
dow and the abundant lighting from at least two
sides, we have the make-up of a charming room for
daily life.
On page 185 is shown a bedroom of a type now a
bit old-fashioned. Here, with the complete set of
furniture in a variety of white enamel ware, the wood
itself concealed under the uniform coat of milky
gloss, a method of adornment which is extended to
the mantelpiece, is the prettiest room that we have
yet mentioned. Alas, that it should be disfigured by
the ugly monster under the fixed settle on the left —
the steam radiator with its hideous lines and the
consciousness that one has — that for seven months in
the year that settle will be — not a pleasant seat in the
window, but a screen and a disguise for the monster!
The old hot-air furnace was a better thing in many
ways than the more powerful modern apparatus.
There are other rooms in which no bedstead is
visible, but which are yet undoubtedly bed-chambers
if one may read their disposition and their old fur-
nishings aright. In one there is the old-fashioned
high bureau (not a tallboy, but a bureau so tall that
it is removed from the modern class of " dressing
bureaus" while yet it has a mirror hung on the wall
above it) , and the room is either a bedroom or a large
dressing-room opening into the bedroom proper.
What one likes in such rooms is the extreme sim-
plicity of fittings and decorations. This is indeed
the way to make a room pretty at the lowest possible
cost, unless we are to have the hangings of the wall
of a woven stuff of some kind rather than a wall
184
THE BEDROOM
- .
7
AN OLD-FASHIONED BEDROOM
paper, in which case a slightly greater expense will
have been incurred. Another room is furnished with
interesting pieces of old times, a bureau and a little
round table of much older type than the two chairs,
but all ancestral in their look. The room itself, with
its comparatively low ceiling and its very simple
fitting up, may be all that can be asked for as most
simple and most gracious; though in modern houses
the dreadful radiator is only too apt to stand in the
choice corner by the fireplace and explain why the
fireplace itself is bare — without andiron and logs.
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
Page 187 is a delightful room. Its fixed and perma-
nent " finish " is not seen, for curtains conceal what
otherwise would be in view; but the open bookcase
tells the story, and we learn that this also is of the
simplest woodwork finished in white enamel, as in-
deed are the little writing table, the arm-chair drawn
up to it, and so much of the door-trim as the curtain
allows us to see. The chair and upholstered arm-
chair covered with a striped silk material in the best
taste of the eighteenth century, are grouped in the
sentimental way with the low stand bearing the
workbasket and the vase of roses; but let no reader
suppose that the word "sentimental" is used other-
wise than in the good sense of betokening sentiment.
All this is of the olden-time genuine American re-
finement of ancestral dignity; but the writing table
is crowned by a desk telephone and that feature
" dates " the whole composition within a decade at
least.
In all this nothing has been said of folding bed-
steads. We are told, and on good authority, that they
are made nowadays in strict accordance with sani-
tary requirements, and it is true that even in high
grade New York City hotels this modern invention
has been introduced, and with such success that a
room already free from the apparatus of the toilet
as above described, is made into a sitting room or
anything else (at least in appearance) by the sub-
stitution of what seems a great bookcase or mirror-
fronted wardrobe for that which is indeed the place
of slumber. This, however, is not quite our subject
to-day. No room need be ashamed to seem frankly
186
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
A COLONIAL BEDROOM
what it is, and we might as well call it a bedroom
when the bed is in another room as when there is no
longer any visible bedstead. Therefore it is that
we are more inclined to consider one or two modern
plans which seem to be useful in the direction indi-
cated above — the direction of separating the toilet
apparatus from the bedroom, and thereby making
the bedroom a pleasant place in which to sit and,
indeed, to live.
Here is a plan (page 190) in use in some of the
modern hotels, and its application to the private
1 88
THE BEDROOM
A BEDROOM SUITE
house is obvious and easy. The door A is not abso-
lutely essential; its chief purpose, indeed, is to give
the bedroom itself a more complete and carefully
closed-in appearance when it is shut. The ventila-
tion of the room by the aid of the fanlight over the
entrance door B is a little easier without the interpo-
sition of the door A. The use of such a door must
always be a matter of private choice. The bathroom
is large enough, of course, for its purpose, and there
is a window in the wall which may or may not be
left open for a large part of the day. The reader is
reminded that with modern plumbing kept in good
189
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
PLAN FOR BEDROOM AND BATH
order the room in which the waterworks are ar-
ranged is no harder to ventilate than any other room
in the house. The most troublesome of all its appli-
ances, the waste pipes of the bath-tub and the basin,
are themselves harmless under such modern con-
ditions. The great closet opposite the bathroom
should have an electric bulb inside the door and this
will be sufficient to make the shelves above and hang-
ing space below far more available and far more easy
to keep clean and sweet than even in the homes of
our ancestors.
Another type of room, that with which a large
dressing room is associated, has the exceptional ad-
vantage that the two divisions together occupy the
190
THE BEDROOM
whole end of the pleasant house in Cambridge in
which they are to be found. The bedstead, set with
its head against the wall, has a window opposite its
foot, but this window need never be open during the
hours of repose, because there is a bay window admit-
ting the air all the time, and at the proper hours the
blessed light of early morning which is still kept
from shining into the eyes of the sleeper. The toilet
apparatus being relegated to the smaller room on the
right, there is left space for the bookcase, for various
tables, and most of all for a working table in the
most charming of all situations, namely, in the throat
of the bay window. The bedroom of which this is
a reminiscence is certainly the pleasantest room in
which the writer ever spent a night.
191
CHAPTER X
THE KITCHEN
As a subject for discussion, it may seem, at first
glance, that the kitchen of a house promises little of
value or interest, at least to the male portion of the
community. The conception and development of the
drawing-room, hall or library doubtless appear at
first sight more attractive, but let us see if even
the less prominent and often neglected kitchen may
not afford profitable consideration. In animal life,
human or otherwise, regular and continued exist-
ence is dependent upon the proper discharge of
the functions of a digestive system. No less is a
home dependent for its smooth running upon a
well-organised kitchen department. To this end,
it must be well planned, well constructed and sup-
plied with up-to-date furnishings. In regard to
the latter more particularly, the kitchen of to-day
is a great transformation and departure from the
same apartment in use one or two generations ago.
In good old primitive days, kitchen and living-
room were often one and the same. There is cer-
tainly a good deal of romantic charm about such a
room in an old English or early American home,
whether one has ever actually seen it or only become
familiar with it in history and fiction. There were
the wainscoted walls and beamed ceiling, well
192
THE KITCHEN
smoked and begrimed; the great brick fireplace with
burning logs and steaming kettles on the swinging
cranes; the floor of wide, well-worn boards; the un-
varnished chairs and table of oak and the rows of
burnished pans and old china o-n convenient racks.
On the deep-set window ledge smiled potted plants
and in a corner stood the spinning wheel. Connect-
ing with it was the woodshed, which in turn opened
into the barn. Everything was convenient and handy
for the housewife and arranged with an idea of mini-
mising labour. There are, doubtless, many who now
own palatial homes in town and country, having
every luxurious appointment, who feel a longing at
times for a good square meal in the old home of
bygone days. Certain it is that brain as well as
brawn have been produced by just such homely
living.
In planning homes for the well-to-do of to-day,
homes of generous size and luxurious appointments,
it is to be feared that both architects and builders are
at times at fault in their arrangement of the kitchen
and its subsidiary rooms. In their desire to produce
a handsome scheme for the showier rooms, they have
been known to ignore the claims of that part of the
anatomy of the house which is below stairs or placed
well out of the public gaze. It would seem that to
the kitchen was given such place and space as re-
mained after all other considerations had received
attention. If not actually bad in size or shape, it is
often a constant source of annoyance because no atten-
tion has been paid to utilitarian considerations. And
when the lady of the house has condemned the
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
kitchen she will likely make statements not calcu-
lated to swell the breast of the architect with pride,
no matter how superb his fagade. With a hope of
demonstrating the possibilities of the subject, let us
take up some detailed considerations.
In the case of a town house, built, let us say, on a
lot not a corner one, the location of the kitchen has
limitations as to choice of exposure to any particular
point of the compass. It is desirable that the expos-
ure should be to the south or west or between the two.
There is no denying the sanitary result of direct sun-
light aside from the benefit of having the prevailing
breezes for ventilation, and our kitchen must be light,
sanitary and easily ventilated. In the house in ques-
tion, it will generally be located under the dining-
room or somewhere in that story having service from
the street. It will probably be possible to get light
from one side only. The windows should be ample,
close up to the ceiling and as nearly in the centre of
the wall space as possible. To get cross ventilation
is the problem. This should be accomplished, with-
out making use of the hall of other basement room,
by arranging a small air shaft or flue on the side of
room opposite the windows. This shaft or flue is
not expected to carry off the smoke arising from
cooking operations, which should be carried away
in a vent flue opening above the range. Of course,
a window opening to the outside would be preferable
to the air shaft or flue, and the sill of such a window
could well be kept high above the floor so as not to
obstruct wall space more than necessary. Having
arranged our kitchen with regard to lighting and
194
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
ventilation, its access should be considered. The con-
ventional long hall or passage to the front area on the
same level as the kitchen is not susceptible of much
variation, providing the latter is at the rear of the
house. In the popular American basement plan, the
service entrance is arranged at one side, with the main
entrance in the middle or at the other side. Differ-
ences in floor levels are provided for by steps within
the house. If in any wise possible, a sunken area
reached by six or more outside steps should be
avoided as being dangerous in winter and unsatisfac-
tory at all times.
The suburban house being capable of fairly ideal
arrangement, there is no good excuse for an ill
arrangement of the kitchen. From utilitarian con-
siderations it should be, and generally is, placed on
the same level as the dining-room and in a separate
wing. In such cases the matters of cross ventilation
and lighting are not difficult to arrange and the de-
sired exposure easily is obtained.
The proper size for a kitchen is determined en-
irely by the actual service required of it. It should
)e compact without being cramped, with the idea
of placing fixtures and utensils within easiest reach.
Too much room is quite as undesirable as too little,
and the happy medium should be carefully sought.
In regard to the fitting up of our kitchen, we
should not allow anything to go into it that is not
first-class and thoroughly up-to-date. For flooring,
tile and artificial stone are rejected by some authori-
ties as being unsatisfactory to work on, gradually
affecting the feet. Others insist on a hardwood floor,
196
THE KITCHEN
Where conditions make it possible, however, an un-
glazed vitrified white tile is the handsomest and least
absorbent material and the objection as to the effect on
the feet can be overcome by using lengths of fibre mat-
ting where most wear comes. These can be removed
at will and the floor scoured. RubbejLlilijig_is_also^ a
suitable flooring material, and produces a handsome
effect. It can be laid on wood or cement and is avail-
able under almost all conditions. The side walls
should be finished with white glazed tile to a height
of six feet or more, having a concave base moulding
and neat cap piece, with such simple lines of col-
oured tile as good taste would suggest. The walls
above the tile and the ceiling may be covered with a
material in the nature of an oil-cloth, made for that
purpose and in appropriate colourings and patterns.
Thus the room may be given a washing over all
parts and kept clean and fresh as the most fastidious
could require. The architraves or casings of the
doorways should have white marble base blocks.
Thus far we have been constructing our room ; the
appliances necessary to make it of use now invite
attention. The range is easily first in importance. It
should be so located as to receive strong side light on
its top and at the same time not be directly in a cross
draught that interferes with the fire. The so-called
French range, with its black steel sides and nickel-
plated trimmings, is a handsome piece of kitchen fur-
niture. At one end, it will have a section devoted to
cooking with gas. At the proper height, a project-
ing curved hood will collect most of the smoke
arising from broiling and allow it to be drawn into
197
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
a vent flue in the chimney. Inasmuch as the hot-
water boiler is not to be considered a handsome fea-
ture, it is well to conceal it if possible in some
convenient closet or else place it on the chimney
breast in a horizontal position above the range. This
relieves the difficulty of keeping the floor clean under
and behind it when it is set on a standard.
On the opposite side of the room from the range
we may locate the sink, and between the two place
the table. A space of about five feet on each side of
the table will be found sufficient to allow of easy
movement and at the same time make a convenient
disposition. The porcelain sink and drip-board and
nickled pipes make a fine effect. It is wise to keep
as much^as .jx)_ssible_Qf Jhe supply and drain piping
exposed. It can be made far from ugly and any re-
pairs can be made without cutting of walls and floors.
The table can be arranged with convenient drawers
for kitchen cutlery and other necessary small imple-
ments; also a deep metal-lined drawer for throwing
refuse temporarily, to be emptied into the regular
metal can or barrel every day. A lower shelf will
be found handy. The top may be of wood or marble
and have a narrow plate shelf down the centre about
fifteen inches above it, carried on end brackets and
leaving the top open under it. The gas or electric
light fixture should be above the table, with a side
bracket above the sink.
Very handsome refrigerators are in the market,
having glass or tile linings and compartments for
every conceivable use. The exteriors are of wood or
tile and they are altogether a most sanitary place for
198
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
the keeping of food. Some housekeepers prefer a
built-in box, but there is little, if any, gain in going
to that expense, as the portable ones meet every re-
quirement. In the case of the town house, the
refrigerator may best be located in the hall between
the street entrance and the kitchen and handy to the
latter. It should, of course, be set in a well-lighted
place if possible. The drainage can be taken care of
by arranging a pipe to discharge above a sink in the
cellar.
The kitchen closet may be devoted almost entirely
to the holding of^pots, kettles and other bulky uten-
sils. The tins and agate ware should be kept bright
and clean and hung on brass hooks in rows on the
kitchen wall where they may have more or less deco-
rative value appropriate to the room. Some of the
dry groceries most constantly needed should be in a
small and shallow wall cupboard or a narrow shelf
within easy reach. A cold-storage closet should be
arranged for the keeping" of vegetables and dry gro-
ceries in bulk, possibly in a laundry extension, off
from the kitchen.
In the plan of a town house with the kitchen below-
stairs, the butler's pantry is of course located on the
dining-room level. A single window is sufficient for
light, as a rule. Some arrangements permit of a
skylight. Provision for the table china is made in
dressers, with glazed doors. These should extend to
the ceiling, if necessary, making storage cupboards
of the upper portion. The pantry sink is of porce-
lain and of open-plumbing type. To a height of
two feet and eight inches, the dressers should be
200
THE KITCHEN
about twenty-two inches deep and be built with tiers
of drawers, bread-cutting slides and a cupboard or
two. The upper part of the dressers should be set
about fifteen inches above the lower and be about
fifteen inches deep. The cabinetmaker often pro-
duces such fine results in constructing these dresser-
cases that the mistress of the house may be proud to
show them. In the centre of the pantry may be
placed the serving table. This will have a marble
top and have a section arranged as a plate -warmer,
steam-heated. The dumb-waiter will occupy a con-
venient corner and provide direct communication to
the kitchen.
In a detached or suburban house with the kitchen
on the dining-room level, the pantry will have the
same furniture but be so planned as to allow no view
of the kitchen from the dining-room and have two
double-swinging doors between, with panels of glass.
The pantry floor mayH6e~a cTioice of vitrified tile,
marble and wood. A neat parquetry floor is appro-
priate. A ^itchen pantry is a desirable feature, de-
voted to the keeping of kitchen crockery and the
sugar and flour barrels. The latter are concealed in
a sort of cupboard arrangement, with hinged top
which gives easy access to the barrels and forms a
shelf when not raised.
The laundxy is a separate room, fitted with a suit-
able stove, a row of porcelain tubs and a closet for
keeping clothes baskets, pins, -lines and irons. The
tubs must be well lighted. The floor may be of
cement, laid off in small squares; the walls of glazed
brick or painted plaster. Space must be allowed
20 1
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
for a table and one or more ironing boards. Access
to the yard must be easy and a steam clothes drier
may be provided for use in inclement weather.
As an adjunct to the kitchen section of the house, a
servants' hall is quite indispensable. It will serve as
dining-room and sitting-room and be substantially
furnished. It may or may not immediately adjoin
the kitchen, but should be easy of access thereto.
And having thus described our kitchen and its sub-
sidiary parts, we may complete its usefulness by
connecting it with the rest of the house by telephone
to each bedroom, halls, drawing-room and dining-
room.
202
CHAPTER XI
THE HOUSE IN RELATION TO OUT-OF-DOORS
WHILE it is only of recent years that most towns-
people have taken very seriously to life in the coun-
try, the well-to-do residents of Boston and its vicinity
have long been used to passing a comparatively large
portion of their time on their country places, and
spending trouble and money in making the estates all
that country estates should be. It is not a matter
of accident consequently that a considerable propor-
tion of the most elaborate formal gardens laid out by
American architects have been laid out on country
places situated not very far from Boston.
The garden of " Weld," illustrated in this chapter,
is in Brookline, and has been peculiarly successful
in reproducing under American conditions the high
style, the elaborate design and peculiar fragrance of
the old Italian gardens. The estate of "Weld" is
situated on the top of a high hill, the plateau of
which is pretty well covered by the house, the
grounds immediately surrounding it and the garden.
From the house and garden the land, which falls
away sharply, is well wooded, and the garden conse-
quently is provided with the shelter and background
offered by fine trees.
The house is on the right, and between it and the
garden is in the first place a bowling green, the
203
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
terminal feature of which is an exedra, while back
of the exedra is a grove of trees to shut off the bowl-
ing green and the house from the garden. There
are two walks on the boundary of the bowling green,
and leading through the grove to the two gazebos
at the upper corners of the garden. There are also
two other walks leading through the grove, and
coming out on the garden, about midway between
the gazebos on one side and the line of the mall on
the other.
The gazebos, mentioned above, are situated in the
two corners of the garden nearer the house. As one
enters the garden by way of the inner covered alleys
through the grove one sees the garden almost on the
line of the illustration on page 205. The cross view
of the garden at the end near the house is figured on
page 208. Down the centre of the garden is a stately
mall which leads to the very beautiful old fountain,
while beyond the fountain is the pergola.
One of the most interesting characteristics of the
garden is the differences of level, of which there are
three. The highest level is that of the terrace walks
at the two sides, which is the same as the level of the
gazebos. Then there is a lower terrace walk, paved
in brick, of which a glimpse may be obtained in the
illustration on page 207, and which is on the same
level with the fountain and the pergola. Finally
there is the lowest level, that of the mall and the
flower beds. The layout of the garden is just about
a square, but the mall down the centre line empha-
sises its length. The different levels, the wealth of
foliage in the background, and the many attractive
204
HOUSE IN RELATION TO OUT-OF-DOORS
THE GARDEN OF WELD
features of the layout make the garden one of the
most interesting in the country.
Such a garden is of course one on a large scale and
demands a house in accordance with it. It is indeed
a very unfortunate thing for American domestic
architecture that the better architects, particularly in
the East, so rarely design small houses and grounds.
205
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
The plan of a small house is frequently even more
difficult to work out than that of a much larger one,
and, as like as not, it is equally difficult to fit a good-
looking design to the plan. It requires more, not
less ingenuity, to make a modest sum of money go a
long way, yet an architect is paid very much less in
the case of an inexpensive house than in the case of
an expensive one. The consequence is that many
architects, and these the most conscientious members
of their profession, cannot afford to undertake small
jobs, and houses of a certain cost are placed in the
hands of builders or turned over to inferior architects
or draughtsmen. It is only in the West that the best
local architects are still willing to undertake this
comparatively unremunerative class of work, and
that is only because the proportion of highly remu-
nerative domestic work is still comparatively small
in that part of the country. It seems inevitable that
the man who wants to build a good but inexpensive
house will have to pay comparatively more for his
plans than the man who builds a good but more
expensive house.
A comparatively inexpensive house design by a
good architect consequently affords an extremely
welcome object lesson, and the residence at Had-
lyme, Conn., is such a discovery. Like Weld, it
consists of an adaptation of an Italian villa's grounds
to a New England landscape.
In the house the large Long Island shingles have
been used. They afford a more interesting surface
and contribute a more natural and idiomatic ap-
pearance, make it look as appropriate amid its
206
HOUSE IN RELATION TO OUT-OF-DOORS
somewhat rough surroundings as a good New Eng-
land farmhouse would look, and at the same time
give it the distinction imparted by a very much
higher tradition of style.
Very simple means have been used to obtain this
most charming effect. The site affords a prospect
across and along a river which is one of the most
beautiful views of the kind in this country, and the
house is situated and planned so that its porches and
living rooms overlook this river view. The edge
of the plateau on which the house is located is out-
lined by a low stone wall, which is separated from
the building by a flat bare lawn, so that there is
nothing to interfere with the enjoyment of the natu-
ral beauties of the site. The garden has been placed
on one side, its axis coinciding with the central line
of the two porches and the colonnade which connects
them, and it is assuredly one of the most charming
small gardens in this country. Its scale harmonises
with that of the house and its character with that of
its surroundings. In general appearance it is just
a little rough, as it should be, considering the rough-
ness of some of the immediately adjoining land, but
its roughness has not the remotest suggestion either
of being affected or slovenly. It is merely an addi-
tional illustration of the happy completeness with
which the design of the house and the garden has been
wrought into the site. A better example could not
be desired of a " formal " plan which depends upon
the use of simple means and which reaches a novel,
picturesque and idiomatic effect.
On a scale between this and Weld are a house and
209
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
HOUSE OF FREDERICK CULVER, ESQ., HADLYME, CONN.
garden at Warren, Rhode Island. The plot of land
on which the house is situated is neither very large
nor very small. It neither rises to the dignity of a
country estate nor sinks to the comparative insignifi-
cance of a suburban villa site. It comprises some ten
acres of land, so near to a large city that the trolley
cars skirt its boundaries, but so far away that the
immediate neighbourhood is not thickly settled. Its
owner consequently has as much room as he needs
2IO
LAY-OUT OF A HOUSE AND GARDEN
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
in which to satisfy all the interests of country life
except those connected with a large farm. When a
well-to-do family occupies a place of this size, they
generally do it with the fullest intention of enjoying
as varied and abundant a country life as a few acres
of land will permit, but unfortunately they rarely
believe that an architect can be of any assistance to
them, except in the design of the house. They usually
consider themselves fully competent to lay out the
roads, select the situation of the house, the stable, and
the tennis court, and plant the flower garden. The
architect's advice may be asked about certain details,
but it is a very rare occurrence to find a place of this
kind which has been placed in the hands of an archi-
tect from start to finish, and designed as a whole.
Some of the larger estates have been so planned and
designed, but the function of the architect in relation
to the smaller estates usually ceases when he has
supervised the erection of the buildings.
It is obvious, however, that an estate of several
acres, no less than an estate of several hundred acres,
should be developed under the eye of the architect,
and it is of the utmost importance that the class of
Americans who buy an estate of this size and build
upon it should be brought to realise that the archi-
tectural treatment of the grounds is inseparably con-
nected with the architectural effect of the house.
When they fail to take competent advice as to the
proper layout and planting of their grounds, they
are sinning against their own opportunities just as
flagrantly as if they erected a vulgar and tawdry
house. Every one of these smaller estates will pos-
212
HOUSE IN RELATION TO OUT-OF-DOORS
sess certain advantages as to location, view, exposure,
the character and situation of the trees, and the like,
which call for a certain particular way of approach,
certain particular means of emphasising the good
points and of evading or concealing the bad. And
when such an estate starts with a complete and ap-
propriate layout, its owner will be fully repaid for
his larger expenditure by the economy with which
his place can be subsequently developed. An ill-
planned estate means a continual process of tearing
down and reconstructing, whereas one that is well
planned will become larger and older without muti-
lation and waste. Age and growth will only mean
the confirmation of the original excellence ot the
design.
The estate in Warren consists of a long and
narrow strip of land running from an important
road to the Sound. This land is level, rather than
undulating, but as it approaches the water it slopes
gently down to the sea. The most attractive view
was that looking towards the Sound, and the house
had to be placed and planned so that its inhabitants
could enjoy the outlook in that direction. The im-
portant natural beauty of the site was an apple
orchard, not far from the road, and immediately
adjoining one boundary of the property. The area
of the estate was large enough to afford abundant
space for stables, gardens and out-buildings, but not
so large that it could afford to be indifferent to its
neighbours. Situated as it was on a thoroughfare,
with trolley cars passing to and fro, and bordered by
places similar in size and character, it had to be
213
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
planned in a somewhat exclusive manner, so that its
beauties could not be impaired or spoiled by sur-
roundings which could not be controlled.
Wherever necessary, the land has been separated
from the road or from adjoining property by a con-
crete wall. The precise location of the house was
determined partly by the desire to incorporate the
apple trees in the garden, and partly by the necessity
of seeing the water and the islands beyond from a
proper distance. The long dimension of the house
was naturally made parallel to the road, so that its
front porch would face the approach, and its back
porch command the water view. A straight drive-
way bordered with trees and shrubbery leads from
the road to the forecourt in front of the house, and
these trees enclose a vista which is terminated by the
colonnade and the entablature of the front porch.
On the right of the driveway, near the road, but
surrounded by trees, is the stable, while further
along on the same side is the tennis court. The
narrower space to the left of the driveway is occu-
pied first by the vegetable garden and then by the
flower garden, but the flower garden is divided both
from the driveway and the vegetable garden by
high walls, so that one sees nothing from the drive-
way but the wall and the trees. The garden can be
reached by a gate in the wall; but this gate is merely
a matter of convenience. Architecturally the gar-
den is supposed to be approached from the porch on
the left side of the house. The garden itself does
not, indeed, extend all the way to this porch; but one
can step from the porch onto the grass, and from
214
HOUSE IN RELATION TO OUT-OF-DOORS
there a few steps will take one to the garden. The
garden, which is enclosed on every other side, is, of
course, left open in the direction of the water. A
simpler and more serviceable plan could not be
imagined, yet it takes advantage of every natural
advantage of the site, and carefully shuts off every
aspect of the land which is either less beautiful or of
dubious value. As one examines the layout, it seems
so inevitable that one can hardly imagine any other
arrangement of the site, yet simple, compact and
inevitable as it appears, it might in less skilful hands
have gone wrong at a hundred different points. A
slight change in the location of the house and the
flower garden, in the method of approach, or in the
plan of the house in relation to the plan of the
grounds would have thrown out the whole scheme,
which now fills the allotted space very much as a
well-composed sculptured relief fills without over-
crowding a selected surface.
There is a prevalent impression among a number
of architectural amateurs that the charm of a coun-
try place depends upon a certain inconsequence in
its general disposition. They seem to think that
when every character and detail of a house and
garden is carefully subordinated to its service in a
comprehensive scheme, the result must necessarily
be frigid and uninteresting. It would be well for
such people to consider how such a house and garden
as that of Mr. Hutcheson fits in with this general
theory. Here is a place which has been planned
throughout without scrupulous attention to detail,
and yet it is most assuredly one of the most charm-
217
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
ing places in this country. Moreover, its charm
does not depend, as does that of so many English
houses, upon the mellowing and softening effect of
time, for the garden had been planted only one sum-
mer when the accompanying photographs were
taken. It depends absolutely upon the propriety of
the whole scheme. Of course, this was not some-
thing which any architect could have reached by
the application of certain principles or rules. The
appropriate scheme was the issue of the architect's
ability to "see" the house and garden best adapted
to the site, and the greater or smaller charm of a
country place will finally depend upon the greater
or smaller propriety of this initial conception. A
country house can undoubtedly be charming even
though inconsequential in many respects; but the
highest charm can attach only to a place whose
beauty does not reside merely in more or less im-
portant details. The highest charm is a matter of
beauty and style, as well as of atmosphere.
It is not necessary to describe this house and gar-
den in detail. The illustrations will tell the reader
more at one glance than elaborate descriptions. Yet
I should like to call attention to the admirable sim-
plicity of the design of the house, both inside and
out. Architectural ornament has been used with
the utmost economy, and the effect is obtained en-
tirely by giving just the proper emphasis to the
salient parts of the fagade. The order and its pedi-
ment, for instance, has a bold projection on the
front and a still bolder one in the rear, but in neither
case is it overbold. It is always a difficult thing to
218
HOUSE IN RELATION TO OUT-OF-DOORS
make a feature of this kind count just as it should
in relation to the house, because it takes only a small
error in scale to throw out one of these big
porticoes; and when they are either too weak or too
strong, instead of pulling the whole design together,
they break it to pieces. In the present instance, the
porticoes are a source of integrity and strength, and
by the very bigness of their scale they have enabled
the architect to economise in the use of smaller de-
tails. The whole effect shows a combination of refine-
ment and strength very rare in American domestic
architecture.
221
CHAPTER XII
NEW USES OF OLD FORMS
AMERICAN use of European architectural and deco-
rative forms has passed through a number of phases.
There was a time toward the middle of the century
when our imitation of the historic styles of Euro-
pean domestic architecture aspired to be faithful,
but was too ignorant to succeed. The architect of
1850 or thereabouts, particularly in the vicinity of
New York, designed in any style his client pleased,
and was as willing to supply a Florentine villa as to
furnish a Gothic cottage, or a Swiss chalet. He be-
lieved, in the depths of his innocence and ignorance,
that the houses with which he spotted the landscape
were the " real thing," and were made authentic by
the high sources from which they derived; but as a
matter of fact his whimsical copies, in which a fre-
quent ponderousness of construction was combined
with restless frivolity of effect, generally bore the
same relation to their models as a child's drawings
do to the contour of the human face. During this
period the only way in which a desire for originality
expressed itself, was in the occasional combination
of several different " styles" in one miscellaneous
and eccentric mass. During the next important
period of residential construction, the early years of
the eighties, the imitative tendency which still domi-
222
PLAN FOR A COUNTRY HOUSE
224
NEW USES OF OLD FORMS
nated the design of brick and stone, if not of frame
houses, was expressed generally in well-informed re-
productions of European styles; and these copies,
while they had the merit of being scholarly, and of
familiarising the American public with authentic
historic forms, were designed with a view to stylistic
fidelity rather than to the complex and varying re-
quirements of local propriety. This phase, although
it was an advance upon its predecessors, proved
to be quite as evanescent. American architecture
could not be satisfied with the well-informed copy
any more than with the ignorant one ; and at the pres-
ent time, although both the careless and the careful
copyist are still in evidence, the best of the younger
American architects are seeking, in domestic as well
as in business buildings, to reach a higher degree of
personal expression and local propriety.
It is in the light of this demand both for personal
expression and local propriety that two houses, illus-
trated in this chapter, can best be understood. They
represent both in training and in point of view the
best equipment of contemporary American archi-
tecture, combining individual expression with tech-
nical precision.
It is important that an architect who seeks indi-
vidual expression should seek it in the right way,
because there are in all the fine arts a good many
wrong ways of going about the search. One of the
worst of these is the attempt to secure originality by
conscious effort. Originality, like happiness, is well
enough, provided it accrues from the inevitable,
but, so far as the intention goes, the accidental fruit
225
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
of a man's work; yet the pursuit of originality is
fatal, because it seduces the architect or the artist to
make his work primarily different from that of other
people. This is, of course, the fallacy and the diffi-
culty which cheapens and sterilises so much of the
" New Art." The only originality worth having is
that which issues unconsciously from the frank and
well-informed treatment of an artist's special task
or material. In the case of an architect this desir-
able originality must derive from his ability to
adapt his design to the conditions which it is re-
quired to meet; and in any particular case this group
of conditions includes many different members,
some of which are frequently ignored. The design
of any particular dwelling, for instance, should be
adapted to the personality of its owner and his man-
ner of life; to the site on which the dwelling stands,
the character of the neighbouring country, and the
scale of the surrounding foliage; and finally to what
may be called the technical logic of the design itself
— meaning thereby the satisfactory composition of
the strictly architectural elements of the design sim-
ply as a matter of form. A house which really meets
all these requirements is certain to be an original
individual piece of work, just because it completely
satisfies a special set of conditions. Originality is
imposed upon an architect who thoroughly masters
a particular job.
Such originality is independent of the sources
from which the designer derives his favourite archi-
tectural forms. The notion that he can create these
forms out of his head or by means of the direct in-
226
HALLWAY IN THE KIP HOUSE, ORANGE, N. J.
HALLWAY AT MAXWELL COURT
NEW USES OF OLD FORMS
spiration of Heaven must, of course, be at once dis-
missed. In all the arts there exists a great and living
tradition — a high and authoritative convention de-
rived from the best foregoing practice^ and an archi-
tect even more than a painter cannot hope to do
mature and finished work unless his mind has been
steeped in the traditions of his art. This study of
architectural history too often furnishes the architect
merely with a set of forms, instead of with a sense
of form and a set of principles; but a man who has
any power of individual architectural thinking will
be equal to the task of giving the forms with which
his mind is furnished, that special rendering which
the conditions of a particular design demand. The
forms which he prefers will depend partly upon his
personal taste and partly upon the scale and the cost
of the house he is designing; and he will be at liberty
to mix styles as much as he pleases provided he pre-
serves the integrity of his composition and does not
violate the logic of any particular style.
The two houses here described are intended
fully to satisfy the demands of particular owners,
who wanted to build upon certain sites; and to meet
these different demands forms were taken from any
source which suited the architect's taste or conven-
ience, and given an individual and local rendering.
The two houses are alike in certain respects, because
the two owners wanted to put up the same kind of
appearance, and because the designer's disposition
and training made him prefer particular architec-
tural forms. On the other hand they also differ radi-
cally because of certain obvious variations in scale,
229
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
cost, and situation. The similarities and differences
are all significant, and are worth particular atten-
tion.
Both of these houses show plainly the result of
French training, yet both are as far as possible from
being merely Beaux-Arts products. The architect
has combined suggestions and forms taken both from
Italian and French sources. The stucco house with
a red tile roof is of course derived from the Italian
Renaissance villa. The detail on the other hand is
very largely French. The general effect is neither
one nor the other, but is probably more French than
Italian. But whether French or Italian, the effect
is eminently handsome and striking, and there is
even something about it which can fairly be called
American. I am aware that many architectural
commentators will be unable to discern anything
American in houses which preserve so much of the
traditions of European domestic architecture; but
such houses as these indubitably possess in a certain
degree the quality of local propriety. An American
house does not necessarily mean a house which is not
European; it means primarily a house adapted to
the needs and tastes of its American owner. The
architect is first of all under obligations to please his
clients, and if he designs a house which lacks the
propriety of being adapted to its owner, it will be
wanting in its chief reason for existence — in the most
fundamental propriety it can possibly possess.
The means taken to adapt a house to the tastes of
its owner will differ considerably in the cases of
different individuals; and they also depend a good
230
STAIRCASE IN HOUSE OF W. L. STOW, ESQ., ROSLYN, L. I.
NEW USES OF OLD FORMS
deal upon the part of the country in which the indi-
viduals live. The demands of the rich western
business man differ considerably from those of his
eastern prototype. But there can be no doubt that the
house of a rich man of the East would as a rule be
wholly inappropriate unless it attained, as these two
houses do, an eminently striking and handsome
effect. Such Americans want to live in buildings
which express frankly and fully the national youth-
ful self-assurance, abounding prosperity, and pleas-
ure in the brave appearances of things. It is the
endeavour to satisfy this demand on the part of their
clients which has led the architects of expensive
houses to make these houses first of all somewhat
spectacular in appearance; and in many cases the
attempt to be brave and spectacular has degenerated
into mere flamboyancy. In the present case such
danger has been avoided. Our two houses are, as
they are intended to be, smart and gay; but they are
also careful and in some respects sober pieces of
architectural design. They show the result of the
most conscientious study in the scale and the compo-
sition of the masses, in the proportion of the differ-
ent members, and in the adaptation of the house to
its site. Ornament is sparingly and appropriately
used. It is, perhaps, in this respect more than in any
other that they show an independence of the familiar
Beaux-Arts convention which disregards simplicity
and sobriety of decoration. The ornament is never
superfluous. It is always subordinated to the effect
sought by adapting the house to its location and by
the proper disposition of its masses and openings.
233
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
In the cases of these two houses the characters of
the two locations happened to be fundamentally dif-
ferent. One is a dwelling at Roslyn, Long Island,
situated on the crest of a high hill overlooking a con-
siderable stretch of country. The other is in New-
port, on a comparatively small plot, located in
semi-urban surroundings. Consequently in the for-
mer case the problem was to design a house and its
approaches which would cap the hill and :ommand
the view, while in the latter case the object of the
layout was to shut out the surroundings and make
the enclosed grounds, which amounted only to three
and two-thirds acres, look complete within these
narrow limits and so far as possible spacious.
The Roslyn estate consists, as I have said, of a
high hill, on the top of which the house was to be
situated. The acreage of the hill is very consider-
able, but its summit is comparatively small. Careful
adjustments had to be made in order to arrange for
the placing of so large a house on the area provided
by the crown of the hill. The great desideratum
was to obtain sufficient space on the south front of the
house, from which the view was to be seen, and the
location of the building was consequently pushed as
far north as possible. The consequence is that the
fore-court on the north side, to which the main
driveway leads, and on which the main entrance
opens, looks small compared with the scale of the
house; but as long as some sacrifice was necessary it
was better to sacrifice the fore-court than the ter-
race. In this way, and by means of a good deal of
grading, plenty of space has been obtained on the
234
NEW USES OF OLD FORMS
south side, where it was most necessary. The object
of the whole layout was to make room for a broad
terrace, from which the very beautiful and extensive
view was to be enjoyed, and by virtue of which the
house would really fit the hill and crown its summit.
This terrace outlines with a low parapet the level of
the hill-top, and overruns by a good many feet the
ends of the house. At each end a broad flight of
steps leads down to the level of the garden, which is
considerably lower than that of the house; and
which is enclosed on three sides by the walls of the
terrace and of the steps. On the fourth or south
side, it is, of course, entirely open; but the formal
treatment is continued by another and still more
spacious terrace on a slightly lower level. This
second terrace is kept entirely green and is bounded
by a walk leading around its outer line and by a
hedge. The whole arrangement makes excellent use
of the space at hand and is admirably scaled. The
effect as it is shown in the accompanying illus-
trations is not all that it should be, because the
rigid lines of the garden architecture are unre-
lieved by any sufficient planting. The proper dis-
position of masses of shrubbery would serve to
soften and relieve the architecture, so that its white
surfaces and straight lines would count very differ-
ently in one's total impression of the place. As this
is what was manifestly intended, the work must be
judged in the light of such a modification. The
treatment is, of course, fundamentally architectural,
as it should be — particularly in relation to the lo-
cation of the house; but the proper planting, after
237
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
it had attained its growth, would have subdued this
architectural effect more to the tone of its natural
surroundings-.
The design of the house is as interesting as that of
the layout. The building consists of a central mem-
ber with wings projecting on both sides of both ends.
The central division is distinguished by heavy en-
gaged columns running through two stories, a plain
frieze above, which continues around the whole
building, and a parapet. On the south side the en-
gaged columns dominate the length of the fagade
between the wings; on the north side they frame the
entrance doorway and the window of the main hall.
The wings are more simply treated, and an excellent
effect is obtained by the plain surfaces of the walls,
in their relation to the deep reveals of the openings.
These reveals are unusually deep on the whole
building; but they are particularly deep in the win-
dows of the wings. They help, together with the
strong, simple lines of the structure and the sobriety
of the ornament, to give it a solid, dignified appear-
ance. Its dignity and effect would, I think, have
been enhanced by the substitution of stone for
stucco, but the colour of the plaster has more grey
in it than usual, and is in itself both pleasing and
appropriate. It should be noticed, also, that the
plan of the house enables its occupants to obtain full
advantage of the layout. The living-room and the
dining-room both open upon the paved recess be-
tween wings on the south side of the house, thus get-
ting full benefit of the exposure and the outlook.
Its dimensions and proportions are those of a moder-
238
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
ate-sized apartment — quite in scale with the life and
the occupations of a modern American family.
The place at Newport is less of an estate than that
in Roslyn, and more of a country villa, but even in
this instance there was more ground in the imme-
diate vicinity of the building to lay out than is
usually the case with Newport residences, though it
did not command any view. It had to be treated ex-
clusively in relation to the house, and with the ob-
ject in mind of creating a group of self-contained
domestic architectural and landscape effects. In
composing these effects there were two advantages.
The size of the house was not such as entirely to
throw it out of scale with the dimensions of the
grounds; and the grounds themselves were partly
enclosed by a fine growth of trees. The enclosure
was, however, by no means complete; and particu-
larly on the south side a good deal of planting was
necessary for the purpose of shutting in the garden
and shutting out the neighbourhood. Here again
the approach is from the north. The road leads
straight up to the house, and runs equi-distant be-
tween two big spreading oaks which screen the two
wings of the house and disclose only the entrance.
The entrance is situated in the angle of the wings,
and is emphasised by pilasters running up through
two stories, and by a parapet which breaks the line
of the roof.
The dining-room and living-room are situated on
the south side of the house, and are planned so as to
be used in connection with the gardens for summer
entertainment. The French windows give upon a
240
NEW USES OF OLD FORMS
small terrace, outlined by a parapet. A few steps
lead down from this terrace to another terrace on a
slightly lower level ; and from there another short
flight of steps leads to the garden. The garden is
very simply treated with comparatively few archi-
tectural features. At the end opposite to the house
there is a pergola, at the back and on the sides of
which deep masses of cedars have been planted. The
effect of this terminal feature, of which the scale is
perhaps somewhat small, is extremely charming.
The treatment of the garden is very open without
much planting; all is rather inconspicuous, the pur-
pose of the arrangement doubtless being to make the
available space go as far as possible, but the minor
features entailed by this arrangement look somewhat
episodic and the garden furniture has not in all
cases been very happily placed. The green lawn
also has the appearance of being cut up too much
with white paths. These, however, are minor blem-
ishes. The place is on the whole a very skilful ex-
ample of a stucco villa, which in its gaiety and
smartness has not lost the more sober architectural
merits.
In spite of certain resemblances to other hand-
some American houses, these two buildings belong
in one sense thoroughly to their architect, just as
they belong in another sense thoroughly to their
owners. Their style differs not only from any speci-
fic historic precedent, but from any similar Ameri-
can houses; and this individual stamp has been ob-
tained, not in any arbitrary way, but by the candid
and thorough treatment of two special problems of
243
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
AN ITALIAN HALLWAY
design, as should be the case in adaptations of old
forms to new uses.
A chapter on old forms would be incomplete
without some remarks on that style of architecture
commonly known as Colonial. That the arts and
sciences follow civilisation was never more con-
clusively illustrated than in our own country. The
hardy pilgrims who settled our rugged shores
brought with them recollections of the architecture
in vogue at that time in their old countries. These
recollections found their fullest expression in " Co-
lonial " architecture, examples of which may be
seen to-day all along the coast from Maine to
244
NEW USES OF OLD FORMS
A ROMAN EFFECT
Georgia and Florida. As civilisation advanced
westward, places of abode for the settlers had to
follow, but compared with even the rudest of the
coast houses, they were positively primitive. Even
after conditions had become sufficiently stable for
the establishment of permanent homes, and people
had acquired money to build them, the result in
most cases was by no means happy. The architecture
of these first Western houses was influenced very
often by other foreign tendencies less admirable than
those of the Renaissance. In many cases architec-
tural tradition had become so weak that the result
was positively ludicrous.
245
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
But we have now arrived at a period in which
artistic education is fast becoming more general
throughout the United States than even the most
sanguine had hoped for half a century ago. The
American architect is continually encountering new
problems and solving them in his own way. He has
even struck out on new lines. The country house,
for instance, is a strictly American product, and it is
in this kind of work that the American architect
shows at his best.
Colonial architecture has got to be almost as well
known and as effectively and correctly rendered in
the West as anywhere in the Atlantic States. So
accurate is the architect's knowledge on the subject
nowadays that one might look at any one of dozens
of houses and imagine it were in New England.
There is nothing in either composition or detail to
undeceive one for a moment. There is something
frank, something naive and ingenuous about Colo-
nial houses that an Englishman would perhaps sum
up in one word — homely. The exteriors are invit-
ing but not pretentious, decorative but not ornate.
On the interiors they are frank, giving what their
exteriors promise — cosiness, delicacy and refinement
of detail.
The expression that an architect gives a house is
to a certain extent an expression of his relation with
the client. If the latter be particularly amenable and
amiable in his intercourse with the architect, there
can be little doubt that the work the architect does for
him will be performed with a keen pleasure, which
cannot help making itself visible in the aspect of the
. 246
HOUSES FOR TOWN OR COUNTRY
finished product. If, on the other hand, the client
is a difficult person to deal with pleasantly, the archi-
tect will approach his task with a necessarily dimin-
ished interest. Then, again, the designer's state of
mind and all the petty troubles of the day's work
show their influences in the architectural com-
position as they would in a painting or a piece of
sculpture.
Little do we think when we behold one of the
world's masterpieces, what must have been the com-
plex causes for the ideas that prompted the master
to express himself as he did and how his work would
perhaps have taken on a different form amid other
surroundings at another time. But it is the idea in a
work of art that is striven after, and it is that which
the interested spectator should try to follow in his
study if he would be rewarded for his labour. It is
in this spirit that the American architect appears
more and more to be studying old forms, adapting
them to new uses, and transplanting them to the re-
motest parts of the United States.
THE END
249
SUCCESSFUL HOUSES
Oliver Coleman
Descriptions of Well-Furnished Houses and Suggestions
for Householders. With over one hundred
illustration? of interiors.
CONTENTS
The Hall
The Drawing Room
The Dining Room
The Library
The Den or Smoking Room
Bedrooms
Walls and Ceilings
Floors
Windows and Doors
Portieres, Their Use and Misuse
On the Use of Soft Woods
Small Ornaments
Artificial Lighting
Walls and Hedges
8vo, Cloth, $1.50 Net. Postage 10 Cents
DUFFELD
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THE BOOK OF ONE
HUNDRED HOUSES _
With upwards of three hundred half-tone illustrations
Partial List of Contents:
How to Make a Successful House
A House for an Architect
House-Planning in the Country
An Ideal Country House
Two Colonial Houses in Maryland
Possibilities in a Southern Clime
The Hillside Problem
In Regard to Cottages
A Three-Thousand-Dollar Cottage
The Rescue of an Old House
4to, $3.20 Net; Postage, 20 Cents
DUFFEIDQCOMPANY
36EAST21CT5T.^^SNEW YORK
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