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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924015399722 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
PliotoBrapJi hy Alice Boughton 
 
 ELLEN TERRY'S COTTAGE, KENT, ENGLAND 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 PRESENTING EXAMPLES OF THE USUAL PROBLEMS 
 WHICH FACE THE HOME-BUILDER TOGETHER WITH 
 AN EXPOSITION OF THE SIMPLE ARCHITECTURAL 
 PRINCIPLES WHICH UNDERLIE THEM: ARRANGED ES- 
 PECIALLY IN REFERENCE TO SMALL HOUSE DESIGN 
 
 BY 
 
 RUBY ROSS GOODNOW 
 
 IN COLLABORATION WITH 
 
 RAYNE ADAMS 
 
 INTRODUCTION BY FREDERICK L. ACKERMAN, A. I. A. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE CENTURY CO. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 MCMXIV 
 
Copyright 1914, by 
 The Century Co. 
 
 Published, October, igi^ 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENT 
 
 To our friends, who have given us so 
 freely of their encouragement and enthusi- 
 asm in the making of this book, we wish to 
 give our thanks. 
 
 We are especially indebted to Frederick 
 L. Ackerman, Richard Derby, Thomas Rob- 
 inson, Robert R. McGoodwin, and William 
 Roger Greeley for their co-operation in the 
 planning of the book; to Alice Boughton, 
 Edmund B. Gilchrist, Lillian Baynes Grif- 
 fin, and Frank Cousins for photographs ; and 
 to Frances Delehanty, Howard Greenley, 
 John D. Moore, Franklin P. Hammond, 
 Henry B. Guillan, Bernhardt E. Muller, 
 Jules Gingras, Henry Henderson and Gerald 
 Wright for many drawings and chapter 
 headings. 
 
 Ruby Ross Goodnow 
 Rayne Adams. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL HOUSE . 3 
 
 II THE \'ALUE OF THE ARCHITECT 7 
 
 III AMERICAN HOUSES AND THEIR EUROPEAN PROTOTYPES ... 15 
 
 IV THE PRACTICAL PROBLEM OF HOUSE BUILDING .23 
 
 V THE VEXATIOUS MATTERS OF PROPORTION AND BALANCE ... 33 
 
 VI THE USEFUL AND THE BEAUTIFUL 41 
 
 VII THE ENTOURAGE OF THE COUNTRY HOUSE .47 
 
 VIII CONCERNING COLOR 57 
 
 IX THE MATERIALS .67 
 
 X WALLS AND THEIR OPENINGS 83 
 
 XI THE CONSIDERATION OF THE ROOF 97 
 
 XII DETAILS OF SMALL HOUSE DESIGN . . . . « 107 
 
 XIII THE COLUMN AND ITS CORNICE . o ... 115 
 
 XIV THE PLEASURE OF PORCHES 121 
 
 XV THE PLAN ARRANGEMENT ..... o .129 
 
 XVI GOOD TASTE AND COMMON SENSE ............. 141 
 
 XVII THE SHELL OF THE HOUSE ................ 147 
 
 XVIII A PLEA FOR THE HEARTH 159 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XIX DETAILS OF INTERIOR DESIGN 165 
 
 XX THE TRADITION OF WOOD PANELING . 173 
 
 XXI THE DECORATION OF WALLS 179 
 
 XXII THE RIGHT USE OF CURTAINS .189 
 
 XXIII BEFORE YOU BUY YOUR FURNITURE 197 
 
 XXIV A LIST OF USEFUL BOOKS 203 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 There are few things which concern us more intimately than the houses 
 in which we live; fewer still are the things in which we take a greater in- 
 terest than the homes which we individually own. The actual size of the 
 house does not so much matter, and we may even venture the statement that 
 the degree of interest which an owner takes in his home is in something like an in- 
 verse ratio to its size. 
 
 It is difficult indeed for us to create a house which is expressive of the owner, 
 and at the same time consistent in all of its parts, true to a chosen style or 
 character, and containing throughout the elements of good design, for the sim- 
 ple reason that we are still young as a people, our social traditions are not so well 
 established as to indicate clearly what is to be our future, and in consequence, 
 what will be the character of the homes which will result. 
 
 In our larger houses we are very likely to draw our inspiration from widely 
 separate and distant fields, and we bring into them the accumulated art of the 
 centuries past, and of the whole world. So it is no wonder that in these 
 hustling times, when our days are filled with a multitude of interests, that we 
 sometimes feel that we are strangers in our own homes. Then too, a spirit. 
 of pride and emulation is often wrought into the building of our larger houses, 
 and often this motive, working unconsciously in the minds of both the owner 
 and the architect, acts as a Chinese Wall, separating us from our ideals and. 
 the things which we actually accomplish. 
 
 It is likewise true that similar motives influence those of us who build small 
 houses, but fortunately it is not true to the same extent. We lack the wealth. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 of resource from which to draw; we do not possess the pecuniary means. The 
 materials from which our houses are to be executed must be found close at 
 hand, and they must be inexpensive. These influences, together with a multitude 
 of others of a similar nature, tend toward the development of the smaller house 
 along more intimate and more interesting lines. They tend toward the creation 
 of a type, something more accurately expressive of our life and time, something 
 more indigenous to our society. 
 
 In our American homes, particularly the smaller ones, we find that 
 which we have characterized as a typical architectural expression of our day 
 and people. In these homes we find an extremely wide range of expression. 
 They are infinite in variety, as regards form or mass, style or character, and 
 in the materials used. Among them we find a few really interesting and fine 
 ■examples, but in the main, the small houses of our suburban and rural commu- 
 nities, scattered the length and the breadth of our country, are ugly; many 
 of them are inexpressively ugly, and yet notwithstanding this fact, we do not 
 hesitate to recognize them as our own, and strange as it may seem, we take 
 a justifiable pride in them. 
 
 How can we explain this seeming paradox — that we have a vast number of 
 ugly houses of which we are proud, which we take so seriously, and that we con- 
 sider them one of the few characteristics and architectural expressions of our peo- 
 ple"? It is pertinent to ask: What is the underlying reason for our so generally 
 accepting or assuming such an attitude*? 
 
 There is no more accurate chronicle of a people than the buildings which 
 they erect. Seen in perspective, they help to explain the nature of a people's 
 religion and philosophy, and their social, moral, and political ideals as well. 
 We can deduce from them their intimate thoughts and desires. 
 
 We have been a busy people, — conquering all sorts of physical conditions, en- 
 deavoring to solve an endless number of political, social, and moral problems, — 
 and we have not given serious thought to the building of our houses. In the 
 architecture of our day we have only sketched in, as it were, the many ideas 
 which form the basis of our lives. As yet the forms are crude; we have not ar- 
 rived at that point in the development of an architectural style or expression 
 where it is possible for us to say clearly that this is true and that is false. In 
 ■other words, we cannot distinguish the masks from the faces. 
 
 Let us, however, return to the reasons for our assumed pride in our houses. We 
 •can surely say that it is not their general appearance, taken as a whole, which 
 justifies that pride. The last generation or so has certainly not built fine 
 -houses, when we compare them with earlier American examples. The fine work 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 of the colonial builders has been replaced by a crude effort of the recent con- 
 tractor. The fine old farm houses of two generations ago have been replaced 
 by the motley colored forms of to-day. We have not much improved their plan 
 arrangement nor have we made them better adapted to their use. With the excep- 
 tion of a recent tendency towards simplification, our small houses for a long time 
 have been growing more complex; simple roof lines have been replaced by 
 forms resembling the clocks of the Black Forest. Little attention has been 
 paid to the general mass of the buildings, and we have substituted, in our en- 
 deavor to improve upon the old forms, an endless number of superficial and 
 unnecessary elements, in the main of exceedingly bad taste, such as is illus- 
 trated in the product of the jig saw and the turning lathes. 
 
 The reason for our satisfaction must be sought below the surface, for it is 
 surely not in the external appearance that we find sufficient evidence or a suf- 
 ficiently good reason. There is something expressed in the plans of the houses 
 themselves, in the very arrangement of the plots of land upon which they 
 stand, which differentiates them from similar houses of Europe. They do not 
 express landlordism, but rather a group of democratic ideals. This is partic- 
 ularly and most clearly expressed in the plan, where is indicated, not as some 
 would have it, the aping of a more pretentious scale of life, but rather a direct 
 and vigorous expression of the effort to lead a life that is sociable, though 
 laborious. 
 
 It is this which we have expressed in our small houses. This is why, with all 
 their ugliness, they are characteristic of America. Is this not enough for a. 
 new people to have accomplished? Is this not a sufficiently firm foundation 
 upon which to build? 
 
 Quite naturally we consider small houses as being in the nature of an indi- 
 vidual or a personal expression only, something growing out of the mind of the 
 owner, the builder or the architect. A study of the history of the house from the 
 earliest times forces home to one the fact that it is a product or expression of 
 great social and economic forces. 
 
 It is not alone the taste of the owner or the architect which establishes the 
 general character of the house. It is rather, that the general character of the 
 house is established by these forces, and those who actually build it in mate- 
 rials but modify the details already established by tradition. From the tree 
 house of the Tropic, the cave house of the North, and the later primitive house, 
 consisting of but a single room, down to the modern house of our own day, we 
 see these forces working; we see them changing, — the changes bringing greater 
 comfort to the individual. Precedent has been the determining factor in build- 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 ing, and as we look back, we wonder that a people could have tolerated in times 
 past the stupid housing conditions under which they lived. 
 
 When we compare these old crude expressions with the homes of the present 
 day, it is evident that we have -gone a long way, and yet, who can state that a 
 few centuries hence we shall not have evolved a type which will make our pres- 
 ent achievement look as crude then as the log house of but a few generations 
 past looks to us to-day? 
 
 Yet one may ask what has all this to do with this particular problem, and 
 how can this help us in the building of better houses? Let us seel 
 
 It was but a few generations ago that local tradition alone influenced mate- 
 rially the design and the arrangement of the houses. There was not possible at 
 that time the universal interchange of ideas which we possess to-day. There 
 was not present the demand for community life such as we find characteristic 
 ■of our civilization; the great industrial centers did not exist, and there were 
 not present such conditions as we find in our great suburban communities, — in 
 -other words, the housing problem did not exist. 
 
 Many are the individuals and societies spending in total large sums of money 
 upon stimulating the erection of better houses and providing for the working man 
 houses of simple design, economical in construction, safe and sanitary, and 
 many municipalities and states throughout the world — ^more particularly in 
 Europe — are giving to-day very serious study and consideration to this subject. 
 The task is difficult. There is a multitude of complex conditions entering into 
 the problem. In bringing about better housing conditions and better houses 
 -ivom the esthetic standpoint, the garden cities of Europe have been an impor- 
 tant factor. These do not represent a complete solution of the problem, but they 
 point in the right direction. Through these experiments we have been able to 
 -gain a great deal of knowledge. ' 
 
 The early efforts in garden city development were, in the main, along phil- 
 :anthropic or semi-philanthropic lines. In the more recent developments, how- 
 ever, there are a number of examples where the funds have been provided by the 
 people themselves. It is in these latter developments that we find an architec- 
 ture more accurately expressive of the conditions and more consistent in char- 
 acter, and we already see in these developments the possibilities of a better archi- 
 tecture. 
 
 The many efforts made toward better housing are aimed primarily toward 
 providmg better living conditions. This, in a word, means that houses must be 
 built cheaply but at the same time of durable materials. They must be sani- 
 tary and wholesome, and what is of vital importance, they must be so designed 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 as to meet the actual needs and requirements and to satisfy the reasonable de- 
 mands resulting from a better education and an independence of spirit. 
 
 In these community developments, beyond providing for these things, a seri- 
 ous effort has been made along the aesthetic side. We realize that it is pos- 
 sible to do much toward raising the standard. The influence of good work 
 surely tells, and it has a marked influence upon adjacent and even distant 
 communities where the erection of small homes goes on through the effort of 
 individuals only. 
 
 This effort, however, does not solve the problem. The problem of obtaining 
 worthy designs of small houses is an exceedingly difficult one and at present, 
 there seem to be few avenues open to the owner desiring to build a small home 
 other than to secure the services of the speculative builder or contractor, or as 
 he is sometimes termed, "architect," or to buy a book depicting one hundred hid- 
 eous houses for one dollar. 
 
 The architect of ability, — and it takes an architect of isuch qualification to de- 
 sign a small home, — has not been able to do a great deal toward bettering the 
 design of the vast number of our small houses which make the majority of 
 American homes. His office, by necessity, is situated in one of the larger cities ; 
 his problems, in the main, are the larger problems of city and country, and 
 about the only opportunity ever presented to him comes when he is called upon 
 to lay out and design something in the nature of a garden city or a community 
 development. The economic side of the problem has forced him away from 
 being a material factor in its solution. 
 
 He sees these little ugly houses along our roads; he wishes that they might 
 be otherwise, and yet it seems almost impossible to suggest a method of mak- 
 ing them better. 
 
 A number of efforts have been made by the various chapters of the American 
 Institute of Architects toward this end. There are at present a number of 
 schemes under consideration looking toward providing something in the nature 
 of scale drawings which could be purchased by an owner for a very nom- 
 inal sum, these to be modified under the supervision of a competent architect, 
 so as to adapt them to the varying conditions of site. 
 
 While all of these efforts are in a very preliminary state of development, yet 
 they indicate the possibility of a solution. The Department of Agriculture at 
 Washington has already started a department, the object of which is to study 
 carefully the farm house problem to this same end, and already the work is well 
 under way. There is no logical reason why the Federal Government, if prop- 
 erly supported in this excellent work, should not be a strong factor in bringing 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 about a higher standard in the erection of buildings upon the farm, not only 
 from the economic and social side, but from the aesthetic side as well. Many- 
 newspapers and periodicals have instituted competitions; many have been con- 
 ducted under most excellent conditions. Much material of value has been pub- 
 lished. The good, however, is so insignificant in its total amount as compared 
 with the bad that as yet the influence is hardly felt. 
 
 This book is not an attempt to consider the housing question in general, nor 
 to supply the prospective owner with designs or plans for small houses, but it is 
 rather an attempt to present to the prospective owner of a home a few simple 
 suggestions as to the best methods of attacking his problem and also a few 
 hints concerning the great underlying principles of good design. It purposes to 
 state these principles in such a way that they may be easily understood and 
 acted upon. 
 
 All our experience in life shows that it is easier to criticize a bad thing than 
 to construct a good one. Houses are no exception to the rule. We can easily 
 see the errors in the work of others; we criticize with a spirit of bravado, but 
 when we start something of our own, how grateful we are if some guiding gen- 
 ius tells us what to avoid ! We all feel that we do not need to ask that we be 
 not led into temptation so much as we need to be told how to avoid failure. 
 
 Nearly all books which deal with domestic architecture are put together with 
 the idea of showing examples of good houses and plans which have merit, and 
 from which the student or the reader may draw inspiration. This is only half 
 of the story. It is not enough to point out what is good in art or architecture, 
 we should point out what is bad also, and show by specific illustrations how the 
 errors may be avoided. One of the purposes of this book is to present good 
 and bad examples of domestic architecture, and to point out specifically many 
 of the common faults in planning and in detail to which the inexperienced 
 home-builder is liable, and which remain to commemorate his ignorance and 
 bad taste. 
 
 Frederick L. Ackerman, 
 
 Member of the American Institute of Architects. 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
A queer fancy seems to be current that a fire exists to 
 warm people. It exists to warm people, to light their dark- 
 ness, to raise their spirits, to toast their muffins, to air their 
 rooms, to cook their chestnuts, to tell stories to their children, 
 to make checkered shadows on their walls, to boil their hur- 
 ried kettles, and to be the red heart of a man's house and 
 hearth, for which, as the great heathens said, a man should 
 die. 
 
 — G. K. Chesterton, in "What's 
 Wrong with the World." 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL HOUSE 
 
 YOU are going to build a little 
 house, your first and only house, 
 your home. For years you have 
 dreamed and saved and scrimped with the 
 rosy vision of your Ideal House luring you 
 on. At last you have accumulated the hoard 
 of dollars you fixed for your goal. Now 
 you are ready to buy a bit of earth for your 
 house, ready to approach the practical prob- 
 lem of the building of it. How are you 
 to accomplish it? You cannot go ahead 
 blindly. 
 
 You look about you at the hundreds of 
 small houses built by people who have enter- 
 tained ideals, just as you have, and you 
 realize that a large proportion of these houses 
 are poor in design, inconvenient in plan, 
 and uneconomical in construction. What is 
 wrong about it all, anyway? If a man has 
 worked hard for honest dollars to build a 
 house, why is it so difficult for him to ac- 
 complish an honest house? You wish to use 
 your best knowledge and judgment to insure 
 the expending of your hard earned money 
 
 to the best possible advantage. Presumably 
 your neighbors had the same ambition. 
 Why, then, are there so few small houses that 
 are honest in construction, logical in plan, 
 and attractive to the eye? Are there any 
 means which may be taken to prevent de- 
 plorable results? 
 
 It is fair to assume that you do not rely 
 on your own technical skill, in either design 
 or construction. You know that you your- 
 self are an expert in your own line of work; 
 that your value to the community depends 
 directly on your ability to serve them in this 
 expert capacity. You are likely to apply 
 this reasoning in the case of your own home. 
 You probably believe that those people who 
 are designing and building houses right along 
 are the very people who can furnish you the 
 expert service you need. So far, so good. 
 It becomes, then, not a matter of whether 
 you shall have help or not, but of what kind 
 of help you shall have. 
 
 There is your neighbor who has recently 
 built a house. You might learn from him 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 the methods he has pursued, and pursue the 
 same yourself. But are you able to detect 
 the faults in his advice"? Sometimes owners 
 are not wholly conscious of the defects in 
 their houses. Sometimes they are conscious 
 of these defects when it is too late to rectify 
 them. Granting that your neighbor will 
 give you the benefit of his experience, mis- 
 takes and all, does his house fill your par- 
 ticular requirements'? 
 
 Suppose you wish to exercise your judg- 
 ment, independently of your neighbors. 
 You will find various kinds of assistance at 
 hand. The most important of them are the 
 magazines, the carpenters, and the architects. 
 The magazines have done much to create a 
 general interest in bettering small house ar- 
 chitecture. 
 
 Much of your inspiration has come from 
 the magazine articles on house building, 
 probably. I know a man who confesses that 
 for years he bought every number of a well 
 known journal for women because he loved 
 houses so, and this magazine often presented 
 pictures of charming houses at ridiculously 
 low prices. The trouble was that the houses 
 could n't be built at the prices named; he dis- 
 covered this when he actually tried to build 
 one of them. Still, he argues, the magazine 
 did much to stimulate his interest in house 
 building, and so he does not altogether con- 
 demn its impractical advice. 
 
 Most of the architects I know are not so 
 amiable about the case of the women's maga- 
 zines. Their quarrel is with the misinforma- 
 tion supplied by glib writers who quote prices 
 that may be reliable in an individual instance, 
 but nine times out of ten the client who relies 
 upon them finds that his is not the instance. 
 He is unable to use judgment in comparing 
 the quotations to his own locality, and with- 
 
 out judgment tables of costs should be left 
 entirely alone. 
 
 Some of the magazines are even running 
 departments for the purpose of giving the 
 readers expert professional advice. They 
 print plans and elevations of different types 
 of houses and of different costs. Frequently 
 these plans are dimensioned, and could be 
 executed effectively. The trouble is that 
 each owner wishes to vary the plan in some 
 way that shall more exactly fill his require- 
 ments, and in making the alterations he is 
 very likely to lose whatever merit existed in 
 the original design. If by any chance one of 
 these houses should be built exactly as shown, 
 it is very likely that it would be inappropriate 
 to the locality. 
 
 A few of the magazines that have a desire 
 to give actual help to the man who would 
 build his own house employ consulting archi- 
 tects. When these men can give time and 
 thought to the problems of individual home 
 builders, the magazines will be doing a great 
 work indeed. But such a service, if success- 
 ful, would mean that thousands of problems 
 would be presented to the staff architect, and 
 he could n't consider them all. We are not 
 living in the millennium, and magazine 
 owners are not likely to employ more archi- 
 tects than editors, and it would undoubtedly 
 come to this I So — make the best of the ad- 
 vice offered you, and then turn to the other 
 possible sources of help. 
 
 Undoubtedly you have a neighbor who is 
 a carpenter, or who knows a carpenter. We 
 all have neighbors who are carpenters. Some 
 of us, however, know things about carpenters 
 which you, as a home builder, may not know. 
 The architect knows that the average car- 
 penter is not a designer; he cannot plan. 
 That is, he cannot plan as conveniently as 
 
THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL HOUSE 
 
 What could be more attractive than this charming old house, in Westchester County, New York, with its plain 
 shingled walls? The shingles are laid in wide courses, about nine inches to the weather. Their irregularity gives 
 an added interest to the house. Note also the unbrtdcen roof surfaces, and the total absence of meaningless orna- 
 
 ment. 
 
 : i'-i^' ■ 
 
 y(r^. 
 
 should be for the amount you are going to 
 expend on your house. He cannot make his 
 hard and fast ideas conform to the peculiar 
 requirements of every individual client. He 
 lacks the flexibility to change his ideas, be- 
 cause he lacks the knowledge and the training 
 which give flexibility. It must be remem- 
 bered that I am speaking of carpenters who 
 are architects, not of carpenters who pursue 
 their own callings. There is no more honor- 
 able profession but it should not be confused 
 with architecture. 
 
 The carpenter must always copy. Some- 
 times it is good work and sometimes- it is bad 
 work which he chooses to copy, or to adapt. 
 In either case, it is a matter of chance, for 
 the simple reason that he lacks the esthetic 
 
 , /'<?''■''' '--' -" -'"'y ■ 
 
 he takes all his ideas from other^eople, he 
 cannot be brought to admit that the . other 
 people, meaning the architects, are of any use 
 to him or to the home maker. He seems to 
 feel bound to defend his ignorance by re- 
 pudiating the source of what knowledge he 
 has. He usually has a lot of arguments up 
 his sleeve against the architect. Here are 
 some of them : — 
 
 ( 1 ) The architect is an additional expense. 
 That is, the fee paid to the architect is simply 
 so much money thrown into the ditch. 
 
 (2) The architect is a very arbitrary fel- 
 low, and will not allow the owner to have 
 anything he wants if he can possibly prevent 
 it. (This is of course a throw at the high- 
 brow architect who no doubt exists, but who 
 
 and the practical judgment to know good is far from typical of the profession.) 
 from bad design. Yet despite the fact that (3) The architect will take a month or 
 
 S 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 more to draw the plans, and this means a 
 month or more wasted. 
 
 There are other stock objections which he 
 advances also, which it is not necessary to 
 enumerate. All of them, including the ones 
 mentioned, can be answered adequately with 
 facts greatly to the confusion of the car- 
 penter. We shall make no attempt, how- 
 ever, to answer them here for our purpose is 
 to help to bring about, not a dispute, but a 
 thorough-going co-operative working policy 
 in which owner, carpenter (and by carpen- 
 ter we mean all the building trades), and 
 architect find their proper places and re- 
 wards. If each can be brought to realize his 
 dependence on the others, you will be in a 
 fair way toward getting an ideal home for 
 your investment. 
 
 It matters (Hot whether you are going to 
 build a four-room cottage or a forty-room 
 house. The principles are the same. You 
 might be able to learn these principles from 
 reading and observation. You might find 
 an intelligent carpenter who could copy a 
 good house for you. And also you might go 
 to a so-called architect and get a disappoint- 
 ing house. The chances are against you, un- 
 less you solve certain problems as an architect 
 
 would solve them. The main questions you 
 must answer to your own satisfaction are: 
 
 "What is a house, anyway? And what 
 is the advantage to me of consulting an archi- 
 tect? How am I to know a trained architect 
 when I find him?" 
 
 The architect's answer is lucid enough : 
 
 A house is primarily a building to live in. 
 The idea in planning a house is to make it 
 comfortable. 
 
 "Comfortable" means that the arrange- 
 ment of rooms should be convenient, that the 
 heating system should be so that the house 
 can be made warm when one wishes, that the 
 plumbing system should never fail to give 
 hot water, that the windows should not leak, 
 and that the cellar should be dry. 
 
 These things when well done give bodily 
 comfort. 
 
 There is, however, another comfort, which 
 has been called a "comfort of the eye." 
 
 Though your plumbing system is perfect, 
 and your cellar dry, and your house warm, 
 we still ask: "Is it attractive? Does it 
 please the eye?" 
 
 The houses in which we live must not only 
 answer the conditions of efficiency, but of 
 good taste also. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE VALUE OF THE ARCHITECT 
 
 YOU have only so many dollars for 
 your house and as you count the 
 precious hoard you wonder if you 
 can afford an architect. What makes an 
 architect desirable, anyway, when you have 
 plans of houses of all styles and all periods 
 to draw upon? When you have denied 
 yourselves so much for this ideal house, 
 dreamed and studied so for it, you feel you 
 cannot aiford to lose the best part of it — your 
 comfort and satisfaction. And so you make 
 a program of your requirements and begin to 
 question if, after all your years of planning, 
 you are n't just as capable to build your own 
 house as an architect. You know what you 
 want. Why pay another to tell you? Why 
 should n't every man be his own architect? 
 Just what is an architect anyway? 
 
 The science of building is the practical side 
 of house construction. The art of designing 
 is the other. That is why the architect, 
 trained to consider both aspects, is more suc- 
 cessful than the practical builder untrained 
 in the history of art and design, or the artist 
 untrained in the use of building materials. 
 
 Now, just as there are houses and houses, 
 so there are architects and architects. To be- 
 come a good artist it will readily be granted 
 one must study long and assiduously; to be- 
 come a good practical builder one must study 
 and work with all the different building ma- 
 terials, must learn to put them together, must 
 ascertain what their many qualities are. 
 This also is a long study. 
 
 It is not difficult to see that an architect, 
 who must cover both these fields, is not made 
 overnight. The study of the practical side 
 of building is admittedly long. What shall 
 we say of the study of design, which is simply 
 the development of good taste? The de- 
 velopment may continue during a lifetime; 
 there is no end to the study of good taste. 
 
 "But," some one argues, "suppose we are 
 willing to give up our questionable plans and 
 copy a good old house? Suppose we like a 
 square brick house in Salem, or a stately white 
 house in Richmond, or a clapboard cottage in 
 our home town well enough to copy it? 
 Suppose we have found just our ideal ram- 
 bling house in England, or France, or Italy. 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 
 The Villa Gamberaia is one of the glories of Italy. 
 
 You admit that we build our houses on 
 the traditions of these countries. Why 
 should n't we reproduce these houses faith- 
 fully? Why consult an architect?" 
 
 Unless you can select every door, every 
 window-casing, every molding; unless you 
 can assemble exactly the materials that went 
 into these old houses, how can you reproduce 
 them? How can you build a closet or a 
 bathroom in a symmetrical Georgian house? 
 How can you get real timber-work in your 
 Norman cottage without paying well for it? 
 How can you get your windows scattered 
 properly over the surface of your Italian villa 
 and at the same time meet all the hard con- 
 ditions of practical comfort demanded by a 
 modern home-builder? How can you get 
 the soft curve of an English roof-line without 
 thatch? 
 
 The idea that a simple Colonial house can 
 be copied by a carpenter is dangerous; the 
 simplicity of those old houses was enforced. 
 
 "But this is dreadful !" some one argues. 
 "You are condemning us to dreary boxes, safe 
 houses of no character. What chance is there 
 for charm and originality in a small house?" 
 
 There is all the chance in the world; as 
 many chances as there are houses to be built. 
 The most interesting house in America is the 
 small country cottage, and it is also the rep- 
 resentative house. 
 
 It is not generally understood that it is 
 much more difficult to design a small house 
 than a large one. A five-room cottage may 
 be just as distinguished as a great house, but 
 it takes a trained architect to make it so, and 
 the trained architect usually has his hands 
 full of bigger things. It is n't that he scorns 
 the small house — he loves it. When he turns 
 his hands to it, he does something supremely 
 complete ^nd charming. But he, like all the 
 rest of us, is concerned with making a finan- 
 cial success, and he does n't often find a client 
 who wants a small house for a reasonable 
 amount of money. The average client wants 
 a large house for a very small and insufficient 
 amount. And so there are very few new small 
 houses that have both convenience and charm. 
 There are thousands of lovable old ones — 
 clapboard and shingle cottages, and field 
 stone ones, and old brick ones. But the new 
 ones are apt to be hideous things, mushrooms 
 
 8 
 
THE VALUE OF THE ARCHITECT 
 
 that grow overnight from queer floor plans; 
 lumpy bungalows; pretentious cottages of 
 stucco or wood masquerading as manor 
 houses. The smaller they are, the mOre at- 
 tention they require, and the less they receive. 
 Poor little houses! 
 
 All small houses should be good, because 
 people love them so. We do not always re- 
 sent the great ostentatious pile of masonry 
 that the newly rich man builds for himself, 
 because the chances are he has much space 
 and many trees around it. But we do feel 
 sad over the poor little houses that might so 
 easily be beautiful. 
 
 The very small house shown on page ii 
 was designed by Mr. Charles Piatt, who is 
 known everywhere as a designer of great 
 country houses. This little house has as 
 much charm as his larger houses. 
 
 The Vanderbilt gate lodge at Great Neck, 
 Long Island, is a triumphant expression of 
 the trained architect. The inspiration is 
 Norman. The timber-work is actual, not 
 sham. The tiles came from an old middle- 
 western church. The gargoyles are a fine ex- 
 ample of the proper use of ornament. The 
 roof line and the chimney treatment are so 
 delightful that we feast our eyes on their fine 
 
 John Russell Pope, 
 Architect. 
 
 Designed in the Nor- 
 man style of half tim- 
 ber architecture, the 
 Vanderbilt lodge, at 
 Deepdale, Long Island, 
 is interesting especially 
 because of the thorough- 
 ness with which the de- 
 sign was carried out. 
 The half timber is real 
 half timber, the tiles are 
 real old tiles, and the 
 whole house has an as- 
 pect of age. There are 
 few more perfect exam- 
 ples of small house de- 
 sign. 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 lines, but — when we come down to essentials 
 — this is simply a five-room cottage, planned 
 for a family of two people. 
 
 These two cottages are the finest possible 
 illustrations of the trained architect's fitness 
 for his profession, a fitness that comes from 
 the pride of workmanship and the joy of 
 work. 
 
 If, then, you are going to employ an archi- 
 tect (and it is the only sensible thing to do) 
 you should submit all your ideas to his knowl- 
 edge and training, just.as you would rest your 
 case. with your lawyer, or trust your child to 
 your doctor. You should go about the busi- 
 ness of house-building with an open mind. 
 You must look upon your house as a lifetime 
 business. If you don't live in it always, 
 some one will follow you. You must build 
 for those people who will follow you, as well 
 as for the immediate content and comfort of 
 yourself. You should be free to tell your 
 architect all the things you have thought out 
 about your house, but then you should let the 
 problem rest with him. 
 
 The architect's profession is based on an 
 exact science. He must know the history of 
 house-building. For instance, he must know 
 the significance of the four styles from which 
 we commonly draw our inspiration for our 
 homes of moderate size and cost — the Colo- 
 nial or Georgian, the Norman, the English and 
 
 the Italian. Each style has its special value 
 for adaptation and use. All are subject to 
 the same general principles of good design. 
 What these principles are, what things should 
 be done, what rules observed that your house ^ 
 may be attractive, it is the business of the 
 architect to know, and it is yours also from, 
 the minute you begin to plan -your house. 
 Good house-design is not obtained by him 
 who has a practical mind only; it is essential 
 that he also have an eye trained for beauty in. 
 things. 
 
 If you have n't taken the trouble to train 
 your eye, if you don't know why one house is 
 good and another bad, play safe. Stick to 
 simple things. Be modest. See to it that 
 your . architect knows your desire for sim- 
 plicity. This may seem drab counsel, if you 
 are full of original and untried ideas, but 
 until you have learned the rudiments of any 
 art, go warily ! Don't try to put on "lugs," 
 and don't let your architect put them on. 
 He won't, anyway, if he knows his business. 
 
 But how are you to know? There 's the 
 rub! It is unfortunate that we accept the 
 architect so casually here in America. In 
 European countries it is usual to require an 
 architect to hold a diploma, or what cor- 
 responds to a license, before he is fully en- 
 titled to practise his profession. Over there 
 a man may build his own house from his own 
 
 First floor plan. Second floor plan. 
 
 House on estate of Robert H. Schutz, Hartford, Connecticut. 
 
 10 
 
THE VALUE OF THE ARCHITECT 
 
 Charles A. Piatt, Architect. 
 This example of house design shows how great are the possibilities for an attractive small house. Note the 
 beautifully proportioned dormer windows and the fine character of the details of this house, which is located on 
 the estate of Mr. Robert H. Schutz, at Hartford, Connecticut. 
 
 plans, but if he employs an architect it is with 
 the understanding that the term "architect" 
 implies a special, serious training. We 
 Americans demand this proof of the fitness of 
 our lawyers, our doctors, and our dentists, but 
 we have no hold on the men who call them- 
 selves our architects. We have not yet 
 awakened to the consequent stupidities and 
 atrocities that surround us and make us ridic- 
 ulous to the people of older countries. 
 
 Down in Florida recently, in a municipal 
 council, it was proposed that all buildings 
 over a certain cost should be designed by an 
 architect or an engineer, as the case required. 
 This plan was defeated on the ground that 
 any one of ordinary common sense could draw 
 plans for a building! Is it a wonder we go 
 
 II 
 
 slowly in establishing an American architec- 
 ture'? 
 
 Any man who can drive a nail may call 
 himself an architect, and perpetrate one 
 dreadful house after another. The country 
 is full of these untrained men whose taste is 
 open to criticism on the ground of imma- 
 turity, to use no harder expression. There- 
 fore, you who are about to build should in- 
 vestigate the standing of your architect, and 
 go to him not simply because he calls himself 
 so. For the time being you are entering a 
 business partnership with him, and you 
 should investigate what he has to offer as 
 carefully as you investigate the title of the 
 land on which your house is to be built. 
 
 It is unfortunately true that certain idio- 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 syncrasies attach to some of the architects on 
 the outskirts of the profession. It is equally 
 unfortunate that these architects are the ones 
 with whom the small home builder, directing 
 his own course of procedure, is likely to come 
 into contact. 
 
 In architecture, as in the other professions, 
 individuals are marked off into classes by dif- 
 ferent attitudes of mind. The attitude of 
 the specialist, the commercial attitude, the 
 professional attitude and the attitude of the 
 professional man who even in this practice is 
 not a professional man merely, are the four 
 usually encountered. 
 
 The specialist is the man who is doing a 
 definite line of work for a particular class of 
 people. The mill architect is a typical in- 
 stance. He does such things as factories, 
 warehouses, and large commercial buildings 
 of a similar class. His knowledge is the 
 knowledge of the engineer, rather than of the 
 architect. It is unlikely that the mill archi- 
 tect will be either interested or successful in 
 the designing of small houses. 
 
 The commercial attitude is simply that of 
 the man who does something for some one, 
 and gets paid for it. It is a typical trades- 
 man's attitude. This sort of an architect 
 feels that he has something to sell, and he 
 means toget as much as he legitimately can 
 for it. I He performs his service in the brief- 
 est possible time, taking all the short cuts at 
 his disposal, and paying out as little money 
 in salaries as is consistent with the satisfac- 
 tion, or what he calls the satisfaction, of his 
 client. When a sincere, and not a cut rate, 
 worker, he may be relied upon to do a work- 
 manlike piece of ordinary work. Unfortu- 
 nately, he is lacking in the finer perceptions of 
 esthetic values. He cannot study a problem 
 with sufficient reference to the location and 
 
 the client's peculiar needs. His work is 
 likely to be all of a piece, and one house is 
 distinguishable from another only by the dif- 
 ference in size and the kinds of materials 
 used. He performs a legitimate service, but 
 a service of a kind not calculated to raise the 
 average quality of small house architecture. 
 
 The professional (perhaps it should be 
 called ultra-professional) attitude is that in 
 which the architect tries to force upon the 
 client designs and ideas in which he, as a pro- 
 fessional man, has the greatest confidence. ,| 
 He is preeminently a stylist. His work is 
 the result of the particular faith that is in 
 him. He is likely to be found among the 
 highest class (socially speaking) of the men 
 in practice. When he is a man of promi- 
 nence and strong individuality he can un- 
 doubtedly force his ideas through. 
 
 The result, however, is likely to be unsatis- 
 factory in the end, from the view of the 
 client. Once in the house, the client finds 
 numerous places that are not to his liking. 
 Several of the rooms are to him unlivable, 
 and after a while he comes to realize that he 
 is occupying not his own house, but the house 
 of his architect. 
 
 While the attitude of mind of this kind of 
 practitioner is undoubtedly one to command 
 respect, it commands the respect due to an 
 artist who happens to be an architect, rather 
 than to a home maker. 
 
 The attitude of mind of the architects who 
 are not professional men merely, seems cer- 
 tainly to be the right one, from the point of 
 view of the man who would build a home. 
 It is also the dominant idea among those men 
 who are doing the domestic work. 
 
 These men, so far as life is concerned, are, 
 like the client himself, still in the making. 
 They are near enough to the struggle for ex- 
 
 12 
 
THE VALUE OF THE ARCHITECT 
 
 Derby & Robinson, Architects.. 
 This house at Winchester, Massachusetts, is full of the placid charm of early New England Colonial architecture. 
 Note the rather unusual but happy type of dormer. 
 
 istence to realize that happiness is the main 
 point, after all, and that happiness is not con- 
 fined to the kind of house in which a man 
 lives. They believe, however, that happi- 
 ness is materially qualified by the home. 
 Just what these respects are vary in different 
 cases. 
 
 The kind of comfort which comes from 
 convenience is first of all, perhaps, with the 
 average man. He has accustomed himself 
 to a certain standard of living, and the con- 
 veniences which he demands are limited by 
 this standard. An architect must find out 
 
 what this standard is, and work with it in. 
 mind. He must not spend the limited means- 
 of the client on superfluities, even if they 
 are practical superfluities. 
 
 On the esthetic side also there are stand- 
 ards. The true architect of homes is not dis- 
 heartened by the apparent lack of taste in a. 
 client. He knows that in certain matters a. 
 client's ignorance is less than his own. He 
 remembers always when he is commissioned 
 to do a house for a client that it is the client's, 
 house he is doing. He is engaged upon it for 
 a month or a year, but the client must live m 
 
 13 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 it all his life. He does not spend time trying 
 to force upon the client a hundred and one 
 trivialities of design, his own singularities, 
 perhaps. 
 
 He uses his best knowledge in the interpre- 
 tation of a client's fundamental needs. He 
 does not observe all of the whimsical wishes 
 the clients advance, for these are often no 
 more than the cut of a coat for a particular 
 season. He goes below the expressed ideas, 
 and finds out which of them have solid 
 foundation. Taking these and a knowledge 
 of the man ( and by this should be understood 
 the man's whole family), he retires to his 
 office and applies his hardest thinking and his 
 best skill to the designing of a home which 
 the client can occupy in that comfort of body 
 and mind which shall leave him free to 
 
 the pursuit of his own proper life work. 
 
 In a word, he gives his client something to 
 grow to, and not something to live up to. 
 This (granting technical skill always), and a 
 proper solution of all the practical require- 
 ments, is in our opinion the whole art 
 of architecture as applied to home mak- 
 ing. 
 
 It is certainly not to your discredit if 
 you do not know all of architecture. You 
 can't be held responsible because you have 
 not educated yourself in all the arts. You 
 have enough to do to educate yourself in that 
 particular profession which gives you bread 
 and butter. But you can acquire a certain 
 knowledge of the simpler principles of archi- 
 tecture which will help you build your house 
 wisely and well. 
 
 H 
 
CHAPTER III 
 AMERICAN HOUSES AND THEIR EUROPEAN PROTOTYPES 
 
 WE have no architecture of our 
 own in America; we are just 
 emerging into the light. We 
 are a population intensely satisfied with cer- 
 tain things. We are well schooled — that is 
 to say we know our arithmetic, and we know 
 how to buy and sell. We know that a house 
 must have a bathroom and must be well 
 heated. But few people have been taught 
 that sheer utility is not the end of things. 
 Few of us are taught to look for beauty, that 
 the ultimate value of a civilization lies 
 largely in what it contributes to beauty. 
 
 We hear a great deal about the. improve- 
 ment of the mind, and yet thousands of well 
 educated people live in houses which are too 
 atrocious for words. Some of them are not 
 hypocritical in this matter; they don't know 
 that their houses are atrocious. We con- 
 demn a man who wears showy clothes, but 
 many of us don't care enough to notice 
 whether the house he lives in is showy and 
 vulgar, nor what there is about it that makes 
 it so. Some day we shall appreciate beauty 
 more. In the meantime we are all in a melt- 
 
 ing pot. When we have melted a little 
 more, and our economic system has become 
 more stable, we shall have time to think 
 whether the houses we live in are cheap*or 
 gaudy or pretentious. 
 
 The situation to-day is a normal one, when 
 you consider the history of culture of the 
 fine arts in this country. It is interesting 
 to trace this history — that is, it should be in- 
 teresting. If you would know the tenden- 
 cies of our architectural design to-day, you 
 should know something of the history that is 
 responsible for these tendencies. 
 
 This country was settled principally by 
 the English, the French, the Dutch, and the 
 Spanish. All of these various contributory 
 elements to the early population of the coun- 
 try brought with them their ideas and cus- 
 toms in the matter of house building, just as 
 they brought their ideas of clothes and cook- 
 ing. 
 
 The early ascendancy of the English in- 
 fluence in the colonies crowded out the ex- 
 pression of other nationalities in literature 
 and art. Of course we still have some colo- 
 
 15 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 ■ 1 A little house at Garden City, Long Island, that has survived many generations of fashions in house-building. 
 It will always be good, — because it always was. The long hand-split shingles are characteristic of early Long Island ,; 
 work. 
 
 nial work other than that of the English 
 colonists, such as the Dutch colonial houses 
 about New York, and the Spanish mission 
 architecture of the Southwest and West. 
 But by the time of the formation of the 
 United States, the domestic aithitecture 
 throughout the thirteen states w-as fairly 
 Georgian' in its character. We call it Colo- 
 nial or Georgian, but really it is Georgian 
 with a difference, the difference doming from 
 the variation caused by the use of local ma- 
 terials, and by local climatic conditions. 
 
 The original colonial houses,^those built, 
 let us say, in the seventeenth century for the 
 most part — had hardly any characteristic 
 style. They were built for shelter, for pro- 
 tection against the savages and the weather. 
 Not only this, but their simple expression was 
 due in part to the fact that building materials 
 
 16 
 
 were difficult to obtain. Timber there 
 was in plenty, but saw-mills were few, and 
 without saw-mills the mechanical labor of 
 obtaining lumber from the trees was enor- 
 mous. 
 
 Building stone was plentiful enough, but 
 in many parts of the country, as in New Eng- 
 land, the common stone, granite, was re- ■ 
 stricted in its usefulness, owing to the diffi- 1 
 culty of working it. One may note that 
 whereas New England is literally criss-crossed 
 with stone walls, yet stone houses of the colo- 
 nial period are scarce. In, other districts,,! 
 notably in Pennsylvania, stone was more gen- 
 erally used. It was of limestone formation 
 and more easily worked. 
 
 From these indications you may easily see 
 how the architecture of a country depends 
 for its expression upon the character of : 
 
AMERICAN HOUSES AND THEIR EUROPEAN PROTOTYPES 
 
 the building materials which are most 
 readily found and most easily worked. 
 
 In the days of early settlement the newly 
 arrived settler copied his neighbor's cabin. 
 Most of these early houses were of logs. 
 The newcomer learned from the pioneer how 
 to notch and caulk his logs, and how to 
 cover his roof. In New England the log 
 house was commonly built around a huge cen- 
 tral chimney, since the climate was rigorous 
 and the first thing to be looked out for was 
 the provision of heat. In the South the 
 warmer climate made the heating of a house 
 less important than air and space, and so even 
 in these early days there were differences in 
 the fundamental requirements. As every 
 one knows, the Southern house differs essen- 
 tially from the Northern house and the Cape 
 Cod cottage differs from the log cabin. Yet 
 all of these types may claim to be native to a 
 particular locality, and native as well to 
 the country as a whole. 
 
 As the community grew in size, the indi- 
 vidual fell more and more into the way of 
 specialization. At this point he called in the 
 carpenters and masons to do his house, and 
 they copied for him the model which he chose. 
 It varied only slightly from other neighbor- 
 ing examples which he might almost equally 
 well have selected. The particular difference 
 from others in the model of his choice was 
 merely his slight expression of individuality 
 as exercised in his own home. As a result 
 of this, the houses of the older corhmunities 
 bear very striking resemblances to each other. 
 
 With the multiplication of communities 
 and of their respective styles, expert service 
 in designing or building came to have a 
 broader foundation. It became necessary for 
 the expert to be able to tell his client what 
 was being done in other parts of the country. 
 
 Sometimes the client chose an example of 
 work that originated in some other part of 
 the country than his own. From this re- 
 sulted a more or less general commingling of 
 the styles. 
 
 It was seldom that the fundamental type 
 for a particular place was altered, and it was 
 still more seldom that the requirements of the 
 individual were neglected. In fact, funda- 
 mental types and requirements of individuals 
 became more and more pronounced as com- 
 munities grew, and as various details of de- 
 sign and construction were adopted for gen- 
 eral use. The most successful service was 
 that which preserved the old styles and sat- 
 isfied the individual requirements, and this 
 
 Old New England. 
 
 17 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 is the most successful service to-day also. 
 
 Undoubtedly this early architecture fol- 
 lowed the national characteristics of the va- 
 rious groups of colonists. But in all cases, 
 since they were built in a country still savage 
 and economically poor, early colonial houses 
 were characterized by an extreme simplicity. 
 When a man feared to receive an arrow in 
 his back while he was shingling his cabin, 
 he did n't waste time on the study of propor- 
 tion, or the refinements of design. The con- 
 ditions necessary for the growth of the arts 
 were lacking. 
 
 There were many elements of national feel- 
 ing and aptitude among the original popula- 
 tion of the colonies, but the leisure to develop 
 this aptitude was lacking. By the time the 
 country had been sufficiently organized on 
 its economic side for leisure, the English colo- 
 nists held an overwhelming predominance in 
 the political state. 
 
 The English regime tended to absorb va- 
 rious political and social groups, and to ex- 
 tend its political influence over them. It also 
 imposed its conception of architecture upon 
 the country, 
 
 At the beginning of the eighteenth century 
 George I of England ascended the throne, 
 and then began the so-called Georgian period 
 of architecture. Naturally the contact of 
 this country with England was as constant as 
 the imperfections of ocean traveling would 
 permit, and the colonies drew from England 
 many artisans, workers in wood and metal. 
 
 As wealth increased in the colonies, archi- 
 tecture became more costly, more complicated, 
 and more decorative in its expression. The 
 models upon which this Colonial work were 
 based were, generally speaking, the actual 
 buildings in England with which the artisans 
 were familiar. 
 
 18 
 
 This does not mean that you will find in 
 America exact replicas of English buildings; 
 it is rather that you will find the spirit of the 
 work identical. The old Salem house shown 
 on page 19 closely follows a common type 
 of English cottage. Its gables and roofs are 
 very true to the traditions. But it is inter- 
 preted in shingle and clapboard, whereas its 
 English prototype was more likely of slate, 
 stucco, or half-timber. 
 
 This tradition was continued throughout 
 the colonial days, and there is no perceptible 
 change from the Georgian type of architec- 
 ture until long after the Revolution had es- 
 tablished the independence of this country. 
 Independent politically, the new country still 
 continued to draw largely on England for its 
 literature and art as well as for its trade. 
 
 It was not until after the War of 1812, 
 after a new generation of native Americans 
 had grown to maturity under an independent 
 government, that the break with English 
 tradition appears. The country had come 
 doubtless to a full realization of its political! 
 independence, and to see the economic inde- 
 pendence which could be • based on the 
 enormous national resources. We see here 
 the beginning of our artistic independence, 
 but this artistic independence began with fal- 
 tering steps. For more than a century its 
 logical and normal development was arrested 
 and deflected by social and economic condi- 
 tions peculiar to its history. It had started 
 on the road to independence, but it was, in 
 the course of the next century, to be nearly 
 smothered by the very democracy which had^ 
 brought it about. 
 
 At the time of the break with England,: 
 which became definite after 1812, we entered 
 into the first period of our modern develop- 
 ment. The revolution wrought by steam 
 
AMERICAN HOUSES AND THEIR EUROPEAN PROTOTYPES 
 
 This old gabled house of Salem, Massachusetts, shows beautifully the English architecture of the seventeenth 
 century, transplanted in America. Its gables, its projecting second story and its huge chimney, can still be seen in 
 the old English villages, only the materials, owing to local conditions, are somewhat different. 
 
 locomotion changed the country from a rela- 
 tively compact group of states with largely 
 homogeneous population, into a great ter- 
 ritory, thinly populated, filled with incred- 
 ible opportunities for wealth. The huge, 
 unpeopled West was waiting to be exploited. 
 In all directions expansion began. The 
 farming lands of the Middle West and, sub- 
 sequently, the discovery of gold in California 
 drew the emigrant always .westward. Im- 
 
 migration, which had been fairly noteworthy 
 up to then, became unprecedented. The 
 enormous country lying to the west of the 
 Alleghenies began to be populated. 
 
 The colonies which later formed the orig- 
 inal states had been under English domina- 
 tion up to the time of the second war with 
 England. The school system, the social and 
 political regulations were fairly well deter- 
 mined, and the standard of literacy and in- 
 
 19 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 
 Second 
 
 telligence was fairly high. Now with the 
 expansion of the country there came an in- 
 vasion of immigrants from other countries, 
 from Germany, from Scandinavia, and later 
 from Italy. This new population had for 
 the most part come from countries where 
 political rights, schooling and personal for- 
 tune had amounted to little. On entering 
 America'they became citizens. The vitality 
 of the country was undoubtedly increased, 
 but culture went into a decline, a decline of 
 which the outer expression is shown in the 
 depths of the artistic horrors of 1875. 
 
 In taking account of this eclipse of the 
 
 floor plan. ; 
 
 arts, it is essential to remember two importanti 
 facts connected with it. The first is the ex- 
 tension of the use of machinery in replacing j 
 hand labor. The second is the spread of the 
 labor unions, to which we may accord a large 
 share of responsibility for the decline of the 
 skilled artisan. That these two develop- 
 ments have been a necessary part of our eco- 
 nomic development will not be denied. 
 That they have made for the destruction of 
 interest in the arts, and especially architec- 
 ture, is just as strongly affirmed. 
 
 One seeks for an explanation of the uni- 
 form attractiveness of Colonial work; the ab- 
 
 First floor plan. 
 House of William J. Henry, Scarsdale, New York. 
 20 
 
AMERICAN HOUSES AND THEIR EUROPEAN PROTOTYPES 
 
 Franklin P. Hammond, Architect. 
 Tlie William J. Henry house at Scarsdale, New York, is a fine modern expression of late Colonial work at its 
 best. ■ It is built Oi£»tapestry brick, red in color, with good variations. Note especially the proportions of the curved 
 porch and the graceful dormer windows.'* 
 
 sence of vulgarity; the exquisite sense of 
 proportion — qualities sq often lacking in 
 modern work. Often one hears the ques- 
 tion: Who were the real designers of the 
 Colonial architecture^ Perhaps the best an- 
 swer to be given is to be found in "Colonial 
 Architecture for Those About to Build" by- 
 Herbert C. Wise and H. Ferdinand Beidle- 
 man. 
 
 "Who were the real designers of the Co- 
 lonial monuments'? It i& difficult to con- 
 ceive of a doctor drawing the design for 
 Christ Church, or a lawyer and Speaker of 
 the Assembly that of the State House. A 
 knowledge of architecture being then consid- 
 
 ered part of every gentleman's culture, how- 
 ever, it is easy to picture these leading men 
 of the community in the role of connoisseurs, 
 having drawings made under their guidance 
 by others; and after so doing, producing or 
 submitting the design at the official meet- 
 ings where a course of procedure was to be 
 determined. The names of those other per- 
 sons who actually handled the T-square and 
 triangle are lost in obscurity. 
 
 "We believe them to be the more intelli- 
 gent carpenters of the time, some of the men 
 who banded themselves together, as we have 
 seen, 'to obtain instruction in the science of 
 architecture.' It was such a motive that 
 
 21 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 made the Colonial carpenter a thinking be- 
 ing, that added some ability at drawing to 
 his skill to construct. His dividers labor- 
 iously transcribed the proportions of Vi- 
 truvius, Serlio and Scamozzi from the al- 
 bums of classic forms. A few old English 
 works on architecture were also his compan- 
 ions. One of the most valued of these was 
 Batty Langley's 'Builder's Director or Bench- 
 Mate,' which the title-page announced as a 
 'pocket treasury of the Greek, Roman, and 
 Gothic Orders of Architecture made easy to 
 the meanest capacity by near 500 examples, 
 improved from the best Authors ancient and 
 modern.' There were also the four books of 
 Palladio, esteemed by Englishmen and por- 
 trayed by Isaac Ware and others. We can 
 imagine the Colonial carpenter conceiving a 
 proposed building with Sir William Cham- 
 bers' time-honored work open before him, 
 referring also to the designs of Sir Christo- 
 pher Wren, James Gibbs, Vanbrugh, "and 
 Sir Robert Taylor. We can picture him 
 zealously striving to do what the Brothers 
 Adam were simultaneously essaying in Eng- 
 land: 'To catch the beautiful spirit of an- 
 tiquity and infuse it with novelty and va- 
 riety.' This meant translating into wood 
 many of the forms originally conceived for 
 stone. In the process it was but natural, — 
 it was necessary indeed, — to attenuate the 
 antique proportions. By such an avenue 
 there arrived the invention and freedom of 
 Colonial architecture, that true novelty that 
 sacrificed neither beauty nor dignity. The 
 public did not demand originality. What 
 
 was proper was acceptable. Of all mechan- 
 ics occupied with building, the greatest gen- 
 eral knowledge of all crafts, in addition to 
 special knowledge of his own, resided with 
 the carpenter. Add a practical knowledge 
 of working in the three dimensions to famil- 
 iarity with the graphic forms in books, and 
 the possessor was quite in the position to be- 
 come the architect of an earlier day." 
 
 In a brief summary, the history of culture 
 in this country is largely this: — weak in 
 the beginning, it developed early a quasi- 
 English character. Its dependence on Eng- 
 land was overthrown, along with political 
 dependence, and it was finally overwhelmed 
 by the expansion of the country, and the in- 
 flux of people of alien thought and speech 
 who came to this country in the search of 
 wealth and freedom. The introduction of 
 machinery and the subsequent disappearance^ 
 of skilled hand labor completed the unfor- 
 tunate situation. 
 
 To-day we have at our hands scores of ma- 
 terials to use in building, we have hundreds^ 
 of appliances to make our living conditions! 
 better. Our contact is no longer with one " 
 country. England is no longer the fountain,-; 
 head. We draw from all the world. Our 
 architecture is English and French and Span- 
 ish and Italian. It will never be American 
 until the home builder accords to the archi- 
 tect a position of responsibility at least as 
 great as that which he gives to his tailor, and 
 until he insists that the architect shall have 
 been trained before he practises his profes-i| 
 sion. 
 
 22 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE PRACTICAL PROBLEM OF HOUSE BUILDING 
 
 THE people who inherit ready made 
 houses and acres never taste the 
 finest joys of home-making. The 
 dreams that come when you have finally de- 
 cided to go ahead and buy a little land and 
 build a house upon it are the most enchanting 
 dreams you will ever enjoy. Anything is 
 possible, in this golden period. You can de- 
 cide to buy a hillside site with a view, and 
 build your house to fit the site. Ten minutes 
 later a valley site with a brook seems more 
 desirable. You remember an old, house in 
 your scrap book that puts an end to both hill- 
 side and valley, and so the dreams and plans 
 change again and merge and change again, 
 and there are so many possible selections — 
 sites, and styles, and materials, and color. 
 How are you ever to find the home that will 
 be peculiarly your own^ 
 
 It seemed so easy, before you had money 
 enough to go ahead. You had a site securely 
 fixed in your imagination, — its picturesque- 
 ness was fixed. Its boundaries were vague, 
 unreal, elastic enough to accommodate any 
 of the houses you dreamed. There was 
 the placid old Virginia house that had all the 
 
 lure of family and ancestry. There was a 
 little Japanese cottage built among the beach 
 grasses of Long Island. There was a timber 
 and plaster house you saw once in Kent, a 
 thatched roofed Tudor cottage covered with 
 ivy and roses that seemed the absolute fulfil- 
 ment of your ideal. There was a wondrous 
 rambling Spanish house near the City of 
 Mexico with a looped roof line that held you 
 enthralled. There was a gray shingle farm- 
 house in the Connecticut hills with a stone 
 wall and an apple orchard. There was a 
 little mushroom of a house on a Massachu- 
 setts hillside, and a little octagonal California 
 house built on the sea — there were dozens of 
 delectable houses. It seemed so easy to 
 choose one and make it your own. All that 
 worried you was the wherewithal to realize 
 the chosen house. 
 
 The trouble is, when you see a house that 
 pleases you, you see it as a part of its entour- 
 age. You see the hedges and the shrubs and 
 the flowers that have taken so long to grow. 
 When you go about building your own house 
 you will have to separate all the things that 
 another man has done for his house from the 
 
 23 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 "Westover" on the James River, in Virginia, is a placid old house that has all the lure of family and romance. 
 It is really Georgian in character, though we commonly call it Colonial. Note its extreme simplicity. Its air of ele- 
 gance comes from its exquisite proportions. 
 
 house itself. You will have to buy an unde- 
 veloped site, and see the litter of building for 
 long months before you can see any chance of 
 beauty. And this is a bitter pill to swallow. 
 The chances are that all the houses that 
 pleased you had been growing for years, that 
 the land was bought when land was available 
 at low prices and building materials cost 
 little. When you are forced to compromise 
 on your site, forced to give up the brook and 
 the vista for a small rectagonal lot with a few 
 trees on it, you feel that there is no light 
 ahead. You have to give up your daily 
 dream of picturesqueness and put in your 
 waking hours considering the practical prob- 
 lems of accessibility, and drainage, and ex- 
 pense, and neighbors, and water supply. 
 These things must be settled before you can 
 buy your site and go ahead with your plans. 
 
 The consideration of neighbors is im- 
 portant, but may be made too much so. 
 You will be a neighbor yourself, remember. 
 
 and you can't demand any more of your 
 neighbors than you give them. They got 
 there first. If you would know who is a 
 good neighbor, look to the parable — it was a 
 Samaritan in that case. Your neighbors may 
 be closer than you like, but there are 
 other elements beside the neighbor necessary 
 to a good neighborhood. The school, the 
 playground, the railroad station, the prevail? 
 ing breezes, and the various kinds of public 
 service — water, gas, electricity, telephone, 
 and sewer — are of great importance. 
 
 It is far wiser to buy enough land for com- 
 fort, and to wait a year to build your house, 
 than to economize on your site and regret 
 later that it cannot be expanded. If the site 
 is to be in a section largely built upon, or 
 divided into lots for building purposes, it is 
 better to buy two lots and afford only a tent, 
 than to buy one, build a house, and always 
 look, feel, and be cramped. A house can be 
 enlarged. A lot cannot. If you expect to 
 
 24 
 
THE PRACTICAL PROBLEM OF HOUSE BUILDING 
 
 have an automobile later, when you prosper, 
 plan it in the beginning. Leave room for it 
 on the site, and be sure of an adequate ap- 
 proach, lest later you find it an impossibil- 
 ity. 
 
 Some people I know, who were tired of liv- 
 ing in a New York apartment, bought a large 
 lot on the top of a wooded hill on Staten 
 Island. They were not ready to build their 
 house, but they built a garage big enough to 
 house them comfortably. Some day there 
 will be a house on the crest of the hill, and 
 later there will be an automobile. In the 
 meantime they live in perfect comfort in the 
 garage, and plant flowers and vines and fruit 
 trees for the years to come. A little vineyard 
 is already growing on the sunny side of the 
 hill. This is an infinitely better plan than 
 buying a small lot and building a small house 
 would have been. 
 
 If you are to build in the real country the 
 consideration of view is important, but if your 
 lot is to be one of hundreds in a suburb or a 
 small town there are more important consid- 
 erations. Many people go into a new house 
 and say, "But there is no view!" In a 
 little while, when they have lived in the 
 house a few weeks, the view is forgotten. A 
 
 pleasant and interesting foreground is of 
 much greater moment twelve months in the 
 year than the sight of a distant landscape. 
 
 As far as topography is concerned, a level 
 lot is always capable of excellent treatment. 
 A lot sloping down from the street gives the 
 advantage of large cellar windows at the 
 back, and a door instead of a bulkhead. A 
 small lot sloping down toward the street is 
 usually disadvantageous. Such a lot can be 
 made very attractive to the eye, however, by 
 a good architect. 
 
 From a standpoint of picturesqueness, the 
 more irregular the lot, the better. Any in- 
 teresting features — rocks, trees, a precipitate 
 slope — can be turned to advantage by the 
 architect. But building a house to fit an 
 irregular site is obviously more expensive 
 than building a house on a flat site. The 
 questions of retaining walls and excavations 
 must be considered. 
 
 The position of the house in relation to the 
 points of the compass must also be reckoned 
 with. Very often it occurs that the view you 
 want to get is to the north, and that is un- 
 fortunate, because your living rooms have to 
 be to the north, which means they are harder 
 to heat in winter. If possible you should ar- 
 
 A rambling English house that owes much of its picturesqueness to its thatched roof, its large wall spaces, and 
 its surrounding hedge and shrubbery. 
 
 25 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 Robert R. McGoodwin, Architect. 
 A pleasant foreground is of much greater moment than a distant landscape. The difficulties of the irregular 
 site of Mr. McGoodwin's house at St. Martins, Philadelphia, have been overcome attractively by the use of stone 
 walls. 
 
 range your house so that you can get the liv- 
 ing-rooms on the southern exposure, and 
 where this cannot be done some kind of sun 
 parlor or porch should be arranged on the 
 side of the house that will be most accessible. 
 A south exposure gets little or no sun on 
 the longest summer days. A north exposure 
 gets the early and late sun, the east and 
 west the forenoon and afternoon sun, but 
 the south receives none, as the sun passes 
 through a point near the zenith rising north 
 of east and setting north of west. The south 
 for the living-room, therefore, gives warmth 
 in winter and comfort in summer. The ideal 
 
 26 
 
 orientation for the dining-room is southeast. 
 When you have finally chosen the site of 
 your house, real work begins. The selection 
 of the site was not such a difficult problem 
 after all. 5t resolved itself into a matter 
 of getting as much land as possible within 
 reasonable distance of your business. But 
 the house! Now come the real inde- 
 cisions, the tempting comparisons, the ago- 
 nizing necessity of selecting one thing from 
 a number of others. You know by now 
 that you can never realize the full meas- 
 ure of your ideal house: you have al- 
 ready compromised in buying the site. Now 
 
THE PRACTICAL PROBLEM OF HOUSE BUILDING 
 
 moments of despair will distress you, but 
 you are still in the golden period. You 
 are still the potential builder of a house that 
 will be a real home for your family, and that 
 is a very fine accomplishment, no matter how 
 much you may have to compromise. 
 
 What kind of house are you to build? 
 You may have a large family or a small one. 
 You may need a house with four rooms, or 
 twelve. You may need a nursery, a library, 
 a workroom, an office, a billiard-room or 
 other special rooms, or combinations of some 
 of these rooms to meet the requirements of the 
 likings and needs of your family. Some of 
 the members of your family may have very 
 decided likes and dislikes which may modify 
 your problem greatly. The size of the house, 
 the style of architecture, whether it is to be 
 a two story house, a bungalow, a house with 
 sleeping porches, a house without porches — 
 all these are special conditions to be dealt 
 with. 
 
 There is a common fallacy that if a man 
 
 ZENITH 
 
 This diagram shows a house facing south, and its rela- 
 tion to the sun's course. 
 
 has a section of land on which to build a 
 house, and money enough to build it, he has 
 only to go to an architect and turn it over 
 to him, and to-morrow a plan will be per- 
 fected. "Plan a good house for me," the 
 patron says. "I can spend ten thousand dol- 
 lars." And if the architect seems a little dis- 
 mayed, the client thinks he does n't know his 
 business. 
 
 The only way to go about the serious busi- 
 ness of planning a house is to present to the 
 architect a list of your requirements. You 
 may formulate your own plan, or he will do it 
 for you, given plenty of time and intelligent 
 co-operation. Whether you are going to 
 build a new house or alter an old one, first 
 of all you must consider carefully your family 
 needs. 
 
 Out of all these many possibilities, there is 
 one certainty which appears. Before you can 
 begin building, you must know -what you 
 ■want — that is, what your practical means dic- 
 tate as the necessary practical conditions that 
 your house shall fulfil. In other words, you 
 must establish a program. The more clearly 
 you can decide upon what you absolutely do 
 need the simpler the solution of your problem 
 will become. 
 
 Suppose you have decided upon the num- 
 ber of rooms and the general requirements of 
 your house. Let us suppose that your family 
 consists of five people, and that you wish to 
 keep one servant. You feel you need for your 
 house these simple requirements: 
 
 On the first floor a living-room, dining-room 
 and kitchen, with pantry and service depend- 
 encies. On the second floor, three bedrooms, 
 a nursery and two baths. And, either in a 
 wing, or in a third story, a servant's room 
 and attic. This is a brief statement of the 
 common requirements of home builders. 
 
 27 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 So far, so good. But how large are these 
 rooms to be"? Obviously, this depends on 
 two things. Their size is limited by the size 
 of the house, and this in turn is limited by 
 what you can afford to spend. Here we 
 come to one of the crucial problems which 
 confronts you: how much can you afford to 
 spend for your house? 
 
 Let us see if we cannot arrive at an answer 
 indirectly. Consider the houses in your 
 neighborhood. Select one which pleases you 
 most in general mass and size, materials and 
 finish. Find out what this house cost to 
 build. 
 
 Let us suppose it cost $5,000.00. Figure 
 roughly the cubic contents of this house. 
 This can be done very easily. Let us sup- 
 pose that the house in question contains 
 25,000 cubic feet. Then, obviously, the cost 
 per cubic foot is 20 cents. Now, if you have 
 $4,000.00 to spend, you can have a house the 
 cubic contents of which is about 20,000 cubic 
 feet. In other words, the dimensions of your 
 house might be approximately 25 feet wide 
 by 40 feet long by 20 feet high, or it might 
 be 50 feet long by 20 feet wide by 20 feet 
 high, or whatever dimensions would give ap- 
 proximately 20,000 cubic feet. 
 
 The picture on page 29 will help explain 
 how to find the cubic contents of a house. 
 This house consists of two parts: — the main 
 portion, and the porch attached to it. We 
 assume that the cellar goes under the whole 
 house, excepting the porch. The contents 
 of the house under the main roof from the 
 cornice line to the ridge, as the section 
 shows, is equal to the width of the house 
 times its length, times one-half the altitude 
 of the roof, this being the volume of a prism. 
 It is equal to 21' 6" X 24' o" X 5' 6" = 
 2,838 cubic feet. The contents of the re- 
 
 maining, portion of the main block of the 
 house is equal to its height times its length, 
 times its width. It is equal to 17' o" X 
 24' o" X 21' 6" = 8,772 cubic feet. Ad- 
 ding these we get a total of 11,610 cubic 
 feet. Calculating the contents of the porch; 
 similarly we get about 1,050 cubic feet. 
 Now, since the porch is not finished like the 
 interior of the house, and since it has no cel- 
 lar underneath it, we may count its contents ■ 
 as only a third of what it actually is. This 
 rule follows practical usage and will be 
 found to be fairly correct. Counting the con- 
 tents of the porch as 350 cubic feet, and ad- 
 ding it to the previous figure, we have for the 
 total contents of the house, 1 1,960 cubic feet. 
 If the house is to cost 20 cents per cubic 
 foot, which is the price your neighbor paid 
 for his house, then the approximate cost of 
 the little house at the top of page 29 would 
 be $2,392.00. There ! It is n't so very dif- 
 ficult to find what a house should cost, is 
 it? 
 
 You can repeat this calculation in refer- 
 ence to other houses in your neighborhood 
 which differ in materials and finish from the 
 house you have just considered, and in this 
 way you can arrive with fair accuracy at the 
 size of the house and general type of ma- 
 terial and finish which the money you have to 
 spend will enable you to get. You might 
 calculate the price per square foot, but this 
 method is far less accurate. 
 
 This gives you a better idea of building 
 costs in your own neighborhood than any 
 table of costs, but you cannot go ahead on 
 this rough basis of estimate. You must also 
 decide on the materials you wish to employ, 
 and the way in which you wish your house 
 to be finished. The cost of the house will 
 be proportioned to' its size, its materials, the 
 
 28 
 
THE PRACTICAL PROBLEM OF HOUSE BUILDING 
 
 ./S^:"--,^ 
 
 F:^/rr ^ZEvJrfoN- 
 
 W £lEVAr/OAf 
 
 FizjT Flook. FlAA^' 
 
 "How much will a house like this cost?" See page 2%. 
 
 cost of labor and its excellence of detail. 
 A brick house costs more than a wooden 
 one, because bricks are more expensive than 
 wood. A house faced with tapestry brick 
 costs still more, because tapestry brick is 
 more expensive than the ordinary kind. 
 Two stucco houses built from the same plan 
 may be extraordinarily unlike, because one 
 has been done by an unintelligent builder 
 and has the general effect of thin gray card- 
 board, and the other has been finished by an 
 artist, with a plaster of a pleasantly rough 
 texture. If you wish the best results, be 
 prepared to pay for them. 
 
 Similarly, the success of a house may de- 
 pend as much on the seemingly unimportant 
 details of hardware as upon the use of the 
 materials selected. I have known many de- 
 lightful small houses that owed much of their 
 charm to the excellence of their shutters, their 
 ironwork, hinges, and so forth. You can 
 spend a fortune on such fascinating details 
 and preserve the modesty of a small house — 
 if you have the fortune. So decide just how 
 important these things are, before you decide 
 on the materials of which you will build 
 your house. 
 
 A great deal is said about the usual increase 
 
 29 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 over the estimated cost. Why should the 
 architect be blamed for this"? You should 
 boast of it, for it is simply an index to the 
 growth of your conception of what a house 
 should be, during the progress of construc- 
 tion. No one with an alert mind can fail to 
 become immensely educated during this ex- 
 perience, and the results of this education are 
 bound to show in the increased cost. 
 
 The only way you can avoid making 
 changes in your original plans is to run away 
 from your house while it is building. Go 
 abroad, and no extras will be incurred. 
 
 When you have worked over your practical 
 living requirements; when you know approxi- 
 mately how large your house is to be, your 
 program is still incomplete. You do not yet 
 know what shape the house will have, 
 whether it is to be long, or short, or L shaped, 
 or a high house, or a low one. This will be 
 decided largely by the site you have chosen. 
 The relation of house and site is usually not 
 enough appreciated. You may have gone on 
 the assumption that you can design your house 
 and- fit it to any site you please. 
 
 The earlier American houses that we all 
 admire so much were practically free from 
 
 the considerations that you have to face. 
 You have to work ten times as hard to get 
 a simple effect, because your problem is so 
 much bound by limitations. You don't own 
 all out-doors; you are fortunate if you have 
 bought an ordinary building lot, that pathetic 
 modern pied-a-terre that takes the place, of 
 your grandfather's great estate. 
 
 If your land is flat and your property- is 
 indefinitely extended you can put your house 
 anywhere, and you do not have to worry 
 about special conditions, such as expensi^ 
 foundations which result from the differences, 
 of grades, and all that sort of thing. But 
 few of us are so fortunate as to have extendej 
 lands on which to build. 
 
 As. to the kind of house you will build on 
 your chosen site, you will have to decide first 
 between a high house and a low house. A 
 high house is usually less expensive than a 
 low one, but it is almost never so satisfactory. 
 If you have to build in a depression, a hollow, 
 it is permissible to put up a higher house than 
 otherwise, but in general a high house is un- 
 attractive. It is interesting to note that the 
 English and the French, geographically so 
 close to each other, have totally different con- 
 
 First floor plan. 
 
 House for Mr. Eugene J. Lang, Scarsdale, New York. 
 30 
 
 Second floor plan. 
 
THE PRACTICAL PROBLEM OF HOUSE BUILDING 
 
 Eugene J. Lang, Architect. 
 In Mr. Lang's house at Scarsdale, New York, broad clapboards are employed. The placing of the windows 
 under the long roof, and the general horizontal expression of all the details, gives the house a low-lying quality. 
 
 ceptions of domestic architecture. Modern 
 English houses are usually low-lying and 
 pleasing, rising out of the ground as if they 
 grew, while the houses of France are often 
 high and stilted in appearance. 
 
 When you have located the position of 
 your house approximately on your lot so that 
 it fulfils to the best advantage all the prac- 
 tical considerations above named, you have 
 fulfilled the important steps preliminary to 
 the program necessary in building your house. 
 
 You have considered the living requirements, 
 the cost, and the size of the house you wish 
 to build. 
 
 In all these matters it is well to take the 
 advice of a competent architect, but if his 
 services are too difficult to obtain, in follow- 
 ing this program you will have gone through 
 the very steps that the architect himself 
 would go through if he were handling the 
 work. By well considering your problem at 
 the start you will avoid painful errors later on. 
 
 31 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 The Vanderbilt Gate Lodge, Deepdale, Long Island. 
 32 
 
 John Russell Pope, Architect. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE VEXATIOUS MATTERS OF PROPORTION AND BALANCE 
 
 WHAT do we mean when we say 
 that a thing is out of propor- 
 tion^ No expression is more fa- 
 miliar. Yet, if any of us were pinned down 
 to define why it is out of proportion, we 
 would find, on reflection, that it is so because 
 it does not conform to some standard. We 
 judge everything by a standard. When we 
 complain that our daily bread is n't like that 
 made by our maternal ancestor, we are re- 
 ferring to a standard. If we see a man 
 whose legs and arms are very long, we say he 
 is badly proportioned. Yes, but we do not 
 criticize the length of arms and legs in a 
 gorilla. Length belongs there. We have 
 different standards of proportion for men and 
 gorillas. 
 
 You could go further; even in the differ- 
 ent types of mankind, we make classifica- 
 tions. We do not judge the beauty of the 
 
 Chinese woman by the Caucasian standard. 
 So in the infinite variety of the forms and 
 colors and materials with which the arts .deal, 
 we make the same distinctions; we classify 
 things and we judge them according to a 
 standard. This standard, in every case, is 
 what we call our sense of proportion. 
 
 In architecture we have been taught that 
 the classic orders have certain proportions. 
 The height of the column, for example, is 
 given in terms of its diameter, ^nd variations 
 from the accepted rule usually are condemned 
 on the ground that their proportions are not 
 good. The Corinthian column, such as that 
 shown in the Salem house on page 34, is ten 
 diameters high. It has the classic propor- 
 tions. No one will deny that a column so 
 proportioned is attractive. 
 
 Contrast this column with that shown on 
 page 35. Examine the two. The propor- 
 
 E 
 
 First and second floor plans of the Vander- 
 bilt Lodge. 
 
 33 
 
 It \ 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 Photograph by Frank Cousins. 
 
 This detail of a charming old Salem portico is full of 
 the grace of the best Colonial work. It adheres closely 
 to the classic tradition. 
 
 tions of the latter column are such that the 
 trained architect would say unhesitatingly 
 that it is ugly. 
 
 Is the mere fact of the variation from the 
 Colonial model enough to condemn this par- 
 ticular column? Certainly not. The pic- 
 ture of the Henry house on page 21 shows 
 columns which vary from the first example 
 quite as much as this column does, and yet 
 
 the Henry house columns are well propor- 
 tioned. Like those of the Salem house, they 
 are beautiful, and yet the proportions are dif- 
 ferent. What does this mean? Is n't there 
 any such thing as proportion"? If the cor- 
 rect proportion of so common a thing as a 
 column is in doubt, can we have any canon 
 of proportion for any of the forms of archi- 
 tectural design and composition'? Is there 
 then no standard to which we may con- 
 form? 
 
 The answer is that proportion is and al- 
 ways must be an individual matter, varying 
 continually with the development of the 
 mind of the individual. Like good taste, it 
 is a chimera. At the. merest attempt to de- 
 fine it as a permanent standard, it eludes us. 
 While, however, our conception of propor- 
 tion and taste is individual, we ourselves are 
 subject to the influence of heredity and en- 
 vironment. We see with the eye of those 
 who have gone before us. We are bound to 
 the past in the matter of our esthetic percep- 
 tions, as in all others. We live in com- 
 munities, and our individual minds reflect the 
 thought of the collective body. If you were 
 born in Turkey, you would be likely to pro- 
 fess the Mohammedan religion; if in Persia, 
 sun worship. If you lived in Russia, the 
 steep roofed and domed architecture would 
 seem to you the natural expression in that art. 
 We all grow up to the general standards of 
 our local surroundings. 
 
 We find that the architecture of one com- 
 munity differs from that of the next, just as 
 we find different ideas of government. But 
 these ideas resemble the molten metal in the 
 melting pot: they are in continual flux. 
 Nothing is fixed. The ideas of certain in- 
 dividuals rise to the surface, and a new style 
 is formed. In proportion to the force of the 
 34 
 
THE VEXATIOUS MATTERS OF PROPORTION AND BALANCE 
 
 new individuality and of the social condi- 
 tions at the time, the new style, the new con- 
 ception, makes a strong impression. And 
 what was popular yesterday becomes un- 
 popular to-day. 
 
 What is our guidance in all this confusion? 
 For those of us who believe in the possibility 
 of progress, the single answer is : study. If 
 we are to improve on the past, if our art is 
 to have a better and more just relation to our 
 every day life, we must know what mistakes 
 have been made in the past. In this way, 
 we shall learn what is essential, what is super- 
 fluous, and what is necessary to our architec- 
 ture. 
 
 The more we study a subject, the more 
 sensitive we become to certain distinctions. 
 The farmer recognizes by sight the different 
 qualities of soil. The coin collector can tell 
 the period of a coin by its general appearance. 
 The physician detects sjmiptoms which are in- 
 visible to the layman. The architect sees 
 distinctions of beauty in the varying propor- 
 tions of design. All this is a matter of train- 
 ing. And when a body of 
 men devote their time to the 
 study of any subject, they 
 come to an agreement on 
 certain fundamental princi- 
 ples. These men all go 
 through certain stages of 
 vacillation and inexperience, 
 but the majority finally ar- 
 rive at certain definite con- 
 clusions. These conclusions 
 are at best only working hy- 
 potheses; they are subject to 
 change and modification at 
 any time. But on them we 
 base our system of education, 
 
 of government, and of all our industrial and 
 social life. And by such a concurrence of 
 opinion, certain principles are recognized in 
 art and architecture. 
 
 If we realize that in order to have good 
 architecture we must study for it — that is a 
 great gain, but what do we mean by "study" ? 
 How does one go to work to study? Is it 
 simply a matter of buying a certain number 
 of dry and tedious books which deal academ- 
 ically with the history of architecture? Is it 
 a matter of memorizing the dates and styles 
 of various buildings? 
 
 It is not. One of the greatest stumbling 
 blocks in the matter of popular understand- 
 ing of architecture is the academic history of 
 the subject. For the most part these his- 
 tories are written without color or style. 
 They are erudite and stilted. They ap- 
 proach the subject with the intellect alone. 
 They point put facts to be memorized. Not 
 one, to my recollection, states the fact that 
 the appreciation of the art of architecture is 
 a matter of training the eye. To study archi- 
 tecture is primarily a matter of training the 
 eye. "Does this please the eye?" is the ulti- 
 mate question which architecture asks. 
 
 The more you use your eyes, the more you 
 classify your impressions, the more you be- 
 come accustomed to fine distinctions and to 
 essentials, the more you are able to answer 
 the questions intelligently. Who would 
 consider for a moment the contention that 
 music should be appreciated by reading about 
 it? The way to appreciate a sonata is to 
 hear it. The way to appreciate architecture 
 is to see it. 
 
 You can develop your appreciation of 
 architecture wherever you are by simply 
 stopping to consider what looks well, and 
 what does not, and why. 
 
 35 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 ' William G. Rantoul, Architect. 
 
 This house, built for Mrs. Emmerton at Salem, Massachusetts, has much of the character of its old neighbors. 
 It is beautifully studied throughout. Note especially the proportions of the classic doorway. 
 
 What do we aim to reach in our study? certain types of architectural design you can- 
 
 The criterion of good architecture is its 
 fitness. It is all summed up in the word 
 "character." In designing anything, we 
 must try to express its character. You know 
 houses which look like prisons to you. The 
 houses are built as residences, but they look 
 like jails. Imagine the lives people would 
 live in such gloomy places! And yet, the 
 same houses by the changing of a few propor- 
 tions might become attractive dwellings, with 
 the character of homes. 
 
 If you wish to have an understanding of 
 architecture you must study to find what best 
 expresses the character of the building. In 
 doing this you will come to realize that with 
 
 36 
 
 not avoid following certain general propor- 
 tions. If you wish to reproduce the char- 
 acter of a Greek temple, your columns must 
 have the proportion of Greek columns, and 
 you must know what these proportions are. 
 And so with all styles of architecture. 
 
 If you wish to get the eifect of a certain 
 style you must understand what proportions 
 the various elements bore to one another. 
 We thus reach an understanding that there |s 
 a reason for designing certain things in cer- 
 tain ways; that in so designing them we are 
 attempting to express the character of the 
 building of which they are a part. 
 
 Let us make a brief summary of what has 
 
THE VEXATIOUS MATTERS OF PROPORTION AND BALANCE 
 
 gone before in this chapter: We have seen 
 that the sense of proportion — like the sense 
 of good taste, — is an individual matter, but 
 that it is influenced by the community in 
 which the individual lives ; that the standards 
 of good proportion, as of good taste, are 
 similarly variable; that our guidance in this 
 confusion is study ; that in this way we arrive 
 "at working principles on which we base our 
 system of education and training in architec- 
 ture; that the way to study architecture is 
 through training the eye to note distinctions 
 of form and color ; that the aim of this study 
 is to enable us to grasp the character of a 
 building, to realize what is essential and 
 what is not. 
 
 While we have seen that proportion is in- 
 finite in its range of variation, we may ask 
 if there is no principle more "fixed" than this 
 shifting one. Yes, there is the sense of bal- 
 ance. 
 
 Whereas the sense of proportion, like the 
 sense of good taste, depends directly on our 
 local influences, on the character of the com- 
 munity in which we live, on the ideas current 
 about us, on our particular training in art, on 
 
 Compare the house on this page with that on page 36. 
 The general scheme of windows is similar, yet the sense 
 of restfulness shown in Mr. Rantoul's house is totally 
 wanting in this example. The central motif and the 
 over-large dormers are especially vulgar. 
 
 37 
 
 our having studied in Rome, or in Paris, or in 
 London, or in some other locality which is cir- 
 cumscribed with limitations, there is a deeper 
 sense essential to good design, which has its 
 foundations much more permanently estab- 
 lished. This is the sense of balance. What 
 do we mean by it'? 
 
 Everything in nature tends to grow about 
 a center. A tree tends to grow straight about 
 a vertical axis. A tree that has been bent 
 by the wind gives the impression of insta- 
 bility. We know that it is held in its posi- 
 tion from falling over by the straining roots, 
 but it looks ill-balanced to the eye. And yet 
 the tree tends constantly to right itself and 
 grow straight again. It is a law of nature 
 that any object tries to come to a condition 
 of rest, of equilibrium. 
 
 The most simple illustration of balance is 
 that of the grouping of windows in the wall 
 of the house. But do not confuse "symme- 
 try" with "balance." 
 
 In this country the symmetrical arrange- 
 ment is often seen in Colonial architecture, 
 which follows classic tradition in the disposi- 
 tion of its detail, its windows and columns. 
 The unsymmetrical arrangement is found at 
 its best in the English cottage type which, not 
 employing classic motifs, is naturally more 
 free in expression. The symmetrical ar- 
 rangement gives an impression of formality, 
 dignity, and reserve; the unsymmetrical, 
 something more intimate in character. 
 
 The house that a child draws is generally 
 symmetrical in the disposition of its windows. 
 Unless you know pretty well the meaning of 
 balance, when you come to arrange your win- 
 dows in unsymmetrical fashion you are likely 
 to produce a house with very restless char- 
 acter. The moment you cut loose from the 
 safe mooring of symmetry you are nowhere ! 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 Just because you have chosen an accidental 
 arrangement, you must not think that your 
 windows can be scattered over your walls 
 like pepper out of a shaker. Such an acci- 
 dental placing of windows usually results in 
 
 
 . ,^ ■ 
 
 D i i ^ 
 
 ' i c 
 
 , X 
 
 i 
 
 n.p-'^— -fll^g 
 
 ^■y 
 
 KIS 
 
 pi:\|--y 
 
 ■:"; , ■ F c 1 
 
 These mechanical illustrations may be ap- 
 plied to the window treatment of the wall 
 of a house. Fig. F shows such a house with 
 the window composition shown in Fig. D, 
 and Fig. G shows a house which has the com- 
 position shown in Fig. E. In both cases we 
 say that the composition is balanced, but in 
 Fig. F it is symmetrical and in Fig. G the 
 composition is umymmetrical. 
 
 Note, then, that in these house designs /Ae 
 •windows balance about a vertical axis. 
 
 Let us go a step further. Let us take for 
 our subject not only the composition of the 
 windows, but the whole house. In Fig. H 
 is shown a house similar in design to the Van- 
 derbilt Lodge. It is, as one can readily see, 
 an unsymmetrical composition. It consists 
 of two distinct elements. To indicate them 
 clearly they are shown separated in Fig. I. 
 The vertical element is marked X and the 
 horizontal Y. In a well designed composi- 
 
 If we diminish 
 
 a frightful exterior that is as spotty as a 
 calico horse. 
 
 An accidental or unsymmetrical fagade tion they should balance 
 must be balanced just as surely as a symmetri- 
 cal one. 
 
 Look at the pictures shown on this page. 
 Fig. A shows an arrow with a stone head and 
 a feathered tail. We all know that this 
 arrow balances when held as shown, for the 
 weight of the part of the right equals that on 
 the left. Let us go a little further. Figures 
 B and C show a flower pot on a board held 
 similarly. In Fig. B the flower pot is too 
 heavy and tilts the board ; in Fig. C we have 
 put a small weight on the left hand side which 
 restores the balance. In Fig. E instead of a 
 flower pot we have put window sashes on the 
 board, a big one on the right and three small 
 ones on the left, , and the balance is main- 
 tained. In Fig. D we have put equal sized 
 windows on each side, and again the balance 
 is preserved. 
 
 38 
 
 the gable too much relatively to the wing, 
 as is shown in Fig. J, the balance is de- 
 stroyed ; similarly if we diminish the wing it 
 tends to become a mere accident, as is shown 
 in Fig. K. 
 
 And so we arrive at another architectural 
 
THE VEXATIOUS MATTERS OF PROPORTION AND BALANCE 
 
 Joy Wheeler Dow, Architect. 
 A very daring example of unsymmetrical treatment is Mr. Dow's house at Summit, New Jersey. It is emi- 
 nently successful. The detail of this house is worthy of careful study. 
 
 axiom: An unsymmetrical composition im- 
 plies a contrast, but the contrasting elements 
 must make on the eye impressions of approx- 
 imately equal importance, or the balance "will 
 be lost. 
 
 If you wish to have an unsymmetrical 
 design for your house, or. an unsymmetrical 
 arrangement for your windows, train your 
 eye by looking at different schemes and ways 
 of arranging windows and wall surfaces, and 
 
 you will arrive at a conception of what is 
 meant by balance. 
 
 If, after all, some profane critic remarks 
 "that all this sort of theory ends nowhere," 
 it is only necessary to remind him that he 
 must have a theory of his own in order to 
 condemn another. It all comes back to the 
 fact that in judging architecture, we have to 
 have a standard — and this standard is our 
 sense of proportion. 
 
 39 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 Mellor & Meigs, Architects. 
 This house, built near Philadelphia, is' an excellent example of the picturesque English type. Unsymmetrical in 
 its design, its elements are well balanced and the impression given is a restful one. The high chimney in the corner 
 is extremely effective. 
 
 First floor plan. 
 
 Second floor plan. 
 
 40 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE USEFUL AND THE BEAUTIFUL 
 
 UNFORTUNATELY, when we have 
 considered the matter of proportion 
 and balance, we have not done with 
 all the vexatious problems of architecture. 
 There remains the question of the relation of 
 usefulness to beauty. 
 
 A flower pot will serve as an example. It 
 fulfils the obvious purpose of holding earth 
 so that a plant can grow in it. It can also 
 be transferred easily from place to place. 
 From the botanist's point of view it makes 
 very little difference what the shape of the 
 flower pot is, provided the drainage and prac- 
 tical considerations are good. 
 ■ Suppose we paint two or three colored 
 bands on a very plain flower pot. Ob- 
 viously we have not changed the practical 
 conditions for the plant's growth, but we 
 have changed the appearance of the pot. To 
 what end? In the hope, not of making the 
 pot more useful, but of making it more at- 
 
 tractive. Our artistic judgment may be 
 good or bad, but the desire to make the pot 
 more attractive is the motive of the decora- 
 tion. 
 
 The settler in the clearing builds a rough 
 log cabin* The boards he uses are rough 
 hewn, the windows are only holes in the thick 
 walls. As time passes and the dangers of 
 attack and the difficulties of living become 
 lessened, and his contact with civilization 
 better, he builds another house. This time he 
 is able to get more finished material and he 
 
 , builds, let us say, a shingled house, which has, 
 instead of the rough plain door, a more elabo- 
 rate doorway with a simple cornice over it. 
 He pays more attention to the finish of the 
 cornice and the other parts of his house. 
 He has added these refinements simply to 
 make his house look more attractive, not to 
 make it more useful. 
 
 It is important to remember, however, that 
 
 41 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 An old log cabin in the Tennessee Mountains. 
 
 just because this builder has substituted for 
 his rough log cabin a house in which the de- 
 sign has been more considered, it is not nec- 
 essarily more attractive. It may be far less 
 so. The old log cabin on this page has an 
 attractiveness which may be lost in a later 
 elaboration. The builder may have had no 
 taste at all, and the new house may be very 
 ugly compared to the old one. 
 
 It is evident that a useful thing may have 
 the qualities of attractiveness, or of unattrac- 
 tiveness. Take as an illustration the plan 
 of a small building shown at the top of page 
 43. It is exceedingly simple. It is built 
 over a spring and serves to shelter it. So far 
 as the plan goes it is perfectly arranged. 
 But how does the building itself lookl On 
 this plan it is possible to get a great variety 
 of elevations. Either of the houses shown 
 beside the plan satisfies the condition of 
 protecting the spring from the weather, and 
 giving adequate access to it for the visitor. 
 And yet, these two houses are ugly. The 
 first is barren, and the second is fantastic. 
 Compare them with the design of the spring 
 house shown below. Notice how modest, 
 
 how simple, how well proportioned it is. 
 And yet so far as the consideration of utility 
 is concerned, it is no better than the others. 
 
 What is true of this spring house is true 
 in a larger sense of all dwelling houses and 
 of all architecture. For the most part, when ' 
 the untrained layman begins to think of his 
 own house which he is going to build, he be- 
 gins with the plan, and considers the number 
 of rooms that he needs. That is right 
 enough so far as it goes. Only he must re- 
 member that he can get the same conditions 
 of arrangement and the same number of 
 rooms equally well in a house that is ugly, 
 or one that is attractive. The plan, cer- 
 tainly, is important, but the impression we 
 carry away with us of a house usually comes 
 from what the eye sees, — the shape, the ma- 
 terials, the color, and the location of the 
 house. 
 
 You see, then, your house has two defi- 
 nite aspects to the architect. It is both a 
 "visible" and "invisible" house, which means 
 simply the difference between the arrange- 
 ment of. your house on plan, and your 
 house as the eye sees it. 
 
 Look again at the sketch at the top of page 
 43. In the center is shown the plan of a 
 small building. What does this plan tell 
 us? It tells us that there is to be a single 
 room in the house, that it is entered by a 
 door and lighted by two windows. And 
 that is all. It does n't tell us what the 
 house will look like. It does n't tell us how 
 high up the windows are, nor how high the 
 house is, not what its roof is like. The plan 
 arrangement is the invisible house. In this 
 book we are particularly interested in the 
 visible house. The trouble with most houses 
 is not so much that they are badly planned 
 as that they are unpleasant to look at. For 
 
 42 
 
THE USEFUL AND THE BEAUTIFUL 
 
 
 OF JrR^Q-ffOUSS 
 
 
 any floor arrangement there are many inter- 
 pretations of fagade possible, good and bad, 
 and we shall arrive at the good solutions 
 only as we understand the dangers and pit- 
 falls of design. What are these dangers'? 
 
 For centuries, writers on architecture and 
 the fine arts have been disputing the theories 
 of design. Different schools of design have 
 been established and widely different theories 
 taught. In this country the student of archi- 
 tecture is trained to a conception of beauty 
 under theories which are different from those 
 by which the young French or English stu- 
 dent is trained, just as again the French train- 
 ing is different from the English, and so on. 
 And in addition to this confusion of training 
 there is the point of view of the individual 
 student with theories all his own. 
 
 However, just as we differ in our ideas of 
 good taste, of what is attractive and what is 
 not, just so we differ at all points. We 
 have different ideas of government, of 
 philosophy and of ethics. How do we go to 
 work to clarify our ideas in these fields? 
 We study history. We approach the prob- 
 lem by the historical method, and we find 
 that after long lapses of time certain institu- 
 tions have a social value ; they continue to be 
 useful to the succeeding generations of men. 
 
 For instance, we are all pretty much agreed 
 that theft is undesirable. We accept certain 
 things as established. They form a working 
 basis for our practical life and we make such 
 progress as we can. 
 
 Let us go a step further. We have seen 
 that a house may be useful and ugly, or use- 
 ful and attractive. The ideal is always to 
 combine these latter qualities. Whatever 
 our individual taste may be, we must come 
 to the point of establishing certain fixed as- 
 pects of house design. To think clearly and 
 comprehensively on the subject we must re- 
 duce it to its simplest terms. 
 
 To study the problem of house design, we 
 must agree first on the elements which enter 
 into it. Look at the two very different 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 Joy Wheeler Dow, Arthitect. 
 In "Witchwood" Mr. Dow has caught the character of Colonial architecture. The entrance door is like the fa- 
 mous Witch Door at Salem. The porch is an interesting variation in porch design. The foreground is unfortu- 
 nately rather bare. 
 
 houses shown on pages 44 and 45. What 
 have thdse houses in common^ 
 
 To begin with, they all have wall surfaces 
 which are penetrated by window openings. 
 These walls and windows are of different 
 heights and shapes, and the arrangement is 
 different in each case. Each house has its 
 "fenestrated" walls. 
 
 Besides this each house has a roof. The 
 roofs may be different in shape and construc- 
 tion, but each house has its roof. 
 
 As we look closer, we make out a certain 
 number of smaller parts. The houses have 
 doorways, chimneys, porches, shutters, etc., 
 — these are the details and incidental parts 
 of the design. 
 
 Then we see that these houses are built of 
 different materials — wood, brick, stone, and 
 stucco are used in them. 
 
 Each house has its own color. Unfortu- 
 
 nately in a black and white reproduction this 
 cannot be suggested easily. This color may 
 be the natural color of the material, or of an 
 applied nature, but whatever it is, each house 
 has its color. 
 
 Finally, there is the setting of the houses, 
 their relation to the background and fore- 
 ground, to the planting of their gardens — in 
 a word, the entourage. 
 
 What is true of these houses is true of all 
 houses. There are certain elements which 
 occur in every house, and they are few in 
 number. They may vary indefinitely, but 
 they can be classified and through these 
 classifications we may learn to avoid certain 
 mistakes in designing our houses. 
 
 Understand clearly that this is no "sys- 
 tem" of design. There is no royal road to 
 learning to design well. It is a matter of 
 hard and continual work. Every architect 
 
 44 
 
THE USEFUL AND THE BEAUTIFUL 
 
 Edmund B. Gilchrist, Architect. 
 It would be difficult to find a small house which gives greater satisfaction than the gardener's cottage at "Kris- 
 heim," Dr. Woodward's estate near Philadelphia. Its simple stucco walls and its happy setting give it great charm. 
 The roof surfaces are unbroken by dormers, and yet the house is adequately lighted. 
 
 who has Studied seriously makes some kind of classification is only analytical. It is arti- 
 
 classification of principles, and bases his 
 work upon this conception of the relation of 
 the different elements of his art. In assum- 
 ing the above classification, it must be said 
 at once and most emphatically that this 
 
 ficial, but it is artificial only in the same way 
 that any method of instruction is bound to 
 be artificial. 
 
 In studying geography, we separate the 
 mountains from the plains, the plains from 
 
 First and second floor plans of the gardener's cottage at "Krisheim.' 
 
 45 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 the valleys, the valleys from the rivers and 
 the rivers from the sea. And yet jn nature, 
 all these form a part of a united whole. 
 They are all interdependent, and are in 
 reality indissolubly linked together. We 
 make an abstraction of the word "river" and 
 we take it out of its setting, but in reality the 
 river exists only in connection with its banks, 
 the valley in which it lies, the plains and 
 the mountains which form the valley, and so 
 on. 
 
 So in architecture the correct conception of 
 design is that of an organic whole. The 
 plan, the section, the elevations of the house 
 
 should all be thought of together. Perhaps 
 it is impossible to do this absolutely, but we 
 should come as near to it as we can. How- 
 ever, as in geography, it is impossible to think 
 of all the elements at once. We make a kind 
 of classification of the elements that we are 
 to deal with. In house design, we have these 
 invariable elements, capable of unlimited 
 variations in their expressions : the walls and 
 windows, the roof and the details, the ma- 
 terials, the color, and the entourage. We 
 shall take them up one by one, and try to 
 find out what are some of the common mis- 
 takes of interpretation. 
 
 John Russell Pope, Architect. 
 A detail of the Vanderbilt Lodge at "Deepdale" showing the carved gargoyles. 
 
 46 
 
'■■x.-i^^^ff/;-'''^- 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 THE ENTOURAGE OF THE COUNTRY HOUSE 
 
 IT is no longer necessary to preach the joys 
 of country life to the right-minded 
 American. He dreams of his some-day 
 home to such good purpose that eventually 
 he realizes it. But the consideration of the 
 entourage of his country house is new to him. 
 It savors of that expensive new-comer, the 
 landscape gardener. He fears that some 
 elaborate foreign fol-de-rol will be brought 
 into his decent American domain, and he 
 will have none of it. Besides, he argues, 
 his house is a good one. His lawn mower 
 clicks from morning until night. He has 
 proper walks with orderly flower beds bor- 
 dering them. What more could a man 
 want? 
 
 Your foreigner dreams always of his 
 house and garden as a well considered whole. 
 No matter how small his little place may be, 
 he finds some way of enclosing it, of making 
 all of it a part of his family life. He works 
 from the outmost boundaries in, with his 
 house always as his point of departure and 
 point of arrival. The disposition of the 
 houses and gardens that surround his place, 
 
 his own hedges and walls and walks and gar- 
 dens — everything that is a part of the land- 
 scape immediately surrounding his house 
 becomes as important as the house itself. He 
 knows that until his house fits comfortably 
 into its site, until his trees and gardens and 
 vistas hang together in a harmonious series of 
 pictures, until his place offers his family 
 a maximum of privacy and repose and 
 beauty, he has not made the best of his en- 
 tourage. 
 
 Our architects have done everything in 
 their power to hasten the appreciation of the 
 entourage. They are hampered, however, by 
 the average man's determination to spend so 
 much on his house, and to let his "grounds" 
 take care of themselves. It has n't been long 
 since the popular measure of a country house 
 was its expensiveness, and the number of 
 acres around it. If beauty was considered 
 at all it was the supposed beauty of closely 
 clipped lawns spotted with geometric flower 
 beds. Garden architecture was limited to a 
 deplorable mixture of summer houses and 
 bridges of unfriendly styles. Garden orna- 
 
 47 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 ment meant a few terrible statues of cast 
 iron or granite, and the last word in magnifi- 
 cence was an elaborate fountain. 
 
 With the growth of country life a new 
 feeling has come about, and where a dozen 
 years ago there were only a few houses and 
 gardens that "belonged," to-day there are 
 hundreds of entrancing domains that dis- 
 prove all the old arguments that you can't 
 make a perfect garden in America. The 
 three influences that have brought about the 
 new consideration of entourage are the archi- 
 tect, who wishes to see his house placed to the 
 best possible advantage; the American's habit 
 of travel, of adapting the best things his for- 
 eign neighbor has to offer to his own uses; and 
 a really genuine pleasure in living out doors, 
 which must inevitably bring about a desire 
 for the same repose and privacy in his gar- 
 den that he demands to-day of his house. 
 
 For these hundreds of houses that have 
 well planned entourages, however, there are 
 tens of thousands that have no relation what- 
 ever to their surroundings. Nothing is 
 more extraordinary than the indifference of 
 the home builder of the average suburban 
 town to the planting about his home. For 
 every cottage that is set attractively in its 
 surrounding garden, there are hundreds that 
 stand solitary, without so much as a sun- 
 flower or a blueberry bush by way of foliage. 
 The idea back of this bleakness seems to be 
 that a house is a man's business, and a flower 
 garden is merely a woman's frill, to be added 
 if she feels equal to the work of it. 
 
 Of course, a house situated in the forest 
 far from any neighboring house can be 
 treated more freely than a suburban house 
 located in close proximity to other houses. 
 This is also true of an isolated man. When 
 he is alone, he can do as he likes. But few 
 
 of us build in the forest; most of us have to 
 build near our neighbors, and it is necessary 
 to consider the problems of our entourage all 
 the more carefully. We must make our 
 house harmonize with its surroundings; and 
 we must better them, if possible, by taking 
 advantage of all opportunities for co-opera- 
 tion with our neighbors. You should con- 
 sider the entourage before you begin to build 
 your house. ■ 
 
 Perhaps the site is already wooded; in 
 that case much of your work has been done 
 -for you. But more often the lot upon which 
 the house is to be put is barren, or nearly so. 
 The actual house itself, the house which is 
 enclosed within the four walls, is only a part 
 of your problem. If you wish to get the 
 greatest attractiveness out of your house 
 design, you must consider it in relation to the 
 possible planting and the development of 
 gardens, etc., which your lot will permit. 
 You must consider the approaches, the plac- 
 ing of out buildings, the views from certain 
 windows — everything. If you have a very 
 small place, every inch of it should be made 
 to count. Flowers should be kept close to 
 the house, or lattices, or hedges, or walls, and 
 a certain feeling of space preserved. 
 
 48 
 
 This badly proportioned and over-elaborate house is set 
 squarely in a barren lot. Privacy is impossible. 
 
THE ENTOURAGE OF THE COUNTRY HOUSE 
 
 Wilson Eyre, Architect. 
 "Fairacres" at Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, is an ample house that fits serenely into its setting. A mass of shrubs 
 gives privacy to the living part of the house. It is possible even for small houses to get similar protection. 
 
 In considering the approach, you are met 
 with the problem of placing the house on the 
 lot, since the approach presumably leads 
 from a public street to the house. There are 
 two ways in which we can place the house 
 that are typical of American and European 
 custom. In America a small house is usu- 
 ally set far back from the public road, and 
 the space between the road and the house is 
 given over to a lawn or garden open to the 
 passer-by. On a larger lot the house will be 
 set half way with the same open lawn in 
 front and a vegetable garden in the rear. 
 
 Surely we are all agreed that the charm of 
 home life lies in its privacy. No one wants 
 strangers looking into his house. Why 
 should he deliberately bare his gardens, his 
 lawns, to the public gaze? It is not a snob- 
 bish selfishness, this enclosing one's own. It 
 is rather the common-sense practice of people 
 
 who live simple, sane lives. We have too 
 long lived in a careless neighborliness that 
 passed for democracy. We have sacrificed 
 our possible gardens, throwing them all to- 
 gether into an unbroken greensward, "for the 
 benefit of the town." This is very com- 
 mendable in a closely settled suburban town, 
 but even then there is a possibility of de- 
 veloping the side and back yards into an 
 enclosed garden. Hedges and lattices can 
 be used with discretion. The humblest 
 house, with a little careful planting, will 
 take on dignity and charm. 
 
 In European towns it is common practice 
 to plan the house so that it turns its back on 
 the street and faces its own gardens. This 
 arrangement gives all the advantages that 
 any entourage can offer — privacy, and re- 
 pose, and an attractive garden space. 
 
 If your plot of land is very small and you 
 
 49 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 John Russell Pope, Architect. 
 No detail of small house architecture is so neglected in this country as the garden wall. This house and garden 
 is located on the Vanderbilt estate on Long Island. 
 
 wish your main ropms to face the street, you 
 can arrange to have adequate planting be- 
 tween street and house, and in this way screen 
 the family rooms. Rooms so placed will re- 
 ceive the maximum of noise and dust, how- 
 ever. Of course if your interest is such 
 that you have to have a constant view of 
 the happenings on the street, you are not in- 
 terested in this argument for quiet and pri- 
 vacy. 
 
 A wall is the finest thing a man can bring 
 to his entourage. It should be of the same 
 material as the house — stone, or stucco, or 
 brick — or, if the house is of wood, it may be 
 of cobbles, or it may be a graceful lattice 
 with a hedge planted against it. In old 
 European gardens the wall is never forgotten. 
 It is a part of the general plan, often continu- 
 
 ing the very house walls, always giving 
 picturesqueness and privacy. Against it 
 grape vines and small fruits are trained. ■ It 
 forms a shelter and a protection, it makes a 
 home a man's own, and it is a convincing 
 argument that it is built for permanency. :,; It 
 is looked upon as a heritage. 
 
 In building a wall, the question of ex- 
 pense must be considered. Many of us 
 would prefer a high stone wall covered with 
 a thick growth of green and blossom to a 
 house, but we have to have the house, and 
 we usually give up the wall. The hard 
 working people who built miles and miles of 
 stone walls all over the old farms of the 
 colonies built with their hands, and our hands 
 are too untrained, too occupied with other 
 things. But cement — that magic means 
 
 50 
 
THE ENTOURAGE OF THE COUNTRY HOUSE 
 
 of accomplishing a desired, effect at small 
 cost — has made walls possible for many 
 of us. 
 
 Walls with green things growing over 
 them and slender gardens of old fashioned 
 flowers creeping along them are much more 
 interesting than fine gardens spread open, 
 public park fashion. Who does n't thrill at 
 the occasional patch of color seen through 
 a thick hedge, at the adventurous roses that 
 clamber over a high stone wall"? There is 
 always an element of mystery, of remoteness, 
 hanging about a wall of any sort. Th6 
 beauty of it is that such a wall gives , the 
 family within a chance to live their own lives. 
 
 and it also gives the passer-by a chance to 
 dream. 
 
 Hedges are a godsend to those of us who 
 cannot afford walls. We have only recently 
 realized that we can have a respectable hedge 
 of privet in two or three years, at very small 
 expense. The clippings of our hedges have 
 been transplanted as hedges for our neigh- 
 bors, and so the custom grows. 
 
 Gateways give the necessary glimpses of 
 the pleasure that lies within our walls. Who 
 that has had the thrill of peeping through the 
 great iron gates into one of the. old gardens 
 of Charleston, or Augusta, or New Orleans, 
 will ever see a garden so fair? I remember 
 
 
 
 1 
 1 
 
 ^^HESj^^I^^HKWWIBwJBp 
 
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 Photograph by Lillian Baynes Griffin. 
 
 Here house, garden and water come together on the shore of Long Island Sound in a delightful and informal 
 intimacy. 
 
 51 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 realizing my favorite fairy story, when I was is the most adorable little house you can 
 a very small person, in an old Augusta gar- imagine, but it would be as humble as a gray 
 
 den. The high iron fence was completely 
 covered with vines and roses, but there was 
 an open place just big enough for a small 
 head to be poked through, and beyond lived 
 The Sleeping Beauty. I saw her fountain, 
 and a red and yellow parrot that perched on 
 its rim, and a very elaborate peacock- some- 
 how much more royal than those on my 
 grandmother's plantation, and a black-green 
 magnolia tree heavy with white blossoms. 
 Back of the fountain a long whitewashed 
 stone house rambled along, and hundreds of 
 make-believe people lived there. I never 
 saw the Beauty, or the Prince, though I sur- 
 prised the parrot and the peacock often, but 
 I was always sure they were just beyond the 
 vista afforded me. When travelers talk of 
 walled- English gardens, and sculptured 
 Italian gardens, and adorable French ones, I 
 remember my perfect glimpse. To this day 
 I am thrilled with expectancy at the sight of 
 an enclosed garden. It always has a. beckon- 
 ing quality that allures. 
 
 The entourage is elastic in its possibili- 
 ties — for every house there may be a garden 
 that will "belong." On Cape Cod there is 
 an old gray shingle house that I know, just 
 one story high, with a grape vine growing 
 all over the roof, with little square panes of 
 glass, and a dark green door and a soft little 
 yard of uncut grass, and gray palings with 
 honeysuckle spread over them. There is a 
 rustic arbor (it would be a pergola now) of 
 weathered gray railings running all around it 
 with a narrow brick terrace beneath, and 
 literally hundreds of grape vines covering 
 house and arbors and the palings of the old 
 fence. The grape vines actually creep along 
 the roof tree and festoon the chimneys. It 
 
 alley kitten without the soft uncut grass and 
 the grape vines. 
 
 On the North Shore of Massachusetts there 
 is a great house that belongs in its entourage 
 just as surely. A little park of pine trees 
 screens the place from the public road. 
 Once past the pine trees you enter an en- 
 chanted domain of intimate gardens, with 
 mysterious paths that lead you to the tennis 
 court, or a pergola, or a rose garden, or a 
 geometric color-mass of vegetables, lying like 
 a brilliant colored flag in a sunny sunken 
 space. All the paths lead to the house, as 
 paths should. You go through the long hall 
 and come out upon another garden, a brick 
 terrace with grape vines covering the beams 
 above it, and formal box trees in great Italian 
 jars along its rim. This terrace drops to, a 
 walled garden filled with rose and blue flow- 
 ers, and this in turn drops to the sea. You 
 sit upon the high terrace and look out over the 
 rose and blue blossoms to the sea. Even the 
 vistas are your own. Were you under yon- 
 der distant little white sail, you 'd be sure 
 that this enchanting garden and the house 
 above it had sprung from the blue water, so 
 perfectly does it all hang together. 
 
 It takes an architect to plan a proper house, 
 but any one who is willing to think a little 
 and work hard may develop a very beautiful 
 and satisfying entourage for his house. It is 
 a consoling thought that although the detail 
 of your house may be unattractive, its arbors 
 and gateways badly designed, you can plant 
 trees and shrubs and vines that will cover the 
 ugliness, and your house will become a trans- 
 formed thing that belongs to its garden; 
 
 Many houses that seem dignified and fine 
 to us are in reality commonplace and depend 
 
 52 
 
THE ENTOURAGE OF THE COUNTRY HOUSE 
 
 entirely on the surrounding foliage for their 
 beauty. . I remember one old place that al- 
 ways seemed remote and beautiful because I 
 could see only a bit of the dingy yellow house 
 through a thick tangle of evergreen trees — 
 magnolias, and cedars, and low shrubs that 
 had been transplanted from the woods. 
 Queer old people lived there, and so there was 
 no excuse for a small person to explore its 
 mysteries. It gave me a shock of disappoint- 
 ment years after to realize that the house was 
 worse than commonplace in itself, — it was a 
 dreadful mustard colored pile of clapboards, 
 with gingerbread trimming around its 
 porches. But that mattered little, for the 
 rose vines and ivy completely covered the 
 ugliness of the jig-saw work, and the trees 
 crept close to the house and protected it from 
 the passers-by. It was not a house, but a 
 "place," with an important and comforting 
 entourage that saved its secret from discov- 
 ery. 
 
 We can perhaps never have the fine luxuri- 
 ance of growth around our houses that the 
 English gardens have, but we can have some- 
 thing very pleasant, if we will work for it. 
 Rose vines and hedges and grass and old 
 fashioned flowers grow quickly for us, and 
 lattices and pergolas add to the charm of our 
 little houses. We can manage everything 
 quickly except trees, and we can have pretty 
 good trees if we study the soil and plant the 
 trees that are quickest in growth. We can 
 plant those for our own pleasure, and a few 
 slow growing ones — oaks, elms and such — 
 for the pleasure of our grandchildren. 
 There is no excuse for barrenness. 
 
 We can't have the delightful brick walks 
 of English gardens, with grass growing be- 
 tween the bricks, because the bricks will 
 freeze in winter and bulge up. But we can 
 
 53 
 
 Mellor & Meigs, Architects. 
 The rose-grown lattice adds greatly to the attractive- 
 ness of Mr. Meigs' little cottage. 
 
 have flat stones of irregular shape laid in 
 the grass Japanese fashion, and they will 
 keep their places. We can have walks of 
 bricks laid in cement or in sand, instead of 
 ugly ribbons of gray cement, or we can have 
 soft earth paths with a little gravel in them 
 instead of .terrible white-washed walks. We 
 can have borders of little flowers and ferns 
 instead of tiresome arrangements of zig-zag 
 bricks or shells or bottles or white-washed 
 stones. 
 
 No place is too small for some sort of 
 flower garden, an arbor or a lattice, a pool, a 
 stretch of greensward, a little space for 
 vegetables. We may realize the wall foun- 
 tain, or the pergola, or the sun dial, or the 
 little pool we have always planned, but we 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 must never crowd things. Repose is the be- 
 ginning and end of a garden. 
 
 Formal gardens are rarely entrancing. 
 They are admirable and orderly, and they 
 afford us plenty of flowers for the house, but 
 they seldom give us sheer ecstasy, as a proper 
 garden should. The real pleasure of plant- 
 ing flowers lies in placing them where they 
 will follow something. A rose covered arbor 
 is much more charming than an orderly 
 "bed" of roses. Long shallow masses of 
 flowers following the rim of a terrace, or a 
 wall, or the rim of a pool are always suc- 
 cessful. A large entourage may include a 
 dozen gardens — formal ones, wild ones, 
 vegetable ones, but on a small place it is 
 best to plant flowers where they will supple- 
 ment the trees and shrubs, and tell in strik- 
 ing spots of color. 
 
 We can all have flower gardens, and we 
 can all avoid flower "beds." It is all very 
 well to fill your garden chock full of flowers, 
 so that there is no room for grass or walks 
 or anything else. A mass of flowers is al- 
 ways lovely, just as a field of weeds is lovely. 
 But if you have a well planned garden your 
 flowers should be against or around things, in 
 
 w- '—■ 
 
 ■^^^' 1 
 
 ^B^BU^SS^S^^Kb""' 
 
 * ,^. .• ' 
 
 ^^^^^— ^ ^B^ ^ 
 
 
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 '^^^tmuimmmm V .,^/ ■, 
 
 ^^HfcigSSti^SaSSi^ 
 
 P-.'- .'"•-"■^•- - 
 
 A rustic arbor that leads to an old-fashioned flower 
 garden. 
 
 long shallow borders against a hedge, or a 
 terrace alongside a brick wall, or around a 
 tree. The only other way of handling 
 masses of flowers is to make a formal gar- 
 den of them with walks and a sun dial, or a 
 tree, or a bird bath in the center. Nothing 
 is more unfortunate than a great stretch of 
 green lawn dotted with isolated crescents and- 
 stars and circles of flowers. 
 
 The house must always be the heart of the 
 entourage, and the paths should all lead to 
 it, but they need not go directly. Winding 
 paths may go pretty much as they please, if 
 they are accompanied by shrubs and flowers* 
 to invite strolling, but straight walls should 
 always lead to something. It may be: an 
 arbor, or a pool, or a sun-dial, or a bench 
 against a lattice wall, but it must lead to 
 something. There should be a vista of 
 something pleasant at the end of all the walks 
 that lead directly from the house. This is 
 often achieved by placing the main walks in 
 line with the windows of the living-room, or 
 dining-room, so that the eye can follow the 
 walk to the picture that lies at its end. 
 
 Probably no one ever planned his ideal 
 entourage without including a little brook, or 
 a glimpse of the sea in his plan. We yearn 
 so for the sight of water, and if we can afford 
 it we sometimes compromise by bringing an 
 elaborate fountain into the garden to take the 
 place of the little brook. But fountains are 
 dangerous things. They are usually vulgar 
 in their noisy display and their mechanical 
 elaboration. A pool with a simple rim of 
 stone or cement or marble set deep into the 
 grass will give greater joy. A round pool 
 eight feet in diameter, or a rectangular pool 
 five feet by eight, is quite large enough to 
 serve as a mirror for the trees and flowers 
 about it. It may have a tiny spray of water 
 
 54 
 
THE ENTOURAGE OF THE COUNTRY HOUSE 
 
 Designed by H. T. Lindeberg. Albro & Lindeberg, Architects. 
 
 Here is a formal garden which is also entrancing. The walls, the pool and the prim box trees are all formal in 
 their disposition, but a long garden of everyday flowers relieves the formality by its gaiety. 
 
 from some little figure in the center, a fruit 
 tree twisting over it, a bench beside it, and a 
 school of gold fish within it. It will afford 
 us never failing color an,d motion, and it will 
 cost little more than a pair of the awful cast- 
 iron vases your grandfather bought for his 
 garden. 
 
 Garden furniture is tempting, and here too 
 we must go warily. Cement has made possi- 
 ble to all of us reproductions of fine old 
 Roman and Greek benches and fountains and 
 jars. It is hard to resist them, but an over- 
 crowded garden is as sad as an overcrowded 
 house. Too much garden furniture destroys 
 repose. Indeed, the small place with one 
 garden bench, and a sun dial, and a pair of 
 Italian oil jars placed where the creamy 
 whiteness will tell against dark green foliage 
 is in much better taste than the elaborate en- 
 tourage that includes all the marble temples 
 
 and fountains and benches and bridges that 
 the landscape architect can devise. Mod- 
 esty is an essential to repose. 
 
 The house is the final, as it is also the first, 
 consideration of the entourage. It must fit 
 comfortably into its site. The brutal line of 
 the foundations must be softened with a mass 
 of shrubs. Ivy will creep over its wall, and 
 pull it more securely into place. If the 
 house is low upon the ground, and we can 
 enter it without climbing, we are fortunate 
 indeed. If the house is much higher than the 
 main garden, terraces will do much to bring 
 it into the general harmony. 
 
 When the house has finally grown into its 
 surroundings, and ivy has softened the new- 
 ness of its lines into mellowness, when trees 
 and shrubs have been planted where dark 
 shadows are needed, and flowers massed 
 where they will be most effective, then will 
 
 55 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 come to pass an intimacy of house and gar- 
 den that will make the perfect entourage. 
 
 Do not be discouraged by the thought that 
 it takes time for bushes and trees to grow. 
 Of course it takes time, but once the tree is 
 
 planted, it needs little care. Who that 
 has n't planted trees can know the excite- 
 ment of watching the first apple ripen into 
 maturity? Who that has n't planted a rose- 
 bush can know the thrill of the first rose? 
 
 Charles Barton Keen, Architect. 
 Entrance gateway at Strafford, Pennsylvania. Note the generous proportion of 
 the arch and simplicity of the design. 
 
 56 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 CONCERNING COLOR 
 
 HAVE you ever gone along one of 
 the streets of a suburban town 
 and noticed how each house is 
 painted without any regard to the colors of 
 the neighboring houses? First we have a 
 red house, then a white, then a chocolate, and 
 then a gray one. If these colors were light, 
 soft tones, such as one sees in the multi-col- 
 ored towns in some of the tropical countries, 
 it would not only be pardonable, but very 
 desirable. But nothing could be further 
 from picturesqueness than the aspect they 
 present. The colors are hard, decided, cheap 
 and unsympathetic. 
 
 Don't be afraid to have the color of your 
 house bear some reasonable relation to the 
 color of your neighbor's house. 
 
 Don't think you get an artistic distinction 
 by making your house picturesque or notice- 
 able by violence or eccentricity. 
 
 The thing that strikes the European most 
 forcibly on coming over here is the lack of 
 harmony between houses put up in the same 
 neighborhood. A man builds his house in 
 his own way, and next to him will be a 
 neighbor who has a different type of house. 
 
 and who has developed his garden in his own 
 way. 
 
 The reason that European cities, espe- 
 cially those on the Continent, are so skilfully 
 developed is that certain despotic rulers have 
 said, "We are going to put a boulevard from 
 here to there without asking anybody's ad- 
 vice or consent about it." Whereas, in 
 America, the only way this could be done 
 would be by unanimous public opinion, and 
 on esthetic matters public opinion is very 
 difficult to awaken. 
 
 Nevertheless the intelligent house builder 
 must realize- the advantages of making his 
 neighbor's property benefit his own, and to 
 do this means study and consideration and 
 co-operation. 
 
 Much of the attraction that the old Euro- 
 pean towns has for us exists largely because 
 of the character of the houses, homogeneous 
 in both design and color. The harmony of 
 design comes from the custom of observing 
 the traditions in building. Harmony of 
 color comes largely from the use of local 
 building materials. 
 
 Each building material has a color of its 
 
 57 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 own. Nature endows it with that color. 
 The common building stones such as lime- 
 stone, sandstone, granite and marble all have 
 their characteristic colors. Bricks, though 
 artificial in that they are made by man, pre- 
 serve the natural color of the sand and clay 
 that goes with them. Wood, the common- 
 est building material of all, has its pleasant 
 range of neutral colors, but unfortunately we 
 associate wood always with paint, and so the 
 value of its natural color is rarely seen. 
 
 It is extremely difficult to consider color in 
 its relation to architecture, for color lies so 
 much in the eye of the beholder. And it is 
 difficult to convey an idea concerning the use 
 of color through the medium of a black and 
 white page. To many people "color" sug- 
 gests instantly paint, something applied to 
 the surface of the house. To others, "color" 
 is an elastic term including a hundred things 
 — the effect of the house and its entourage, 
 the color Nature has given and man has ap- 
 plied. 
 
 If you seek to analyze the spell that your 
 favorite house always casts upon you, you 
 will find that much of its fascination lies in 
 the harmony of color of the house and its 
 details, its surroundings. You have prob- 
 ably treasured such a house in your imagina- 
 tion, a house that seemed exactly right to 
 you. It may have been a pink stucco house 
 in the Azores, or a salmon-colored villa in 
 Sicily, or a dove-colored English cottage 
 with velvety thatched roof. It may have 
 been nearer home, an old whitewashed, 
 broad-shingled farmhouse in a pink and 
 white apple orchard, or a cottage of clap- 
 boards silvered by the weather, with masses 
 of hollyhocks crowding against it. Wher- 
 ever you saw it, it entered into your soul and 
 became a vision to be cherished; and you 
 
 58 
 
 planned a some-day house very much like it. 
 The point is, you considered the green of the 
 trees and vines and grass, the hues of the 
 flowers, the very clouds and sky, along with 
 the house. It was the harmony of color that 
 got into your memory and stayed there. 
 Else why do we not go intcv ecstasies over 
 the houses we see in winter"? We don't. 
 Ideal houses are visualized in full color. 
 
 You may succeed in avoiding all the com- 
 mon pitfalls of design so far as your archi- 
 tectural detail is concerned and then wreck 
 your house by the use of bad color. You 
 can avoid this only by studying assiduously 
 the possibilities of your house and its rela- 
 tion to the neighboring houses. If your 
 place is large enough, of course the neighbor- 
 ing houses need not enter into your consid- 
 eration at all. Then you can work out a 
 harmony of house and garden that will de- 
 clare your good sense and your understand- 
 ing of the community in which you live. 
 
 One of the finest examples of a color plan 
 in our architecture is the country place of Mr. 
 Albert Herter at East Hampton, Long Island. 
 Here is a large, rambling house, built so 
 close to the sea that the blue-green of the 
 water and the clear blue of the sky are de- 
 liberately considered as a part of the color 
 plan. Mr. Herter's idea was to get, if possi- 
 ble, the effect of a house in Sicily, and so he 
 built the house of pinkish yellow stucco and 
 gave it a copper roof. The sea winds have 
 softened the texture and deepened the color 
 of the walls to salmon, and the copper roof 
 has been transforrned into ever-changing blue 
 greens that repeat the colors of the sea. In 
 front of the house there are terraces massed 
 with flowers of orange and yellow and red, 
 and back of the house there is a Persian gar- 
 den built around blue and green Persian tiles, 
 
CONCERNING COLOR 
 
 Photograph by Lillian Baynes Griffin. Slee & Bryson, Architects. 
 This stucco house at Tokoneke, Connecticut, shows vivid contrasts of color which are fascinating. A mass of 
 black-green ivy climbs over the creamy stucco. Note the ruggedness of the plain walls and the sense of graceful in- 
 timacy which is given by the Italian bas-relief on the ivied wall. 
 
 and great blue Italian jars. Here flowers of 
 blue and rose, and the amethyst tones in be- 
 tween, are allowed. Black green trees and 
 shrubs are used everywhere, with the general 
 effect of one of Maxfield Parrish's vivid 
 Oriental gardens. 
 
 It is a far cry from this intoxicating har- 
 mony of color to a shabby genteel villa of an 
 Italian peasant on the Long Island railway, 
 but somehow the peasant's house seems al- 
 most as wonderful to me, it is so frankly a 
 courageous attempt at realizing an ideal 
 
 house. I pass the house every day, and in 
 the few seconds it is within my sight I find 
 new pleasures, a new amusement. 
 
 The house is a large, squarish box, spang 
 against the railway tracks, but it has been 
 treated as seriously as if it were an imposing 
 villa with spreading acres. A high wall cov- 
 ered with stucco has been built to enclose the 
 yard, which the ambitious owner is strug- 
 gling to make into a real garden despite the 
 cinders and smoke and heat. In the mean- 
 time, huge colored vases at least a story high 
 
 59 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 have been painted on the walls of the house, 
 vases with spiral-like leaves and flowers in 
 gay colors. On the large gate posts are 
 clumsy urns, with feeble flowers growing in 
 them. The gate itself is a strange affair of 
 odds and ends of iron patched together, but 
 what matter"? On the arbor real grape vines 
 grow, and the vegetable garden gives real 
 color. 
 
 A huddle of little out-houses, "dependen- 
 cies," runs along one wall, and I am sure they 
 are somehow a part of the dream. The 
 
 • dream, by the way is clear to me: here is a 
 prosperous Italian who has always had a 
 vision. Prosperity gave him courage to ac- 
 ■conlplish the villa that must be as much like 
 
 an old-country estate as possible. In the 
 frankest, simplest fashion he has set to work 
 to embellish his house and his wall in the gay 
 
 • color that expresses his happiness. All 
 around him are hideous little mustard col- 
 ored shoe-box cottages of clapboards, with 
 not a twig or a tree for solace, but they do 
 not discourage him. Somehow he has ac- 
 complished a splash of real interest and good 
 color in a dingy railway yard, and I rejoice 
 with him and. wish we had more like him. 
 
 The charm of the cities of Spain and Italy 
 and of warm countries generally, lies in the 
 ever present evidence of warm colors. The 
 tones of the walls are light, — light grays, 
 pale yellows, pale pinks and greens, and the 
 appeal to the- sense of beauty which they 
 make is irresistible. 
 
 In the temperate climate in which most of 
 us live, we run to two extremes. In New 
 England, where granite is plentiful, one sees 
 frequently the house of a bluish steel-col- 
 ored cut stone, than which there is nothing 
 more gloomy in the whole world. Then on 
 ■.the other hand, there is the New England 
 
 farmhouse, painted white with dark green 
 blinds, but of a whiteness which only the 
 light of heaven can equal. It is a cold 
 white, with a bluish cast, and against the 
 dark greens of surrounding trees it shocks one 
 with its intensity and austerity. 
 
 Let your grays and your whites be warm, 
 and your effects will be happy. The white 
 needs only to have a blush of yellow in it 
 to take away the frozen aspect, but that 
 slight blush is what makes the difference be- 
 tween amiability and harshness. Avoid 
 bluish tones always, for they give an impres- 
 sion of bleakness. This is a matter perhaps 
 of psychology, but certainly it is none the less 
 true that we always associate our ideas of 
 winter and of the cold landscape with bluish 
 colors. And so with the somber tones in our 
 stone and brick and stucco walls. 
 
 But, after all, the natural colors as they 
 occur in the different building materials, 
 such as stone and brick, are all relatively 
 subdued. Probably you think of an excep- 
 tion to this, and remind me of the bright 
 colors of certain marbles. We do not, how- 
 ever, use these marbles in every day housed, 
 and our common building materials are not 
 endowed with brilliant colors. „ Even if they 
 are sometimes strong and displeasing, time 
 and weather gradually soften their bad 
 qualities. The real color problem of the 
 . usual small house is the painter and his paint. 
 Iri the field of artificial color, the possi- 
 bilities for ugliness are unlimited. The 
 colors which the house painter can wallpw^i^ 
 in range from the deepest piratical blackito 
 the most screaming vermilion, and whereas 
 nature endows each building with one color, 
 the painter can make your house look like a 
 kaleidoscope in a few days' time. 
 
 The ordinary house painter, armed with 
 60 
 
CONCERNING COLOR 
 
 three pots of -different colored paints, varies 
 only slightly from a maniac in his conception 
 of decoration. 
 
 We have all seen rows of small wooden 
 cottages, badly built and badly designed, 
 that became relatively attractive by being 
 painted in one uniform color. The same cot- 
 tages painted in bright reds, greens, purples 
 and browns look more frightful than words 
 can tell. 
 
 Good advice to follow is this : if you have 
 a shingled house, it is well to let the shingles 
 take a natural weatherstained color. If it is 
 
 necessary to give them protection stain them, 
 with some silver gray stain which approxi- 
 mates the weathered effect. Or you can 
 paint the shingles. Generally speaking white 
 is best for the shingled walls, and with this 
 you can have your outside shutters, your 
 flower boxes, and your lattice work painted 
 warm tones of brown or gray or green. It 
 is best to paint the whole house uniformly, 
 save for these details. 
 
 For the ordinary simple house of clap- 
 boards, no color combination has been found 
 more satisfactory than white walls with. 
 
 Charles Barton Keen, Architect- 
 The restful impression given by these houses at Strafford, near Philadelphia, is due to their harmony of color and form. 
 
 61 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 shutters of some greenish color. If you feel 
 yourself at all uncertain on the matter of 
 color, paint your house white. Avoid heavy 
 colors like chocolate, slate gray, and red for 
 the colors of your walls. Don't be afraid 
 to have your house conform to the houses 
 of your neighbors. Don't think that you get 
 artistic distinction by making your own house 
 an eyesore. If your ornament is unstudied 
 and bad, to silhouette it by using two con- 
 trasting colors, is simply to make your house 
 a thousand times more hideous than it need 
 be. In the days when cheap wooden orna- 
 ment of the jig-saw, gingerbread type was 
 prevalent it was customary to emphasize this 
 ornament by the use of paints of different 
 color. 
 
 Even if your trim is good, it is best not to 
 emphasize it. In no other way can you 
 make your house look cheap so quickly as to 
 afflict it with stripes and rectangles of 
 painted trim. The roof has one color, the 
 walls another, and the shutters and doors 
 have still another. That is enough. Noth- 
 ing is more unpleasant than a house with the 
 first-story walls painted one color, the second 
 story another, the triangular space of the 
 gable ends another. Such houses have been 
 called the "shirt-waist-and-skirt-houses," and 
 the term fits. They are usually further 
 embellished by painting the piazza lattice 
 and railing still another color, and of course 
 the roof has something awful to declare be- 
 fore the color-plan is finished. Ofteii you 
 will see such a house sitting impudently be- 
 tween two self respecting colonial houses, 
 affording a contrast which only a blind per- 
 son could look upon without shuddering. I 
 shall never forget passing such a house in 
 a sweet old village on Cape Cod, where its 
 very existence was a libel. A little South- 
 
 ern girl was-with me, and though none of us 
 said a word, she looked at the house, sniffed, 
 and said, "It looks like a nigger preacher's 
 house!" 
 
 It is a great misfortune, this lack of con- 
 sideration of our neighbors. For too long 
 we have ignored them. Each man has built 
 as he pleased. Beside a house of the Eng- 
 lish style he has erected one of the formal 
 classic colonial type, and his neighbor has 
 built a house of the Spanish mission type, and 
 so on, thus producing a disharmonious jum- 
 ble of color and design. 
 
 Happily, this reckless disregard of neigh- 
 borhood is passing. We are beginning to 
 co-operate, to pull our little towns into pleas- 
 ant completeness. There are several garden 
 cities already begun, planned on the English 
 and continental scheimes, and at least one 
 town is far enough along to be an object les- 
 son to thousands of people. This is Forest 
 Hills Gardens, Long Island, a much misun- 
 derstood community that owes its being to 
 the Sage Foundation. 
 
 The popular conception of this place is 
 that it is a model village for working men. 
 It would be much more interesting if it were, 
 but unfortunately land in the immediate 
 
 62 
 
 Too many colors are used. The columns are badly 
 spaced and like the stone wall, they are out of keeping 
 with [the rest of the house. 
 
CONCERNING COLOR 
 
 Photograph by Lillian Baynes Griffin. Wilson Eyre, Architect. 
 
 The first floor of Mr. Goodnow's house at Forest Hills Gardens is very near the ground. This gives an impres- 
 sion of intimacy and informality on entering. The house looks as though it grew out of its surroundings. Note the 
 admirable texture of the stucco. The woodwork of the porch is stained a deep brown, the tiles are red and the 
 stucco is a light gray, tinged with the slightest suggestion of green. 
 
 vicinity of New York is too expensive to per- 
 mit the charming cottage colonies so success- 
 fully .fostered in England. Forest Hills 
 Gardens is within nine miles, and fifteen 
 minutes, of the heart of New York, and this 
 means that a man must pay as much for the 
 little bit of ground on which he would build, 
 as a good house would cost in a more remote 
 community. But there are enough people 
 who appreciate the excellence of a little town 
 that is planned for the future to make the 
 
 enterprise successful. You may object to 
 being restricted yourself, but it is heavenly 
 to know that your neighbors are restricted 
 as to color, and design, and the many things 
 that are so unpleasant at close range. You 
 are willing to pay more for a small house 
 that fits into its landscape, its neighborhood, 
 than you would pay for a very much larger 
 house in a town where every house is a law 
 unto itself. 
 
 Much of the charm of Forest Hills 
 
 63 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 Gardens comes from the color of the ma- 
 terials used. Some of the color is un- 
 doubtedly unfortunate, but as all the houses 
 must be fireproof this makes for excellent 
 color. Fireproof houses are most commonly 
 expressed in brick or stucco, which almost 
 always have good color and pleasing texture. 
 If your stucco goes wrong, you can tint it. 
 If your bricks are ugly in tone, you can 
 whitewash them. Good color is always easy 
 to obtain in such materials. 
 
 It is almost impossible to build wooden 
 houses close together and get a harmonious 
 effect. * Indeed, we recall very few success- 
 ful streets of wooden houses, except the 
 quaint old village streets that are lined with 
 rows of gray and white and faded green 
 houses, pulled together comfortably by old 
 trees and placid gardens. But when you be- 
 gin assembling houses that are vertical rather 
 than horizontal in expression, you have a 
 difficult problem. The architects who have 
 planned Forest Hills Gardens had this prob- 
 lem to solve. They do not permit three or 
 four houses to be built on a line, for instance. 
 
 The two end ones may be set near the 
 street, and the two inner ones set far back to- 
 ward the edge of the lots, and so a pleasing 
 irregularity is gained. Houses of timber 
 and plaster, houses of a composition cement 
 of dull browns and reds, houses of brick and 
 field stone and stucco are all there, but the 
 architects have decreed that all the roofs 
 shall be of red tile, and so the community is 
 united. As one of the architects says, the 
 little houses are all satisfyingly different, but 
 their roofs are all singing the same tune. 
 
 As with the house design, so with the 
 garden. Each garden is considered as a part 
 of a perfected plan, and the planting around 
 /the house assumes its proper importance as 
 a part of the picture. The result is a de- 
 lightful mass of color that will grow finer 
 always. As ivy covers the houses and the 
 gay little gardens grow up around them we 
 shall have a fine exposition of what may 
 come to pass when every man considers his 
 neighbor. 
 
 In the meantime, most people are forced 
 to live in neighborhoods that have grown 
 
 Compare this restless row of badly designed houses with the street of modest white houses on page 6i. Compare 
 them also with the group of houses on page 65. 
 
 64 
 
CONCERNING COLOR 
 
 Wilson Eyre, Architect. 
 These houses, built at Forest Hills Gardens, are grouped so that all share in the enjoyment of the enclosed gar- 
 den. A detail of the house at the right is shown on page 63. The middle house is a twin house. 
 
 without plan, and must make the most of 
 situations that are most discouraging. You 
 may have bought a lot with a magenta house 
 of many turrets on one side of it, and on the 
 other a sprawling house of mustard yellow 
 stucco, and terrible tiles of a red that swears 
 at the magenta. What sort of house can 
 you build that will soften the vulgar conflict 
 of your neighbors' houses? How can you 
 separate your own house from its ill-bred fel- 
 lows'? 
 
 Of course the only real separation possible 
 is planting-^trees and shrubs and hedges. 
 But after you have done all you can with the 
 frame of the picture that is your house, you 
 must study color as related to the neighbor- 
 ing houses before you can go ahead. 
 
 As to the matter of choosing your colors, 
 it is possible here to give only the slightest 
 
 hints, because each house presents its own 
 special difficulties. Nevertheless whether 
 your house is of stone or brick or shingle or 
 stucco, there are certain combinations which 
 it is well to avoid. These combinations are 
 those made by the association of uncomple- 
 mentary colors. 
 
 You know what is meant when we say 
 that crimson and scarlet clash, that they do 
 not look well together. Under ordinary 
 conditions this is true of scarlet and crimson, 
 because they are not complementary colors. 
 
 What are the complementary colors then, 
 and How shall we know them? This could 
 be answered simply by giving a reference to 
 any text book on physics, but text books of 
 that kind are always forbidding. Briefly, 
 the theory of color is this: white light, or 
 sunlight, is made up of seven or, we may say. 
 
 65 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 six colors. These are called the colors of 
 the spectrum. You see these colors in the 
 rainbow, or through a prism of glass. 
 
 There are three primary colors, red, blue, 
 and yellow; the secondary colors, orange, 
 
 ^ED 
 
 OX/W<:f£ 
 
 _ _/_ I \ \pi/x^ie 
 
 Y£i.l.aws 
 
 .3zm 
 
 .<^KS£-JV- 
 
 violet and green, may be derived by the com- 
 bination of the primary colors. Thus if we 
 have some blue paint and some yellow, we 
 can mix them and the resulting color will be 
 green. In the figure on this page, yellow, 
 blue, and red, each at an apex of the tri- 
 angle, represent the primary colors; green, 
 orange, purple, which form another triangle, 
 are the secondary colors. Thus, if you will 
 notice, green lies half way between blue and 
 ytUow, orange half way between red and 
 yellow, and violet half way between blue 
 and red. Now those colors are comple- 
 mentary which lie diametrically opposite each 
 other. Thus orange is complementary to 
 blue, purple to yellow and red to green. 
 These colors can be used successfully to- 
 gether, that is, side by side. The nearer two 
 
 colors approach, such as green and orange, 
 or yellow and orange, the more difficult they 
 are to use together. 
 
 Many difficulties will probably present 
 themselves to your mind! First for in- 
 stance, that there are a dozen different reds, 
 and a dozen different blues, and so forth. 
 Which of these are you to take as the 
 standard for comparison? The answer to 
 this is found in the spectrum. The yellow 
 which forms the standard is that yellow 
 which has no green and no orange. And so 
 for the other colors. 
 
 Another difficulty is, how do we account 
 for such colors as gray and brown? These 
 are composite colors, and if you will look 
 closely at a gray you will see that it is a blue- 
 gray, or a yellow-gray, or a red-gray, and 
 so with the browns. Thus these so-called 
 neutral colors may be considered as having 
 the color of that primary color which is most 
 prominent in them, and associated accord- 
 ingly. 
 
 This explanation is of course very incom- 
 plete; the science of the combination of 
 colors is involved and difficult. But if we 
 can be content with simple color combina- 
 tions, we have nothing to fear and much to 
 gain. It takes an artist to plan a house of 
 many colors, but any of us can accomplish 
 a house of some soft tone, with individual 
 detail of colored lattices, or shutters, or 
 what-not, to satisfy the personal equation. 
 With a background of neutral tone, we can 
 experiment with occasional splashes of bril- 
 liant color in our gardens, and here, after all, 
 is where vivid color really belongs. 
 
 66 
 
t ^;fe^gfg/i}fitzKv^t^=~-eat^safipP;^ .'^:. 
 
 T.<=s^!£Stss,z'!!^p^m-mit=M\m^/y^/iy/^iy^^/-^^^ 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE MATERIALS 
 
 IT is all very well to tell a man that a 
 masonry house is cheaper in the long 
 run than a wooden one. But the run 
 is so long! The immediate necessity is so 
 imperative! It is hard to convince a man 
 who has only so much money to spend, and 
 who wants a lot for his money, that he 
 should wait until he can build a fireproof 
 house. 
 
 He knows that masonry construction is 
 more durable and from certain points of 
 view more sanitary. Brick, terra cotta, field 
 stone, or concrete will make a house that will 
 last beyond his time with little necessity for 
 further outlay. But he sees all about him 
 the wooden cottages of people who lived a 
 hundred years ago. These cottages have 
 lasted. They are attractive. The price of 
 building such a house is not prohibitive. 
 These are the arguments with which he con- 
 soles himself. 
 
 Still, the cost of a house should be figured 
 as an investment of capital. The cost of 
 painting clapboards or siding, and of re- 
 shingling, is large. Six hundred dollars 
 extra to build of brick means thirty dollars 
 
 67 
 
 a year interest. To keep a wood house 
 painted means as much as this, and there 
 will be repairs in addition, to say nothing 
 of depreciation in value. 
 
 When the insurance companies reach a 
 stage of intelligence (and they are leading 
 the people in this), it will be considered good 
 business not only to build the walls of ma- 
 sonry, but to build the house fireproof 
 throughout. We burn up some three mil- 
 lion dollars' worth of property per annum, 
 and insurance does n't pay for a cent of the 
 loss — it only makes us pay for our own care- 
 lessness and the carelessness of others. 
 
 We are agreed that on all practical points 
 of view, save that of initial cost, masonry 
 construction has the advantage over wood 
 frame construction. But from the point of 
 view of appearance, the matter is not so 
 easily settled. The old clapboard Colonial 
 house with its white painted walls and its 
 green shutters remains one of the most 
 charming expressions of small house archi- 
 tecture. 
 
 A house builder under primitive condi- 
 tions built his house of local materials, and 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 a great many historical styles were developed 
 in the materials or capabilities which were 
 found in the locality. The difRculty of 
 transportation forced builders to use their 
 ingenuity in solving their problems. We 
 do not have to do this to-day. As 
 an in,stance, the early builders of Colo- 
 nial houses in this country had to import 
 some of their building material from Eng- 
 land. The facilities for transportation were, 
 however, very feeble, consequently Colonial 
 builders had.|o turn to local materials to 
 satisfy, their needs. The cheapest and 
 easiest material to get was wood, which was 
 plentiful and of very good quality, whereas 
 in' the European countries it was both scarce 
 and expensive. Wooden houses therefore 
 sprang up all over the Colonies as a result of 
 the economic situation. 
 
 To-day the facilities of transportation are 
 so, great and the number of building ma- 
 terials' so multiplied that there is a tempta- 
 tion to build largely from a surplus of ma- 
 terial. The supply of wood is of course 
 diminishing, and is forcing the builders to 
 use some forin of masonry construction. 
 
 This is, in some ways, a very good thing, — ■ 
 it has a tendency to produce a more solid 
 architecture ! 
 
 In coming to the matter of materials in 
 which we can express ourselves, there is a 
 variety to choose from. Suppose you build 
 a frame house; you can express its exterior 
 in stucco, clapboard, shingle, or half timber. 
 If you build a masonry house its exterior can 
 be expressed in stucco, brick, or stone. Each 
 of these materials has its own character, its 
 own limitations, and its own application. 
 The eye judges the house by its appearance, 
 rather than its construction. 
 
 The use of shingles for exterior covering 
 is, one might almost say, indigenous with 
 America. If shingles were ever used in 
 England and the European countries gen- 
 erally, they had long given away to the use 
 of slate and other materials by the time of 
 the colonization of this country. The 
 forests of our new world offered such an 
 abundant supply of wood that the wooden 
 frame house with its shingle or clapboarded 
 exterior was a natural and easy develop- 
 ment. Until something like fifty years ago. 
 
 When this attractive old house at Hartsdale, New York, was built, there was a plentiful supply of shingles of 
 good quality. They were more durable than the shingles you can buy nowadays. 
 
THE MATERIALS 
 
 Eugene J. Lang, Architect. 
 This house for the Misses McVean at Great Neck, Long Island, is unusual in its design and charming in its 
 simplicity. 
 
 wood was Still plentiful, and no one thought 
 of the danger of its becoming scarce. 
 
 As late as 1870 hardly any one thought of 
 planting new trees to replace those which 
 were being so ruthlessly cut down. In the 
 European countries the forestry regulations 
 have been in force for hundreds of years, and 
 wood has been greatly prized for so long 
 that it has become an established custom to 
 plant a tree when another is cut down. 
 
 So far from being appreciated was this 
 attitude in this country that when, about 
 1870, a New Englander, inspired by the sys- 
 tem of forestry practised in France, bought 
 a number of deserted farms in New Hamp- 
 shire, and planted hundreds of thousands of 
 
 pine trees, he was called a visionary! Had 
 there been a few such visionaries about a 
 hundred years ago we would have had a 
 system of forestry insuring the country with 
 a rotation in the production of lumber. 
 We should be sure of getting wood of good 
 quality, cut from -large trees instead of hav- 
 ing to use wood cut from small trees still 
 filled with sap and therefore being imperma- 
 nent for building. purposes. Only recently 
 have measures been taken by the government 
 for the increase of our forests, and for re- 
 forestation. 
 
 What is the bearing of this on shingles? 
 Just this : that whereas shingles were once a 
 fairly durable house covering, they come to 
 
 69 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 Photograph by Coutant. Parker Morse Hooper, Architect. 
 
 Few houses in America have so much quality as has this house designed for Dr. Abbott at Cornwall, New 
 
 York. The balcony is a somewhat daring feature but it is beautifully studied. The first and second floor plans 
 are shown below. 
 
 be less and less so, because it becomes harder 
 and harder to get them of good quality, and 
 of sufficient length. 
 
 The older houses were shingled with hand- 
 split shingles about eighteen inches long. 
 These can still be obtained, though they are 
 expensive. They make a much more in- 
 teresting house covering than the shorter 
 machine cut shingles, which in virtue of their 
 reduced length, cannot be laid so as to ex- 
 pose more than five inches to the weather. 
 On page 5 is shown an excellent example 
 of a Colonial house with hand-split shingles 
 
 70 
 
THE MATERIALS 
 
 laid about nine inches to the weather. The 
 effect is charming. Wide courses of shingles 
 are generally more attractive than the 
 common narrow courses, in which the 
 shingles are laid only six inches to the 
 weather. 
 
 One of the commonest misuses of shingles 
 from the point of view of good design is seen 
 in the attempt to reproduce with them elabo- 
 rate architectural forms. Houses of this 
 type belong to the post-Richardsonian school 
 of domestic architecture, common to the 
 eighties, but happily belonging to our 
 past. I am quite sure there will never be 
 another epidemic of such houses, but un- 
 fortunately many of them are still with us. 
 They are seemingly built for inflammable 
 purposes, but fire has passed them by, and 
 they linger to torment us. 
 
 Another misuse of shingles is the would-be 
 decorative scheme, where scalloped shingles 
 are used along, with ginger-bread and jig-saw 
 work. Nothing could be more ugly or more 
 trivial. Another misuse is seen in the com- 
 bination of shingles with other materials for 
 wall covering, a familiar sight in closely 
 settled suburbs, where the lower part of 
 every house is clapboarded and the upper 
 part shingled. This treatment, by the way, 
 invariably invites a shocking application of 
 paint. 
 
 As for clapboards, the type of wide clap- 
 board used in the old Long Island farm- 
 houses gives an excellent effect, far better 
 than the type of- narrow clapboard used com- 
 monly in New England. An excellent ex- 
 ample of the proper use of the wide weather 
 clapboard or siding is. shown in Dr. Abbott's 
 house at Cornwall. The wide courses give 
 interest and vigor to the fagade. 
 
 In the real old English houses of the half 
 
 timber type, the timbers expressed the actual 
 frame construction of the house. These 
 houses were constructed of heavy joists, and 
 the spaces between them were filled in 
 with brick and sometimes covered with 
 stucco. In our modern methods we have n't 
 the honesty (or perhaps we should say the 
 money!) to use real timber in our half- 
 timbered work. We frame our wooden 
 houses which are going to be half-timber on 
 the exterior, just as we frame them when 
 they are to be covered with a shingle or 
 stucco, and then we apply our false half- 
 timber to our frame. This false half-timber 
 work consists often of only %" boards, and 
 under the action of the weather they tend 
 to twist and warp and go to pieces generally, 
 all of which is too painfully evident if one 
 looks somewhat critically at most of these 
 houses. 
 
 This practice of false half -timber work is 
 not altogether reprehensible, but when we 
 have a modern house of real timber work 
 built as is the Vanderbilt Lodge^ there is a 
 certain satisfaction in viewing it, a satisfac- 
 
 In this old English house, the timber work expresses the 
 actual frame construction of the house. 
 
 71 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 tion which comes from seeing a thing well 
 done. 
 
 There are ever so many schemes possible 
 in the handling of half-timber decoration. 
 We say decoration rather than construction, 
 because the real construction of our houses 
 is concealed. In the old Norman work the 
 pattern of the half timber was the natural 
 expression of the construction. Notice that 
 a horizontal piece is laid under the sill of 
 the window and over its head; similarly the 
 slanting pieces were put there to brace the 
 frame, and so on. Therefore, as a general 
 rule it is well to design a ha:lf timber house 
 as though the half timber had a real meaning 
 structurally. This tends to make the design 
 look serious and reasonable. 
 
 In the English and Norman work, the 
 timbers were spaced rather close together. 
 This was done because it gave strength and 
 solidity to' the building. In some of the 
 modern American work designed by un- 
 trained builders who knew nothing of the 
 antecedents of half timber work, the design 
 is frequently skimpy, the spaces between the 
 false timbers too great, and the false timbers 
 have no apparent structural relation to the 
 window openings, or to each other. Such 
 
 houses usually look as if they had been 
 striped with brown pasteboard, or smooth 
 satin ribbons. ■ 
 
 The use of stucco is very old, and it is 
 used very generally throughout Europe, 
 largely because it is made of lime, and lime 
 is abundant everywhere. Moreover, the use 
 of stucco on masonry walls has a distinct 
 advantage inasmuch as stucco can always be 
 re-applied, and an old house rnade new. In 
 this country, where we have excessive heat 
 and excessive cold, stucco has to meet diffi- 
 cult conditions of expansion and contraction, 
 and it is consequently still somewhat im- 
 perfect. Still, if the stucco cracks here and 
 there, it can be patched, and that patch in- 
 stead of being ugly is often a picturesque ad-, 
 dition. Certainly much of the charm of the 
 old European stucco houses lies in their bat- 
 tered condition, their delightfully varying 
 color. 
 
 There is a sad superstition in America that 
 a house should look as though it were taken 
 out of a band-box. The moment it becomes 
 shabby enough to be interesting, it is painted 
 and varnished until it shines. Of course we 
 must keep our houses tidy — but not too tidy. 
 If they are of wood, we have to repaint them 
 
 First and second floor plans of Mr. Raymond's house at Manchester. 
 
 72 
 
THE MATERIALS 
 
 James Purden, Architect. 
 Note the complete lack of useless decoration in this interesting house of Mr. Robert L. Raymond at Manches- 
 ter, Massachusetts. 
 
 lest they fall to pieces under the attacks of 
 the weather, but when they are of brick, or 
 stone, or stucco, there is no excuse for 
 our frenzied housecleaning. People actually 
 tear down the shrubbery and friendly vines 
 that were struggling to make their houses 
 beautiful in order to apply a new and un- 
 necessary coat of paint ! 
 
 I know two stucco houses of approxi- 
 mately the same cost and plan, in the same 
 town, and there is all the difference in the 
 world to any one possessed of the seeing eye. 
 One house was planned for years by its 
 owner, and finally the plans were turned 
 over to a sympathetic architect. The house 
 
 is placed as close as possible to the street, 
 to gain privacy for the garderi in the rear. 
 The long line of the house is parallel with 
 the street, which gives it added interest, and 
 this line is emphasized by a wall which be- 
 gins under the front windows and runs along 
 past the end of the house, enclosing the laun- 
 dry yard. The house sits low on the ground, 
 and although it is not yet two years old, it 
 has all the subtle charm of an old English 
 cottage. The texture of the plaster is very 
 rough, slapped on by a skilled hand, and just 
 enough black was put into the creamy mix- 
 ture to take away the "new" appearance. 
 The unobtrusive outer trim is painted a neu- 
 
 73 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 tral blue-gray. The red tiled roof has the' 
 character of an old one, for the tiles have not 
 that unvarying redness that is so deplorable. 
 Brownish ones, and purplish ones, and black 
 ones have been spotted among the dark red 
 to give a shadowy variation of color. 
 
 The other house was equally well planned, 
 but it has been set at right angles to the 
 street, so that you get an impression of the 
 bolt upright end of a narrow house. It sits 
 up from the ground with a deliberate frame- 
 
 The doorway of "The Cloisters," an old house at 
 Ephrata, Pennsylvania. The stucco is of good color and 
 a most interesting texture. 
 
 74 
 
 work beneath the first floor that says ob- 
 viously, "This is the basernent." But : my 
 main quarrel is with the horrid smoothness 
 of the stucco, the neat yellow expanse that 
 looks more like the eggshell plastering of an 
 interior than an outside wall built for 
 weather. The trim, on this house is very 
 heavy, very much emphasized, and it is ob- 
 viously false. It is stained an even, choco- 
 late brown. It is supposed to suggest a bit 
 of half timber, but it really suggests brown 
 satin ribbon, neat and thin and temporary. 
 The roof of this house is blatantly red, every 
 tile a perfect mate to its neighbor. Cer- 
 tainly it is a "new" looking house, and 
 should be quite right for the people who 
 wish to live in band-box-new houses, but 
 even to the unpractised eye it is disappoint- 
 ing. 
 
 From the point of view of good design, 
 the main difficulty with stucco is its color, 
 and the next is found in its limitations when 
 used otherwise than in flat surfaces.'* In 
 other words, stucco is not adapted for the 
 small house unless the details be extremely 
 simple. Nothing is more disagreeable thaii 
 a dark bluish, or dark brownish colored 
 stucco. This danger can be obviated usually 
 by the use of white sand and white cement, 
 for it is essential that the tone be light. 
 Light grays, with a suggestion of yellow or 
 green, are warm and cheerful, and show off 
 stucco at its best. The quaint pink stucco 
 houses of Southern France, of Italy, of the 
 Azores, and of so many fair countries are not 
 for us, for their color is tempered by climatic 
 conditions, but we may at least aim for a 
 pleasant deepening of some cream or gray 
 tone. 
 
 It is well to keep the surfaces of stucco 
 walls plain, because it is difficult to express 
 
THE MATERIALS 
 
 Edward B. Gilchrist, Architect.. 
 
 This house is located at St. Martins, Philadelphia. Note the large areas of blank wall, the interesting texture 
 
 of the stucco, the fine grouping of windows, the generous proportions and mysterious charm of the arched dooi;way. 
 
 * - «■ 
 
 detail in stucco without getting into trouble, walls are kept severely simple and the de- 
 It is worth noticing that in the attractive tail, in order to give contrast to the stucco,, 
 stucco houses of English architecture the is found in the dark stained wooden cornices,. 
 
 75 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 window frames, and bay windows. Mr. 
 Dow's house shown on page 39 is a beauti- 
 ful illustration of this use of detail. 
 
 Brick is one of the most attractive of 
 building materials, provided two things are 
 observed: the brick must be of good color 
 and it must have good texture. The brick 
 used in the early houses of this country were 
 imported from England, and were no doubt 
 imperfect from the point of view of technical 
 composition, but they had and still have 
 more attractiveness than the majority of 
 our modern bricks, judged at least by our 
 modern standards. Their very imperfec- 
 tion of -manufacture gives them a texture and 
 a variety of color which is extremely inter- 
 esting. This is also true of the first bricks 
 that were made in this country, which were 
 crude in color and texture, and therefore 
 wonderful in composition in mass. 
 
 About 1870 the so-called "water pressed," 
 or smooth faced brick came into use. It was 
 smooth, unvarying in color, and usually of 
 a dead salmon-colored red. During the 
 time that this brick was in fashion, brick 
 houses were unattractive, so far as their 
 design depended on the material. Only 
 recently has it become recognized that the 
 variation of color and texture in a brick wall 
 is one of its charms, and we have to-day a 
 variety of bricks which are beautiful in their 
 color and rough texture. The best of these 
 are the so-called tapestry brick. 
 
 The chief mistake in the use of brick is in 
 its misuse in connection with stone. Fre- 
 quently brick is used for the general wall 
 surfaces of the house, and the window sills, 
 heads, trim, and so forth, are made of terra 
 cotta, marble, or lime stone. Mr. Greeley's 
 house at Lexington, Mass., is an example of 
 an excellent brick house which is quiet and 
 
 reposeful. It has an almost complete ab- 
 sence of stone ornamentation. Compare it 
 with the agitated little house shown on this 
 page in which the repose is all lost in the con- 
 fusion created by the stone decoration. 
 
 A house should be one thing or the other; 
 it should be brick or stone. One of these 
 materials should predominate if it is to be 
 restful. Nothing is more vulgar than the 
 emphasis of decorative forms which are 
 totally unrelated. 
 
 The color of bricks is most important, and 
 the old fashioned red bricks are the most satis- 
 factory in .the long run. They have a rough 
 uneven surface which will permit the weather 
 to work its changes agreeably. The worst 
 colors are the deep blues and browns, purples 
 and magentas, because they are cold and un- 
 sympathetic in effect. In combining brick 
 with other materials the color should be care- 
 fully considered. Do not put crimson-red 
 brick with orange colored sand-stone, or sal- 
 mon colored stone. Go back always to the 
 old Colonial work, and notice how simple and 
 how sure is their sense of color in brick work. 
 
 Stone, in spite of its abundance, was not 
 so extensively uSed in Colonial architecture 
 
 An overworked little house. 
 
 76 
 
THE MATERIALS 
 
 William Roger Greeley, Architect. 
 Mr. • Greeley's house at Lexington, Massachusetts, is quiet and restful in design. Note that the entrance vesti- 
 bule is at the ground level. Note also the enclosing wall for the service yard. 
 
 as might be imagined. It was used most in 
 those districts where limestone, which is 
 easily worked, was readily accessible. There 
 remain, however, many excellent stone 
 houses, notably those in the vicinity of 
 Philadelphia. An example of such stone- 
 
 work is shown on page 79. The walls are 
 eighteen inches thick, and because of this, 
 the windows may have very deep reveals. 
 This depth of reveal may be taken advantage 
 of either for the exterior or the interior; in 
 either case, it gives added interest. 
 
 \l1iTcneN- 
 
 
 FTT 
 
 N/ILt. 
 
 TMl F^ 
 
 /ox/^- 
 
 f — 
 I 
 
 
 ■Li VINO- 
 ■loom- 
 
 i*'j:zz' 
 
 'Loom- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 First and second floor plans of Mr. Greeley's house. 
 
 77 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 Savery, Sheetz & Savery, Architects. 
 Mermaid Lane Cottage at St. Martins, Philadelphia, is a fine example of the house built of local stone. 
 
 For the small house, cut stone is usually 
 "too expensive to be considered, though one 
 finds occasionally a combination of cut stone 
 and rubble stone. It is in the simple rubble 
 wall that the small house architecture of this 
 country has found its completest expression. 
 
 There are mistakes to be avoided in the use 
 of stone, as in all other materials. The difR- 
 ■<;ulties commonly met with in this material 
 are first, the manner in which the stone is 
 laid and second, the color of the stone. 
 ■Contrast the beautiful wall shown on page 
 82 with that shown at the bottom of this 
 page. In what does the difference consist? 
 The stones in the wall shown in the first 
 figure are laid horizontally, and rest evenly 
 -on their beds while in the other case the 
 stones form a crazy pattern which is restless 
 -and futile. 
 
 If the color of the stone which is accessible 
 to you is not warm and cheerful, it is better 
 to build your house of some other material. 
 Warm gray limestones tinged with yellow, 
 green and pink are attractive, and grow bet- 
 ter with age. Field stone which has long 
 
 submitted to the influence of sun and storm, 
 often acquires an attractive character. Mar- 
 ble of the whiter kinds in order to be attrac- 
 tive must have also warm pink, yellow or 
 greenish tones in it to be agreeable in color. 
 It should never be bluish in tone. The 
 stones with the deeper colors, such as red and 
 brown sandstone and the dark gray and dark 
 blue limestone, are best avoided. Nothing 
 is more lugubrious than brown sandstone, 
 which, in addition to being ugly, is very 
 friable. 
 
 We have confined ourselves to the con- 
 sideration of shingles, clapboards, stucco, 
 stone and brick, in this discussion. There 
 are, in addition to these, two other building 
 materials used for the exterior of houses 
 
 78 
 
 This shows how not to build a stone wall. 
 
THE MATERIALS 
 
 which are fairly common, concrete and glazed 
 terra cotta. There are still other materials, 
 such as the decorative tiles used in Mexico, 
 the tile being applied directly against the 
 masonry wall. But this material has been 
 little used in this country, and, while its pos- 
 sibilities are many, it falls without the scope 
 of this book to give it more than passing no- 
 tice. 
 
 Of concrete there is this much to be said: 
 Constructively, it is an excellent material, 
 and its color (usually a dull blue, brown or 
 gray), makes little difference provided that 
 it is covered with a warm colored tint. As 
 for the concrete block, however, it may safely 
 be said that it would be difficult to find any- 
 thing much more ugly. If the concrete block 
 house, which looks like a German toy block 
 house, were covered with stycco of a uniform 
 tint, it would be passable. Glazed terra 
 cotta is used generally for .the purpose of 
 imitating stone, and serving in its place, and 
 as such it does very well. Its use in domestic 
 architecture, especially of the smaller type, 
 has been restricted, and so it is only neces- 
 sary to say that what has been said about 
 stone applies to the use of glazed terra cotta. 
 
 Finally we come to a most important mat- 
 ter, the juxtaposition of materials. Ma- 
 terials in themselves are far less frequently 
 abused by the untrained builder than when 
 they are put in intimate association in the 
 same building. That is where most of the 
 mischief enters. If you will look at the good 
 examples shown in this book you will find 
 that most of them are built of one uniform 
 material. It is saddening to note the ten- 
 dency of the amateur home builder to 
 mix unrelated things. The untrained 
 builder seeks for interest in complexity. He 
 multiplies his forms, his colors, and his ma- 
 
 Mellor & Meigs, Architects. 
 Note the stonework in this cottage near Philadelphia. 
 The white paneled woodwork set in the reveal of the '■ 
 doorway is beautifully studied. 
 
 terials. His house is composed of all the 
 motifs he can think of. He uses three or 
 four different materials and, finally, he 
 paints his house two or three different colors. 
 All simplicity is lost. 
 
 The effort of the trained architect is to get 
 back to a simple expression of his idea; to 
 find the interest of his design in the refine- 
 ment of its proportion, and the skilful use 
 of detail developed at the salient places. 
 
 In combining materials, then, it is neces- 
 sary to remember that from its very constitu- 
 tion masonry does not knit with wood. One 
 kind of masonry is fastened to another with 
 
 79 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 cement, whereas wood is fastened to another 
 piece of wood with nails. 
 
 To show what is meant by saying that two 
 materials do not knit, let us take a practical 
 example. Consider the house shown on this 
 page. In this house, which is a clapboarded 
 house painted white, the red brick chimney 
 seems to cut right through the side of the 
 house and gives one the impression that with 
 a slight push from the other side it would 
 fall away. Compare - this with the house 
 shown on page 8l. Here the chimney 
 holds the same relation to the house design, 
 but it is of the same material and color as 
 the house and' consequently it gives the im- 
 pression of belonging to it. 
 
 In the first case, the brick of the chimney 
 and the wood of the house do not knit. 
 Nothing holds them together. From this we 
 can make a generalization. 
 
 With materials differing so completely in 
 character as wood and masonry, we get a 
 feeling of stability when the joint between 
 them is a horizontal one, arid not a vertical 
 one. When wood rests on brick, as for ex- 
 ample the wooden second story wall rests on 
 
 the stone first story wall in the house on page 
 82, we feel that gravity acts to hold thetn 
 together, and that the weight of the wood 
 holds it in its place. 
 
 Of course this is only a matter of theory, 
 because in practice we know that a chimney 
 is stable, whether it is red or white in color, 
 and we know that in house construction the 
 second story wall is n't built with reference 
 to its weight. Nevertheless this theory has < 
 its practical side, which is simply this: the 
 impression which the eye gains in looking at 
 such a building as that shown on page 82 
 is that the chimney does not knit with the 
 house. The eye also decides that it is rea- 
 sonable for different materials to lie hori- 
 zontally upon each o±er, and the eye is the 
 final judge of architecture. 
 
 The relation of wood to stone is an im- 
 portant one. When it is necessary to cope 
 a stone pier, such as a piazza porch, with 
 wood, the stone work should not be rough 
 and angular. The strictures which have' 
 been expressed on the matter of joining wood 
 and masonry apply in a much more limited' 
 sense to the joining of one form of masonry 
 
 TTiis charming little cottage is reminiscent of the old villages of New England. 
 
 80 
 
THE MATERIALS 
 
 >■«-■,—■'«„ * 
 
 
 DeArmond, Ashmead & Bickley, Architects. 
 Note the distinctive simplicity in this house for Miss Mary C. Gibson at Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. 
 
 traction which is very appealing, but the fact 
 that they are not fireproof causes them to be 
 regarded with suspicion by many house build- 
 ers. Then, too, they must be renewed once 
 in so many years, which is expensive to the 
 modern economist. So we turn generally to 
 one of two types of roof covering, slate or 
 tile. 
 
 Slate is permanent and fireproof, but it 
 is usually cold and unsympathetic, in color. 
 The best roof covering is unquestionably flat 
 
 wall with another, simply because they have 
 much in common in their character. 
 
 So far we have considered only the ma- 
 terials used for walls. There remains the im- 
 portant question of the roof and its covering. 
 Of all the roof coverings the most common 
 is shingle, and undoubtedly this is one of 
 the most satisfactory so far as looks are con- 
 cerned. The gray, weather-beaten shingle 
 roofs of some of the old colonial houses, 
 colored by mosses and lichens, have an at- 
 
 First and second floor plans of Miss Gibson's house. 
 81 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 shingle tile. In the old European tile works, 
 as in the old European brick work, the manu- 
 facture was imperfect. The tile was of a 
 rough texture, unglazed and soft baked. 
 The consequence was that while they satisfied 
 the conditions of permanence and fireproof- 
 ing, they also permitted age and weather to 
 beautify them. The roofs resulting were 
 symphonies of color. Their tones varied 
 from light orange to warm browns, and 
 through these colors, the greens and grays of 
 the mosses and the lichens played. 
 
 In this country until recently tiles, like 
 brick, have been too hard, too smooth, too 
 colorless to be interesting. Recently, how- 
 ever, shingle tile has been made with a rough 
 texture and good color. Little can be said 
 
 in approval of the so-called mission style of 
 round tile, such as is seen everywhere on 
 ponderous near-Spanish houses. This tile is 
 always ugly and awkward, and its constant 
 convolutions are very tiresome. 
 
 Of the other types of roof covering, such 
 as asbestos shingle and various patent roof 
 coverings, it is only possible to say that they 
 are practicable. Certainly they are nearly 
 always ugly. Nothing is more sad than an 
 asbestos shingle roof with its dull, monot- 
 onous red or sickly green, and its thin un- 
 broken evenness. It has a surface that one 
 could almost skate on. Some day this sur- 
 face and texture may be improved, and we 
 may have an asbestos shingle of good color, 
 and thickness enough to be interesting. 
 
 Charles Barton Keen, Architect. 
 Note the excellent stone work in this Germantown house at Garden City, New York, 
 
 82 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 WALLS AND THEIR OPENINGS 
 
 AFTER all, what is the wall of a 
 house? First of all it is a protec- 
 tion against the weather; secondly, 
 it is a construction to insure privacy. 
 
 The early builder, long before he came to 
 cope successfully with the problem of roofing 
 his house, realized that his walls insured him 
 against the attacks of the enemy, gave him 
 shelter from the weather and afforded privacy 
 for his family. Then he added a roof to 
 further protect himself, a roof consisting, 
 probably, of skins of animals. In the walls 
 of his rough dwelling he made a few openings 
 — rough windows and doorways to give him 
 light and air. And so came to pass an ele- 
 mentary home. 
 
 This primitive home is a type of dwelling 
 which exercises a fascination upon most of 
 us even to-day. Don't you remember as a 
 child, in reading stories such as "The Swiss 
 Family Robinson," a certain thrill of satis- 
 faction when the adventurous castaways suc- 
 ceeded in establishing a rough shelter for 
 themselves'? Have you not experienced 
 
 83 
 
 while camping in the woods the excitement 
 of improvising such a shelter"? It exercises 
 your ingenuity to obtain and fashion the ma- 
 terial for the rude walls and roof. Far 
 away from villages and shops you must 
 make the best of such material as you can 
 find. Finally, however, the shelter is fin- 
 ished; your few belongings, your stores, and 
 clothes are moved into it ; night falls ; a huge 
 .fire is started and you contemplate the sur- 
 rounding blackness with security and con- 
 tent. To a certain extent you are living 
 as the primitive home-builder lived. After 
 all, what you have done is simply to con- 
 struct some walls with an opening or two in 
 them and a roof overhead. And this was 
 primarily just what the first house-builder 
 constructed. 
 
 In this rude beginning we have the earliest 
 form of domestic architecture, ,and in its es- 
 sentials, the most pretentious dwelling of to- 
 day varies from it only in the interpretation 
 of these elements. In the diminutive build- 
 ing shown on page 84 we see a wall with a 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 rough opening in it, and in the background — 
 a palace. It is obvious that in the most elab- 
 orate architecture the fagade is, in the last 
 analysis, only a wall punctured by openings. 
 If these openings are arranged so as to pro- 
 duce a balanced effect, the fagade has at- 
 tained a large measure of the essence of good 
 design. There are, of course, many other 
 considerations which enter into its design, 
 but the placing of the windows in the walls 
 so as to produce a happy effect, is one of the 
 very first problems. 
 
 To show how the character of a building 
 varies, not only with the arrangement of the 
 windows but with their size, examine the 
 houses shown on page 85. In enlarging the 
 window openings relatively to the wall spaces 
 between them, we lighten the appearance of 
 the building. We let in more air and light. 
 
 It is easy to see that one of the essential 
 considerations in designing your house is to 
 get the window openings just right in size, 
 not too large and not too small. If you 
 make them too small, your house will suggest 
 
 a prison; if too large, it will look like a 
 greenhouse. 
 
 Somehow we associate our ideas of home 
 with a certain snugness, a certain security. 
 It is this quality which makes the difference 
 in character between a public building and 
 a home. Seated around the great fire, with 
 the doors securely locked and the strong walls 
 of our house about us, we get a feeling of 
 what the French call the foyer, — of what the 
 English call home. This feeling vanishes for 
 most of us, if we try to imagine such a scene ■ 
 in a house which is all windows. 
 
 In a word, it is all summed up by saying, as 
 is pointed out in Chapter V, that in archi- 
 tecture the important thing is to express the 
 character of a building. On looking at a 
 building we should be able to say by its ap- 
 pearance to what purposes it is put. We 
 ought to be able to tell a greenhouse from 
 a jail and a jail from a dwelling house. 
 Nothing tends to express the character of the 
 building so much as the treatment of the 
 walls in relation to the openings in them. 
 
 84 
 
WALLS AND THEIR OPENINGS 
 
 In a greenhouse the openings are large; in a 
 jail, small. It is not a question of the kind 
 of window you use ; it is simply a question of 
 fixing the amount of window space rela- 
 tively to the wall space and thus to find a 
 treatment which will express the particular 
 character of a building. 
 
 It is interesting to look a little further into 
 the conditions which determine the difference 
 in the treatment of walls and windows in dif- 
 ferent countries. 
 
 The walls of a house protect the inmates 
 against heat and cold. In addition to the 
 heat and cold which come from the outside 
 atmosphere, the house also receives its light 
 from out of doors. There is protection 
 against cold by the use of artificial heating in 
 the house, but there is no such protection 
 against excessive heat. 
 
 In hot countries where the light is intense, 
 and the heat excessive, the window openings 
 are very small. In extreme northern coun- 
 tries, and in countries where glass is expen- 
 sive, and fuel scarce, the windows are small 
 again. In temperate countries the windows 
 are made as large as possible, to let in much 
 light and air. Thus you see that the matter 
 of the size of the windows in a house has a 
 direct relation to the climatic conditions. 
 
 Of course these climatic conditions tend 
 less and Ifess to influence our house design, 
 because with modern appliances, we are able 
 
 to combat more or less successfully the condi- 
 tions of heat and cold. The point to be 
 made is this: you cannot expect to retain 
 the character of certain types of architecture 
 if you go to work and change the very things 
 which gave them their character. 
 
 It is important that you should not confuse 
 the wall itself with the decoration of the wall. 
 The essential thing to remember in designing 
 a house is that you have a simple wall in 
 which you are going to make simple openings. 
 The use of pilasters, of band courses, of win- 
 dow frames, etc., are all of secondary im- 
 portance. They belong to the decoration of 
 the wall surface, and are not essential. It is 
 important to recognize the beauty of the wall 
 in itself. How pften we have admired the 
 crumbling wall of a deserted house over 
 which the vines and lichens have grown. 
 Time and exposure have given to the old 
 stone color and texture, a richness which 
 comes only with age. 
 
 So much for the theoretical aspects of the 
 wall and window treatment of the house. A 
 very practical matter is the placing of the 
 windows. 
 
 Generally the people who are planning 
 their first house begin with a consideration 
 of the plan arrangement. I have seen dozens 
 of people in the first flush of their pride as 
 landowners, and invariably they seize pencil 
 and paper and begin making squares that are 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 supposed to indicate rooms, and choppy little 
 lines to indicate windows and doorways. 
 Later they perfect these amusing plans and 
 work out room sizes laboriously, with the aid 
 of a simple scale of measurement. But of 
 the exterior they think not at all. Where 
 will these windows and doors find them- 
 selves'? That is a mystery they expect the 
 architect to solve, and woe be unto him if in 
 solving it, he sacrifices their room arrange- 
 ment! I do not decry the making of plans 
 — it is one of the finest pleasures a man can 
 have, — but I do wish his imagination would 
 soar upward to his second story, to his roof. 
 A crude elevation would be quite as much fun 
 
 to work out as a crude plan, and would give 
 him so much more respect for his architect. 
 
 In my magazine experience, I have had 
 hundreds of plans sent in to me with re- 
 quests for criticism. These plans usually are 
 incomplete and hasty, and of course any in- 
 telligent criticism is impossible, because noth- 
 ing has been submitted to show what the 
 house is to look like. 
 
 How is it possible, looking at such a plan, 
 to tell whether the windows are going to work 
 out right, whether the roof is possible, — in a 
 word, whether there is any design to the house 
 at all? 
 
 The correct way to work at such a problem 
 
 Photograph by Frank Cousins. 
 
 The old Henry House at Germantown, Pennsylvania. 
 
 86 
 
 Note the beautifully proportioned windows. 
 
WALLS AND THEIR OPENINGS 
 
 is this : suppose you want a house which has a 
 Hving room, a dining room and a kitchen on 
 the first floor and two or three bedrooms on 
 the second floor. Usually you will have 
 been inspired by some house which you have 
 seen, and liked. Perhaps it did n't altogether 
 suit you, but it gave you a point of departure. 
 Suppose that you want an arrangement in 
 which the living room and dining room are 
 adjacent. As soon as you have drawn that 
 much, you realize that you need windows in 
 these rooms. Where are they to go? Well, 
 the average person just indicates them any- 
 where, without reference to anything. That 
 is wrong. The thing to do is this : when your 
 little sketch is drawn, make a rough study of 
 the elevations as is shown at the bottom of 
 this page. This will tell you where your 
 windows ought to go to look well. Then 
 check on your plan so that they agree in po- 
 sition with the windows on the little sketch 
 elevation. 
 
 This does not mean that the position of 
 the windows is fixed. You have only made 
 one little study, and before arriving at the 
 design you should make a great many such 
 studies, always checking the plan and the 
 elevations. Not only is this true in the con- 
 ditions of the windows, but it applies to the 
 roof and to all the elements that go into your 
 house design. It is the only way to wbrk 
 inteUigently. If you work simply by con- 
 
 sidering the plan arrangement, you will in- 
 variably get some terribly complicated and 
 impossible plan for which no ingenuity could 
 possibly devise a respectable elevation. 
 
 So far in this chapter the window open- 
 ings have been considered in relation to the 
 wall in which they form the openings. I 
 have tried to point out that the essential 
 character of the home lies in its security and 
 shelter, that in order to express this charac- 
 ter ±e openings of the walls must be neither 
 too large or small, and finally I have tried 
 to show how in designing a new house you 
 must constantly consider how the windows 
 which you so easily locate on plan are going 
 to look in elevation. So far nothing has 
 been said about the types and kinds of win- 
 dows and doors which we can use. 
 
 I wonder if ever a woman planned her 
 ideal house without a vision of wide-flung 
 casement windows, ivy framed, with broad 
 inside sills holding orderly pots of red gera- 
 niums, and a bird cage somewhere in the 
 background"? Of course there are no win- 
 dow shades gnd no wire screens in sight. 
 Flies and mosquitoes do not frequent ideal 
 houses. 
 
 Men plan differently. They always think 
 of the sensible side of things — of adequate 
 •light and air and all that. They bring us 
 to earth with practical considerations and ar- 
 guments for and against casements, or double 
 
 ?2>^ ar/^*ri' 
 
 87 - ' 
 
 j/j>jr £^£y^rA>A/'- 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 Edmund B. Gilchrist, Architect. 
 The planting about this house is so successfully done that, although the house is still very young, it has the 
 appearance and charm which age and time give. Note the plain wall surfaces which contrast happily with the 
 planting. 
 
 hung windows, as the case may be. I know 
 one man, however, who always specifies case- 
 ments when he possibly can (of course he is 
 an architect), because he says the text of his 
 career is the image called to his mind by the 
 poets' songs of the magic casement. He sees 
 a small window in a high tower flung wide 
 open, with a fairy princess hanging out. A 
 more definite examination gives him an im- 
 pression of a charming arrangement of small 
 panes of glass. No one, however realistic, 
 could conceive the possibility of poetic 
 imagery lying in a double hung sash con- 
 
 sisting of two huge sheets of plate glass! 
 
 Architects should be also artists, and artists 
 have such visions. If your architect insists 
 on huge sheets of glass, instead of begging 
 you to consider small panes, there is some- 
 thing wrong with him. I know. 
 
 In the chapter on wall openings we con- 
 sidered windows as mere penetrations, but 
 they must also be considered as decorative, or 
 marring, details. From a historical point of 
 view the window in the primitive house was 
 an opening to admit light and air. At first a 
 simple hole in the wall, it finally came to be 
 
WALLS AND THEIR OPENINGS 
 
 glazed, and then the refinements of window 
 design began. 
 
 The early English and French cottages 
 from which we draw so much of the inspira- 
 tion for our American homes were built in a 
 period when glass was expensive. Life was 
 lived out of doors, and when night fell the 
 family went to bed, since artificial light was 
 scarce and expensive. Partly to protect 
 themselves, from the rain and snow, men 
 made the windows of their houses small and 
 few. Look at the typical old cottages shown 
 on pages 5 and 25. Notice how small the 
 windows are as related to the wall surfacesi, 
 and how charming the cottages are, because 
 of the mystery, the intimacy of those quiet 
 walls. 
 
 When glass became less expensive and it 
 became possible to have large windows, a 
 new condition was brought about which still 
 obtains. The modern architect must keep 
 the picturesqueness, the sense of hominess, 
 the sense of privacy which these old cottages 
 gave, but the house must have more windows. 
 People demand windows everywhere ! Each 
 room must have two and often three, and the 
 houses of to-day are designed so as to answer 
 these conditions. Then the layman wonders 
 why our small domestic architecture is not 
 picturesque, like the old English and French 
 cottage architecture. 
 
 The small country houses of England have 
 small windows and large wall spaces. This 
 is also true of Spanish houses, but the 
 Spaniard has the excuse that the sun is so 
 bright and the day so hot that thick walls and 
 small windows give relief. It is curious that 
 the Englishmen should have built in the same 
 way, for the climate is exactly the opposite 
 of that of Spain. Perhaps the price of glass, 
 or the old window and door tax, caused this. 
 
 Drawn hy B.E. MuUer 
 
 In northern Italy you go through a great 
 many small towns where the windows are 
 boarded up, and the Italians have even gone 
 
 89 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 so far as to give the effect of windows by 
 painting them on the outside walls. You 
 may remember having seen in Italy the 
 painted figure of a man leaning against a 
 painted doorway. 
 
 At the beginning of American housebuilding 
 our windows were good, — they had to be good 
 because no one had attempted to apply the 
 principles of vulgarity and ostentation to 
 them. ( Principles is too good a word, — what 
 is its antonym?) Then, about 1880 some 
 malignant fiend decided that windows had 
 been decorative long enough, and introduced 
 into American domestic architecture that 
 hideous atrocity which we know as the plate 
 glass window, the window which makes every 
 house in which it is used pretentious, dismal 
 and uninteresting. For a shop window the 
 big pane of glass has its utility. It is a pub- 
 lic window. It invites us to examine it. 
 We all look into it to see what is exposed. 
 But is not this the very opposite of what we 
 should demand of the windows in our home? 
 The modest retiring aspect of privacy should 
 be the quality which distinguishes a "home," 
 and this is destroyed when the house has win- 
 dows of huge sheets of glass. 
 
 In America we have not had the difficulty 
 of the window tax, and with the introduction 
 of electric light — a desire came over the coun- 
 try to have the maximum of light by day 
 as well as by night, and so plate glass win- 
 dows were introduced because they gave a 
 great deal of light. The fact that they ab- 
 solutely destroyed the beauty of the houses 
 where they -are used, meant nothing to their 
 perpetrators. An epidemic of plate glass 
 made most of our houses as badly open to 
 the gaze of passers-by as if they were shops. 
 
 I remember as a child, with the smugness 
 of childhood, classifying the social desirabil- 
 
 ity of people on the basis of whether or not 
 the windows of their houses were of plate 
 glass. I disdained the small panes, I thought 
 them old fashioned and that only poor peo- 
 ple had them in their houses. 
 
 Many old cottages which the American 
 traveler admires so much when passing 
 through English villages are very lovely — 
 from the outside. The traveler rarely sees 
 them from within, and he does not realize 
 that their defect lies in the ' lack of light 
 and air the interior enjoys. He sees a low, 
 rambling cottage with an overhanging roof 
 of moldly tiles, and a few small casement 
 windows, and much ivy, and he decides his 
 architect must give him an English-style 
 house of exactly this sort. He is sadly dis- 
 appointed when his architect tells him that 
 the interior of the cottage is as black as your 
 hat, and that these visible charms can't be in- 
 troduced into our American houses without 
 sacrificing sunshine and air and comfort. 
 
 But if English houses are defective through 
 a lack of light, many American houses err in 
 the other direction. You must understand 
 that this is not a criticism against well- 
 lighted rooms, but against the disposition of 
 too much window space in one place. Often 
 in American houses the privacy that should 
 belong to the home is destroyed by badly 
 placed windows on or near the street, which 
 enables the outsider to look into the house. 
 
 If we could only make up our mind to the 
 radical idea of broad wall spaces and few 
 windows, we could get along with small win- 
 dow openings. The Boardman Robinson 
 house on page 164 is a fine exposition of 
 this. Here is a long rambling house with 
 large wall spaces broken by small casement 
 windows. It is most adequately lighted and 
 ventilated, and yet it has the picturesque and 
 
 90 
 
WALLS AND THEIR OPENINGS 
 
 Photograph by Frank Cousins. 
 
 This detail of the door and windows of the old Robert Morris House at Philadelphia may well serve as an, 
 inspiring model. The small window panes are charmingly proportioned. 
 
 intimate character of an old-world house. It 
 has great charm, absolute convenience, and 
 all the comforts. 
 
 The window divided into small panes 
 possesses much more decorative interest than 
 the single pane sash. Look at the houses 
 shown on page 109. The first is without in- 
 terest; the second has windows that look like 
 windows, and not like great black holes, 
 or characterless shop windows. 
 
 The defense of the large pane of glass is 
 commonly based on two considerations: — 
 the small pane window is more difficult to 
 clean, and the muntins between the small 
 
 panes obstruct the view. If one were to be- 
 logical he must also do away with the open 
 fire-place because it is responsible for a cer- 
 tain amount of dust in the house, whereas 
 steam or hot water heating is more scientific. 
 And if the muntins obstruct the view, so also 
 do curtains obstruct it. To be logical these 
 should be done away with also. But we are 
 not quite so foolish as that. We keep the 
 open fire-place, because in spite of its ineffi- 
 ciency as a house heater, we like to see the 
 open fire. We decide, that its cheerfulness 
 makes up for its dust. And so with our cur- 
 tains. They do obstruct the view, but the 
 
 91 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 window looks bare without them, and we can 
 see enough. 
 
 With these strictures we pass from the sub- 
 ject of plate glass windows. The offense 
 does n't lie in the fact that the windows are 
 of plate glass, but in the hideousness of an 
 unbroken expanse of glass. Very large 
 studio windows are often filled with large 
 sheets of glass, but they are small in compari- 
 son with the wall opening, and they are, after 
 all, divided by muntins. 
 
 Windows made up of large single paries of 
 glass are uglier than windows subdivided into 
 small panes, but unless the small panes are 
 well managed they can be pretty bad, too. 
 In ordinary house design a window with 
 wooden muntins has panes eight by ten 
 inches. As a rule a rectangular pane is more 
 attractive than a square one, a vertical rec- 
 tangle better than a horizontal one. The 
 simple rectangle of ordinary cottage windows 
 is rnuch more satisfactory than the diamond 
 shape, or any of the fantastic sub-divisions, 
 be the muntins of wood or of lead. 
 
 The leaded diamond panes in the old Eng- 
 lish Tudor houses are very delicate and grace- 
 ful, but these windows were large, and verti- 
 cal in expression. Diamond panes that are 
 squarish and separated by thick wooden mun- 
 tins are very unpleasant. 
 
 Do not have windows of one sort in one 
 part of the house, and windows of an unre- 
 lated family in another. It is possible to use 
 double-hung sash windows and small case- 
 ment windows in the same house with excel- 
 lent effect, if the general character of the 
 windows is the same. 
 
 If your house is two stories and a half high, 
 your windows would ordinarily be larger — 
 that is, taller — on the first floor than on the 
 second. Consequently the panes of the sec- 
 
 ond floor window may be less in height than 
 those in the first, but the width of the panes 
 should be kept and the windows will belong 
 to the same family. 
 
 There are three kinds of windows in com- 
 mon use: the double hung, which is the 
 familiar window, the two halves of which 
 slide up and down ; the casement which opens 
 into the house ; and the casement which opeiis 
 out. 
 
 Of these three types the advantages and 
 disadvantages are pretty much as follows : 
 
 The double hung window is more practical 
 in a very small house where outside shutters 
 and inside screens are required, since its opera- 
 tion does not interfere with either the swing- 
 ing of the shutter or the screen. Its disad- 
 vantages lie in the fact that one can utilize 
 only half the opening. Its advantage lies 
 in that it may be opened solely at the top or 
 bottom. From the point of view of good 
 looks it is invariably the least attractive of 
 the three types. 
 
 The casement opening in is generally less 
 weather proof than the double hung window, 
 or the casement opening out. It also con- 
 sumes part of the room space which would 
 otherwise be useable, since it has to swing 
 into the room. Its advantages lie in the 
 fact that it can be used easily and it gives 
 you the full value of the window opening. 
 
 The casement opening put is weather proof 
 and looks well open or shut. Its disadvan- 
 tages lie in the fact that it is less easily man- 
 aged from inside of the house than is either 
 the casement opening from the inside or the 
 double hung window. It is difficult to ar- 
 range outside shutters in connection with it, 
 and in summer the problem of screens be- 
 comes an abomination. There are now, how- 
 ever, contrivances that make it possible to 
 
 92 
 
WALLS AND THEIR OPENINGS 
 
 ~^i^ 
 
 Designed by H. T. Lindeberg. Albro & Lindeberg, Architects. 
 
 This house presents interesting and excellent detail throughout. It will repay the most careful study. 
 
 open the windows by using a small lever that 
 runs through the lower part of the screen. 
 
 Doubtless as we become more appre- 
 ciative of the beauty of the casement "flung 
 wide," our American ingenuity will devise 
 still better pechanical means for manipulat- 
 ing the shutters and screens. Casements 
 must ordinarily be smaller than double-hung 
 windows, because they are supported by their 
 hinges. It will take a group of casements to 
 admit the same light as two or three ordinary 
 windows, but the ordinary windows give too 
 much light usually — else why do people cur- 
 tain them so resolutely? 
 
 Study the old cottage architecture of Eng- 
 
 land and France and notice how simple the 
 forms of the windows are. In the Colonial 
 work, it is true, you find examples of semi- 
 circular and elliptical arched windows, and 
 occasionally in gambrel roof houses you find 
 quarter circle windows. But the great ma- 
 jority of windows are plain, straightaway, 
 rectangular openings, with little effort to elab- 
 orate. It is always well to avoid triangu- 
 lar, hexagonal and oval windows. Especially 
 unpleasant in modern work is the recurrent 
 oval window with its elongated key stones, in- 
 variably made of wood. Many otherwise 
 good houses are spoiled by this silly little oval 
 window that is inserted in the wall without 
 
 93 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 Thyme or reason. It may light a closet or a 
 dark corner of a stairway, but surely the 
 architect could devise some better opening. 
 Too often the oval window has not even this 
 excuse : it is merely a strange expression of a 
 misguided ambition to decorate; to beautify. 
 Almost always it goes with another dreadful 
 sin against good taste — colored glass. 
 
 There is a general superstition that the stair 
 hall window should be filled with colored 
 glass, and this idea has ruined many stair 
 halls that would otherwise be good looking. 
 We all remember the houses that have come 
 to us from the dreadful period of the seven- 
 ties and eighties, when blue and green and 
 orange and purple glass was used with 
 terrible effect. If you feel you must have 
 ;stained glass in your house, study the subject 
 thoroughly, and then use it sparingly. Of 
 ■course if you are a connoisseur in glass, that 
 is different. You will understand what 
 istained glass is. Otherwise, let your glass be 
 ■of good quality, transparent. Cheap stained 
 ;glass is a sure way to vulgarize the appear- 
 ance of any house. It is a two edged sword : 
 it betrays you to the world outside, and it is 
 always with you inside your house. Shun it. 
 
 There are accidental effects that are worth 
 recording, while we are discussing colored 
 glass. Any one who has visited Boston re- 
 members those quaint old houses on Beacon 
 Hill with their windows filled with panes of 
 violet glass. This is one of the delightful 
 things that came by accident, for the violet 
 tones came from some chemical action in the 
 .glass. There are dozens of other reasons for 
 it, one hears a new one on every side ! One 
 theory is that these Simon-pure Bostonians 
 conceived the idea of living in a violet light 
 for ethical reasons. Another theory is based 
 -on the hygienic value of violet rays. But the 
 
 truth probably is that the glass started out in- 
 nocently as plain glass, and Nature, the baf- 
 fling chemist, did the rest. It is safe to say, 
 however, that a man who deliberately 
 planned to fill his sashes with panes of violet 
 glass would make an awful mess of it. 
 
 The bay window and the dormer window 
 are special types which merit special atten- 
 tion. Both these occur in a great variety of 
 forms, and both are hideously designed in the 
 ordinary house built by a contractor. The 
 common mistake is to make the bay window 
 too heavy. A bay window should always 
 show some kind of support under it. If the 
 walls of the bay window cannot run to the 
 ground, as shown on page 155, then it should 
 be supported by brackets, or a series of mold- 
 ings. 
 
 As for dormer windows, the great error lies 
 in making them too monstrous. Nothing 
 takes away from the serenity of a house so 
 much as great dormer windows, too big to be 
 dormers, and too small to be gables. 
 
 The dormers not only are frequently too 
 large but they are nearly always badly de- 
 signed. Compare the dormer of the house 
 shown on page 36 with that shown on page 
 37. Note in the latter house how heavy are 
 the pediments crowning the dormers, and 
 
 94 
 
 What a roof ought not to look like. 
 
WALLS AND THEIR OPENINGS 
 
 note further how much narrower in the 
 dormers shown on Mr. Rantoul's house is 
 the space on either side of the window sash. 
 These dormers are beautifully proportioned. 
 In the ordinary dormer a common fault is 
 seen in the too great projection of the roof 
 of the dormer. Look at the example shown 
 on page 118. What could be more hideous 
 than the great flaring overhang of the dormer 
 roof? Compare these with the modest dor- 
 mers of the house shown on page 119. Still 
 another distressing use of dormers lies in 
 overdoing the number of them. The dor- 
 mer windows in the house shown on page 94 
 destroy absolutely all sense of restful ness 
 and give the house a very unhappy and agi- 
 tated appearance. 
 
 A word of caution should be given: it is 
 well to finish the side walls of the dormer 
 window in the same material as the roof. 
 Thus, if your roof is shingle, let the shin- 
 gles be carried around on the side walls of 
 the dormer. This makes them more incon- 
 spicuous and knits them to the roof. 
 
 The grouping of windows is done most 
 successfully in the English country house 
 work, and well repays study. One thing 
 that has to be remembered, however, is that 
 a group of windows makes the application of 
 outside shutters impossible, unless the win- 
 dows are spaced so far apart that they lose 
 the feeling of being grouped, — and shutters 
 are very attractive additions to the house. 
 
 In placing the windows in relation to the 
 fl9or and ceiling, remember that the upper 
 part of the window lights the room, and that 
 the nearer it is to the ceiling the lighter the 
 room will be. As a general rule the head of 
 the window should come to within about 
 eight inches of the ceiling, and the sill within 
 two feet four inches of the floor. This ap- 
 
 plies, of course, to the usual windows. Spe- 
 cial windows may be high from the floor. 
 
 Shutters have much to do with the attrac- 
 tive appearance of the house. The most 
 charming ones are the old, faded blue-green 
 ones. The old painters did not achieve this 
 delightful color deliberately, they used a 
 green paint in which the yellow was weaker 
 than the blue. The yellow faded out, 
 gradually, leaving much of the more lasting 
 blue, and so those delicious blue-green tones 
 came to pass. Recently paint manufacturers 
 have had the good sense to copy this acci- 
 dental color with excellent results. Gray, 
 white, French green, and sometimes even 
 blue shutters are used with interesting color 
 effect nowadays. 
 
 In most of the newer country houses the 
 downstairs windows are grouped to give 
 greater light, and no shutters are used, but 
 the upstairs windows are placed at well 
 studied intervals, with wide-spread shutters 
 that help balance the grouped windows be- 
 low. One seldom sees solid shutters on the 
 ground floor, nowadays, but occasionally in 
 clapboard houses one sees batten or solid 
 shutters on the first story, and slat shutters 
 on the second story. 
 
 It is much better to stick to shutters of one 
 type for the whole house. Undoubtedly the 
 heavy, solid old shutters, with their graceful 
 panelings, were most attractive to the eye. 
 But for real use they are a nuisance ! The 
 happy compromise is the shutter that has a 
 panel at the top in which a little tree, or a 
 crescent, or a bird, or what-not has been cut, 
 and the lower two-thirds slatted. These 
 shutters admit sufficient light and air, and 
 are very attractive folded back against the 
 house walls. They give the house an old 
 fashioned home-like character. 
 
 95 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 "An old fashioned character." Does it 
 seem reactionary, this praise of the old fash- 
 ioned? The significance of "home" de- 
 pends upon its long tradition; on the idea 
 of a place of well established security and 
 peace. It takes time for such a tradition to 
 
 grow. If you are to build a new house let 
 it be so designed that you will catch in an- 
 ticipation something of what time will bring. 
 You can achieve a suggestion of this char- 
 acter if you consider carefully the design of 
 your windows. 
 
 An old farmhouse in Normandy. 
 
 96 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 THE CONSIDERATION OF THE ROOF 
 
 THE average untrained home builder 
 is inconsiderate of his walls and win- 
 dows, but he is positively indifferent 
 to the designing of the roof of his house. It 
 seems to be a failing of untrained architects, 
 and all carpenters, as well as of the home 
 builder. One of the most famous professors 
 at the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris had the 
 habit of saying, when he was called upon to 
 criticize a student's plan, "How are you going 
 to roof it?" He realized that the student 
 had n't thought of how he was going to roof 
 it, and that in all probability it was impossi- 
 ble to roof the proposed building reasonably. 
 
 It is very easy to draw a pleasing floor 
 plan, given plenty of pencils and paper, but 
 when you try to visualize a house built up- 
 ward from these floor plans you find yourself 
 hopelessly involved. You can't decide how 
 the rooms on the second floor will find them- 
 selves, and the roof disappears into the clouds. 
 You can't even imagine it, except as a poetic, 
 friendly covering that will somehow fit itself 
 comfortably over'your house. 
 
 The trouble is, it won't. The trained 
 
 architect has a hard enough time with it, 
 and the untrained builder finds opportunity 
 for a thousand mistakes in solving the prob- 
 lem. 
 
 How, then, are you to design your roof? 
 The architect sighs in despair as he tries to 
 answer you. If you asked : How do you go 
 to work to desigp your windows or your 
 facade, or your chimneys, or what not, his 
 sigh would be as heartfelt. How can you 
 separate the designing of one part of a house 
 from that of the others'? You can't! He 
 can't! You have to grope and grope until 
 you find your vague dream-house gaining 
 form. Then the form grows more definite 
 and becomes style, and when you have your 
 general style decided, the details of roof and 
 windows and chimneys suggest themselves, 
 little by little. 
 
 One thing you are sure of: you must have 
 a roof, and it must be a good one. Who of 
 us has n't said : "As long as we have a roof 
 over our heads — " The very spirit of hos- 
 pitality hangs upon the proper consideration 
 of the rooftree. Your roof and your hearth 
 
 97 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 must be unfailing in giving you shelter and 
 warmth, if you would make the most of your 
 house. 
 
 The two types of roof in general use are 
 the flat roof and the roof composed of slant- 
 ing surfaces. It is with the varieties of the 
 latter that we who build small houses are 
 particularly concerned. We seldom use flat 
 roofs, for ours is a country of rain and snow. 
 We associate round roofs with Eastern tem- 
 ples and Eskimo huts. But everywhere we 
 see three types of sloping roof: the gambrel, 
 the gable, and the hip. Almost all our houses 
 are roofed with these types, or combinations 
 of them. Illustrations of each type are 
 shown on pages l6, 19 and 31 respectively. 
 
 It seems easy, given only three types of 
 roofs, to select one and play safe, but just as 
 there are only a few kinds of windows and a 
 thousand vicious ways of misplacing them, 
 so there are so many mistaken ways of han- 
 dling your roof that you have good reason to 
 beware the seeming simplicity of "putting in 
 your thumb and picking out a plum" — be it 
 gable, gambrel or hip. You can design any 
 one of them so that it looks like a pasteboard 
 crown or a heavy load of tile or shingles. 
 
 Go out into your neighborhood and see if 
 
 you can't tell a good roof from a bad one. 
 Study first the little good and bad sketches on 
 this page, and then exercise your powers of 
 criticism. It is good for you and it won't 
 hurt your neighbors. 
 
 The three houses on this page all have 
 gambrel roofs. Mr. Jones's roof is bad 
 because its lines are flattened out and 
 weak. Mr. Brown's roof is a hundred times 
 worse, because it is spread over a three-story 
 house, and the eaves of a gambrel roof are 
 best never more than one story from the 
 ground. Mr. Green's delightful little house, 
 on the contrary, has a pleasantly proportioned 
 roof of logical lines. 
 
 The slope of your roof depends on the 
 style of your house, the arrangement of your 
 plan, the climate, and many other such condi- 
 tions. 
 
 The gable roof lends itself to the necessities 
 of houses built in climates where snow is 
 plentiful. It is the roof most used, and it is 
 the easiest of the three types to construct. 
 It has its difficulties, however. You have to 
 be careful that it does not project too far 
 over the face of the gable wall. The roof 
 that extends too far looks like cardboard. 
 If it hugs the wall and is finished with a 
 
 At the left is Mr. Jones's House; at the center Mr. Brown's; at the right Mr. Green's. The roof lines 
 latter are designed by the method shown on page 102. 
 
 98 
 
 of the 
 
THE CONSIDERATION OF THE ROOF 
 
 
 
 i^N^i 
 
 Joy Wheeler Dow, Architect. 
 Mr. Dow's house at Summit, New Jersey, is full of unusual detail. Note the leaded glass windows, the plain, 
 steep roof, the strong contrast between the stained woodwork and the stucco walls. 
 
 simple molding, the effect is usually happy. 
 Compare the projections of the roofs of the 
 houses shown on this page. One looks like 
 a slipshod arrangement of pasteboard. The 
 other roof fits its house perfectly, and the 
 narrow molding is as clean-cut as if it had 
 been modeled by a practised sculptor. 
 
 I don't think, however, that any photo- 
 graph or drawing could give adequately the 
 bad impression which a great flaring roof 
 gives in reality. There is something so 
 heavy and brutal and common about such a 
 roof, that one must get the impression of the 
 actual house as it exists in three dimensions 
 to appreciate the gravity of this fault. 
 
 As for the pitch of the roof, it is better 
 to make the slope somewhat over forty-five 
 
 degrees with the horizon, than to have 
 it just at forty-five. For houses in the Eng- 
 glish style generally a steep-pitched roof 
 such as is shown in Mr. Dow's house above 
 is most in character. From a practical point 
 of view it is rarely safe to risk a roof with a 
 
 99 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 s 
 
 3t 
 
 5??i 
 
 -•Xros 
 
 ^3- 
 
 FtF 
 
 ttTI 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 ji 
 
 v 
 
 pitch less than twenty-five degrees, if it is to 
 withstand rain and snow. 
 
 There are four common ways in which 
 the gable roof is terminated at the gable wall. 
 These are shown on this page. The first 
 termination of the gable is common in Eng- 
 lish cottages, and is usually used on a house 
 with stucco walls. The second is frequently 
 used with half timber construction, and the 
 third with stone or brick walls. The gable 
 termination shown at the right at the bot- 
 tom of the page is a special problem, and 
 will be considered in Chapter XIII. 
 
 It seems dry, doesn't it, to spend much 
 time on small matters like moldings? Ac- 
 tually, although it may be difficult to be- 
 lieve, it is the lack of understanding of such 
 details that is responsible for so much bad 
 
 architecture. Let us, as patiently as we can, 
 consider each of these gable terminations in 
 order. So far as (A) is concerned, the most 
 reprehensible error to which it is liable has 
 already been noted in the preceding page. 
 It consists in giving the roof too great a pro- 
 jection over the roof of the wall. As the 
 drawing shows, the projection under ordi- 
 nary circumstances should not be more than 
 three inches. 
 
 The type of gable finish (B) is called the 
 barge board termination. The barge board 
 is the large flat board which runs parallel 
 to the roof, and projects from the wall. It 
 is supported by brackets. In much of the 
 English and French construction the barge 
 board is highly ornamented, but this decora-^ 
 tion is not essential. If this type of termi- 
 
 100 
 
THE CONSIDERATION OF THE ROOF 
 
 nation is to be used, it is important to re- 
 member three things : — do not let your barge 
 board project too far from the face of the 
 gable; do not make it too large, and do not 
 fail to support it by brackets. 
 
 There is little that needs be said here con- 
 cerning the third type of termination (C). 
 It is one of the most attractive of all gable 
 terminations, and is used extensively in brick 
 colonial architecture, and in English stone 
 construction. The roof is contained between 
 the two gable ends, and shows only at the 
 eaves. In using this gable termination the 
 
 The barge board in this house is brutally large. Com- 
 pare it with the barge board shown on page 45. 
 
 lines of the coping should always be simple. 
 Compare the simple and effective coping of 
 the houses on pages 2 1 and 88 with the hor- 
 rid accentuated coping of the house on page 
 76. 
 
 Finally we come to the last type (D). It 
 is the classic pediment, and is common in the 
 larger Colonial work. In this case the pro- 
 jection from the face of the gable is the 
 same as the projection at the eaves. For 
 the ordinary gable roof the projection of the 
 roof at the eaves must be greater than at 
 the face of the gable — and amounts usually 
 to about twenty inches. But the^rules for 
 the classic pediment and cornice are much 
 more rigid. 
 
 You remember, I am sure, some old Colo- 
 nial or Georgian courthouse with its impos- 
 ing front of huge, white-painted columns. 
 The columns, without doubt, remain clearly 
 in your mind. As a child, I remember won- 
 dering how anything in the world could be 
 so big as the columns of just such an old 
 courthouse. I don't think I ever tried to 
 look to see what was above the columns. 
 Of course, I knew the building had a roof, — 
 but how that roof ended above the columns 
 I never stopped to notice. And my attitude 
 was n't so different from that of grown-ups. 
 At any rate, it is safe to say that over the 
 columns was a cornice and pediment, — in 
 fact, the pediment looked something like 
 (D) on page 100. Of course, the courthouse 
 with the columns required a complete cornice 
 and pediment to conform to the classic mod- 
 els from which it is copied. In the case 
 of small houses, such as that shown on page 
 86, where no columns are used, it is custom- 
 ary to modify the cornice and to omit the 
 architrave and sometimes the frieze, and 
 when the corner of the house is reached, only 
 the upper moldings are continued up the edge 
 of the gable. Notwithstanding this modifi- 
 cation, the moldings should have the charac- 
 ter of the classic moldings. To know how 
 to use these moldings, you must understand 
 something of the classic tradition. What 
 that tradition is we shall take up when we 
 come to the chapter on columns. 
 
 We now come to the gambrel roof. In 
 general, what has been said regarding the 
 gable roof applies to this also. It is best to 
 have only a slight projection at the gambrel 
 end of the building and a much larger over- 
 hang at the eaves. In the best Colonial work 
 this rule always obtains. 
 
 A very special difficulty, however, con- 
 
 101 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 fronts the designer of the gambrel roof. On 
 page 98 I pointed out some of the character- 
 istic errors to which the gambrel roof is liable. 
 It is evident that the chief trouble lies in 
 the determination of the slope of the roof 
 surfaces. They must not be too steep or too 
 flat. 
 
 We very often see unpleasant gambrel 
 roofs, such as that at the top of this page. 
 How shall we go about to make a better one "? 
 There is a general rule which will be found 
 to give good results, for average domestic 
 work. 
 
 In the figure at the bottom of this page let 
 AB represent half the width of the house. 
 Let us suppose the width to be 25 feet, which 
 is that of many small houses. Let B be the 
 edge of the outer molding of the cornice 
 which projects 20 inches from the wall face. 
 
 With the point A as a center, strike the 
 arc of a circle as shown in the little diagram. 
 Draw the top line of the roof tangent to the 
 vcircle at an angle of thirty degrees with the 
 horizontal line. Then join the tip of the 
 eaves with this point of tangency as shown. 
 To make. the roof graceful it is well to have 
 the lower line slightly curved at the eaves. 
 
 This shows a method for designing a gambrel roof. 
 
 An example of a badly designed gambrel roof. Note 
 the awkward projection of the roof beyond the face of the 
 walls. 
 
 Now you have to test this roof in relation 
 with the floor lines, especially the second 
 floor line, to determine if the necessary dor- 
 mer windows will take their right places. 
 By a series of simple experiments you will 
 arrive at a good roof slope. 
 
 In the house shown at the top of this page 
 the roof lines are stiff and harsh. The 
 pleasant sweep of the roof at the eaves, so 
 familiar in the old houses, is absent. The 
 old Dutch Colonial roof is. worthy of great 
 commendation, but it is easy to lose all the 
 charm of this roof by bad lines. 
 
 The third type is the hip roof. It is called 
 "hip" because of the rafters which run up 
 diagonally from each corner to meet the 
 ridge, and into which the other rafters are 
 - framed. With this roof there is only one 
 mistake to watch for — the overhang of the 
 eaves. If the overhang is too great, the roof 
 will look like grandfather's hat on a small 
 boy. It is usually a good plan to bring the 
 eaves down as near as possible to the heads 
 of the windows. This gives an impression 
 of lowness, and low houses usually have 
 much greater charm than high ones. 
 
 So far in this chapter the difficulties which 
 are peculiar to the design of the gable, the 
 02 
 
THE CONSIDERATION OF THE ROOF 
 
 gambrel and the hip roof have been con- 
 sidered. 
 
 These three types of roof are distinct, and 
 in building any house it is well to avoid 
 combining more than two of them. It is 
 usually best to use one type. Let your roofs, 
 as much as possible, belong to the same 
 family. Thus, if your main house is roofed 
 with a gable and you have a projecting wing, 
 do not use a gambrel roof on it. Do not 
 make a salad of your house top. As a rule 
 the roofs which go together are the gable 
 and hip roof, and the gambrel and hip roof. 
 Do not mix the gable and gambrel. It has 
 been done, but it is rarely satisfactory. 
 
 It is almost impossible to get much length 
 for roof line in a small house, but wherever 
 it is possible it is to be strongly recom- 
 mended. A little cottage one room deep 
 and one story high that is placed parallel 
 with the village street is more pleasing than 
 a very much finer house that shows you only 
 its narrow end. Often one gets a finer effect 
 of length of line in a small cabin that sits 
 low on the ground than in a house that has 
 
 This house, with the exception of its roof, is like- that 
 , shown at the top of the page. Note the too great over- 
 hang of the roof. 
 
 Here the roof fits the house, and the relation of the 
 eaves of the roof to the second story windows is good. 
 
 worked hard for beauty. Look at the long 
 restful lines of the house shown on page 65 
 and compare it with the agitated roof lines 
 of the houses shown on page 64. Nothing 
 could be more restless or unprepossessing 
 than these, and yet they are. no worse than 
 other houses one sees every day. 
 
 When your house is small, try all the 
 harder to get your roof simple. _ Sometimes 
 this is achieved by the combining of two 
 small houses into one, so as to get an expres- 
 sion of length, as is shown on pages 132 and 
 133. Let your roof be as undisturbed as 
 possible. 
 
 Look again at "Fairacres," on page 49. 
 The roof has one long, unbroken ridge. 
 "But," you say, "this is a huge house; how 
 are you going to get a long ridge-line with 
 a small house, the plan of which is square?" 
 Well, if your plan is square, do not roof it 
 with a hip roof; if possible, use a gable. 
 Better advice is this; — Try^to design your 
 house so it will not be perfectly square in 
 plan. A pyramidical roof on a small house 
 is always unpleasant; — such a house is that 
 shown on the bottom of page 118. One wdy 
 out of the difficulty is the twin house scheme 
 
 103 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 already spoken of in the preceding paragraph. 
 After all, for all you can tell by looking at it, 
 "Fairacres" might be such a twin or triplicate 
 house. 
 
 Avoid dormers which are so big that they 
 destroy the design of the roof like that shown 
 
 Another illustration of bad roof lines. If the dormer 
 has to be so big, why try to have a gambrel roof? 
 
 on this page, where in order to gain room 
 for the second floor the dormer is made so 
 large that only two thin ribbons of the 
 gambrel roof are left. In a case like this, 
 it would have been better to give up the 
 gambrel roof, and make a simple, two story 
 and a half house. A recent atrocity is the 
 double dormer, — one dormer on top of the 
 other. If it were carried a little bit further 
 with still another dormer on top of the sec- 
 ond one, the roof would look like a wedding 
 cake, or a Chinese pagoda. 
 
 So much for the design of your roof. 
 The consideration of the material is also im- 
 portant. What is the roof to be made of 
 — shingles, or tiles, or slate, or thatch? 
 Ahd what is its color to be? 
 
 Lately there has been an effort to shingle 
 roofs in curving lines, imitating thatch. 
 Thatch is a charming miracle of nature and 
 of architecture that should' n't be imitated, as 
 a matter of fact. But occasionally a mas- 
 
 104 
 
 terly architect comes along and accomplishes 
 a wonderful effect. Mr. Harrie T. Linde- 
 berg has accomplished some really satisfac- 
 tory roofs with thatch-like curves. One 
 of these is shown on page 105. Usually, 
 the thatch imitations are very distressing, 
 and at best the woven shingle roof invites 
 criticism on the ground that it is an imita- 
 tion. 
 
 The everyday roof is made of shingles, 
 left to weather a soft gray. Certainly for 
 average wooden houses this is the most suc- 
 cessful treatment, and the least expensive. 
 The only sensible variation of color is to 
 stain the shingles wood-brown, or soft green. 
 Brown shingles seem to belong to certain 
 bungalows, and green shingles are very pleas- 
 ant on the little white cottages that sweeten 
 the country landscape. But the eccentric 
 roof is always to be avoided : red shingles are 
 somehow always terrible, whereas red tiles 
 are almost always pleasant. 
 
 The temptation of gay-colored roofs is 
 hard to resist. I have seen one blue roof 
 that gave me great pleasure, and the blue- 
 green copper roof of Mr. Herter's house at 
 East Hampton, Long Island, is a rare sight, 
 but the best roof for all neighborhoods is 
 the uneven red one of flat tiles. When we 
 planned a little house for Forest Hills Gar- 
 dens, I had so long dreamed of a white and 
 green house, with green tiles on the roof, 
 and a whitewashed chimney with green 
 stripes around its top, and green lattices, 
 that it was difficult to yield to restrictions. 
 But to all my arguments that it would be 
 cool, and fresh, and just as fireproof as if 
 it were red all over — the architects said me 
 nay. All the houses must have red roofs, to 
 pull the place together. I recognize their 
 wisdom when I go through other towns, with 
 
THE CONSIDERATION OF THE ROOF 
 
 Designed by H. T. Lindeberg. - Albro & Lindeberg, Architects. 
 
 ■ Nothing could be more charming than this glimpse through the shrubbery showing the excellently designed lat- 
 tice. Note the way in which the shingles are woven. 
 
 vari-colored roofs spread out like a crazy 
 quilt. 
 
 Our roofs belong to our communities as 
 well as to ourselves, and it is only fair to 
 make the best of them. 
 
 Yes, we have "to make the best" of our 
 roof. Do you know that every roof repre- 
 sents a conflict? We try to cover our house 
 simply, we know that a simple roof costs 
 less and looks better than a complicated one, 
 but we also wish to utilize the space under 
 the roof. We begrudge the space lost by the 
 
 slanting surfaces. If you cannot afford to 
 use the space under your roof for an attic, 
 try to choose a type of plan and roof 
 which will permit you to utilize the space 
 without spoiling the exterior appearance of 
 your roof. I remember a house in which 
 the roof was so arranged that the attic 
 was n't quite high enough to stand up in with- 
 out bumping one's head. Yet it was so 
 nearly practicable that for twenty years, the 
 Occupants bumped their heads in the attempt 
 to utilize it. Finally they burst through the 
 
 105 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 roof with huge dormers, — with the result son why your roof should not be a practical as 
 that the appearance of the exterior of the well as a beautiful one, if you take time to 
 house suffered appallingly. There is no rea- think it out. But don't be too practical. 
 
 Wilson Eyre, Architect. 
 Nearly all modern half-timber houses are built with a machlne-lilie finish in the half-timber ' worlc. Note in 
 this drawmg of the house at Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, the irregular, hand-hewn character of the timber. The 
 charm of half-timber work lies largely in this rough suggestion of strength. 
 
 106 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 DETAILS OF SMALL HOUSE DESIGN 
 
 TO refresh your memory turn back to 
 page 44. You will see that we 
 planned to discuss the elements 
 which enter invariably into the design of a 
 house. Whatever kind of house you have it 
 must have some kind of setting or entourage ; 
 it must be one color or another; it must be 
 built of some material and it must have walls 
 with openings in them and a.rpof overhead. 
 These are the important elements which we 
 have dealt with. In addition to these there 
 are certain other things to consider. For 
 example, your house usually has chimneys 
 which are visible; it usually has leaders for 
 the rain water ; it sometimes has balconies ; it 
 always has at least one exterior door. More- 
 over, columns may be used in its design, and 
 it very likely has a porch. 
 
 After all, it is the consideration of the 
 various details which makes or mars your 
 house. We have seen in the preceding chap- 
 ters on the walls and windows and the 
 roof that bad design consists largely in the 
 way in which the window and the roof were 
 treated in detail. A badly designed dormer 
 window, a hideous porch, an ugly chimney, 
 will go far to destroy any merit your house 
 
 may otherwise have. It is these smaller 
 things which are sometimes the most vicious. 
 
 I remember an old stable I used to pass 
 on my way to school. It was an unpre- 
 tentious affair; father low lying and hidden 
 by trees ; but I never paid any particular at- 
 tention to the modesty of its retreat. Over 
 the large door was carved a sunburst. Do 
 you know what a sunburst is'? It is a piece 
 of ornament representing the rays of the sun 
 and usually semi-circular in shape. This 
 one in particular had a'yellow center, from 
 which orange rays flashed out over a blue 
 background. It sounds frightful, does n't 
 it? Yet I used to look at it with equa- 
 nimity. In passing the stable I always 
 looked at the sunburst and wondered in a dull 
 way how such things were born. I know 
 now. And I know this one small detail in 
 the design of that old stable completely 
 counteracted the charm which the building 
 otherwise had. 
 
 One does n't need to take so violent an 
 example as a sunburst, however, to make the 
 point clear that it is the character of the 
 detail of your house which largely makes or 
 breaks it. Look at the old house shown on 
 
 107 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 The sunlit porch of this old house at Mt. Vernon, New York, is very inviting. 
 
 this page. It was built almost one hun- 
 ■dred and fifty years ago. It began simply. 
 Probably at first it had neither porch nor 
 ■dormers. The general proportions of the 
 house were excellent. The window open- 
 ings in the front wall were well disposed, and 
 the roof was terminated at its gable end with 
 the modest molding so commonly used in 
 the early Colonial work. Then the house 
 
 began to submit to a number of "improve- 
 ments." A porch was added. The posts of 
 this porch are very simple; their designer, 
 moreover, had sentiment enough to make the 
 cornice over the post small and in keeping" 
 with the unpretentious gable termination. 
 So far so good. The appearance of the 
 house was doubtless benefited by the addi- 
 tion of the porch. Then the dormers were 
 
 •Corf. l^BD-P oILcH- 
 
 The first, and second floor plans of the Mt. Vernon bouse. Note that the second floor plan is modified and that 
 'three dormers are shown instead of four. 
 
 108 
 
DETAILS OF SMALL HOUSE DESIGN 
 
 added — and half of the charm of the 
 old house was destroyed. Why? Because 
 there ought to be no dormers'? Certainly 
 not. But because the dormers are too big, 
 because there are too many of them and be- 
 cause they are awkward in design. Com- 
 pare for instance their large pediments and 
 heavy moldings with the charming and deli- 
 cate cornice over the posts. This is what I 
 mean by saying that it is detail that counts. 
 I am going to press this matter further. 
 The old Mount Vernon house started out 
 well and was damaged subsequently. Sup- 
 pose, on the other hand, we start out badly. 
 Suppose we have a house like that shown at 
 the bottom of this page. The drawing was 
 made from a photograph of an actual house. 
 What is wrong with it? Compare it with 
 the house at the top of the page. The shape 
 of the' two houses is the same, they have the 
 same number of windows, the roofs are alike, 
 and yet the upper house is attractive, and 
 the lower one disagreeable. What is the rea- 
 son? Look a little closer and you will no- 
 
 Modern American Domestic architecture, — alas! 
 
 What the house below might have looked like 'if its 
 designer had known more about architecture. 
 
 tice that instead of a heavy round tile roof 
 with fantastic brackets at the eaves, the- 
 upper house shows a simple flat tile, or shiri-^' 
 gle roof with simple moldings at the eaves/. 
 Instead of the eaves being high above the 
 heads of the second floor windows, they are 
 brought close to them. Instead of the huge 
 awkward dormer windows in the roof, 
 smaller ones have been substituted. Instead 
 of uninteresting single panes of glass, the 
 window sash is divided into small panes. 
 Instead of a'pretentious and more or less use- 
 less porch, a "simple hood has been placed 
 over the entrance door. Instead of the house 
 being raised high out of the ground, a ter- 
 race has been used to bring the house close 
 to the ground, giving the pleasing impression 
 of the house growing out of the ground, and 
 therefore belonging to the landscape and not 
 looking like a hat-box placed on the floor. 
 
 So you see there is much in the way we de- 
 sign these various details. 
 
 Before taking up the matter of doors, col- 
 umns and porches, which are, after the va- 
 rious elements already considered in the- 
 previous chapters, the most important, mat- 
 
 109 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 ters in house design, I am going to touch 
 on two or three others of lesser importance. 
 First of these is the chimney. 
 
 In the older cottages of England the chim- 
 ney was usually made much of. Often it 
 took huge and uncouth shapes, but usually 
 this resulted from the fact that many and 
 large fireplaces had to be accommodated. 
 However that may be, when the colonists set- 
 tled this country they brought with them 
 the tradition of the huge chimney. It was 
 customary in the old New England houses to 
 place the chimney in the middle of the house, 
 — and then build a house around it. In this 
 way the occupants of the house were able to 
 utilize the chimney for as many as four 
 fireplaces, and thus keep the house warm. 
 It is not until comparatively late that the 
 chimney became a decorative feature. When 
 the Colonial brick house developed, the chim- 
 neys were often arranged at the end of the 
 house, in the manner shown on the Henry 
 house on page 2 1 . This treatment is typical 
 of old Solithern houses, where the wide hall 
 usurped the center of the house, and at least 
 two large chimneys and often severaf snialler 
 ones were necessary to heat the large, high 
 ceiled rooms. 
 
 As has been pointed out, when wood arid 
 brick join each other horizontally, the wood 
 upon the brick, gravity acts to hold them to- 
 gether and if they don't "cohere" in any other 
 way at least the weight of the wood holds it 
 in place. Therefore in a wooden house it is 
 well not to expose your chimney on the out- 
 side. Often space on the inside is at a pre- 
 mium, and this pushes the chimney out. 
 When it is thus pushed out it can at least be 
 painted the color of the house, or treated in 
 some way to make it inconspicuous. Of 
 course in a brick or stone house the danger 
 
 rarely arises, since the chimney is usually of 
 the same material as the house proper, and 
 consequently belongs to it. 
 
 So far as the design of the chimney is con- 
 cerned, whether it is to be a chimney which 
 shows its full length or one which starts from 
 the roof, it should not be too high. Per- 
 haps the only criticism one can make of the 
 excellent house shown on page 70 is the too 
 great height of the chimneys. The tops of 
 the chimneys should not come much above 
 the main ridge line. It is best, if possible, 
 to have your chimney intersect the roof at 
 the ridge or near it, or to have it located on 
 the face of the house wall, either at the ga- 
 ble as on page 21 or at the side wall as on 
 page 40. It appears in this way to be tied 
 to the walls of the house. When, however, 
 it emerges from the roof as shown in the 
 house on page 48, the result is usually less 
 happy. As to the elaboration of the design, 
 of course a chimney like that on the Vander- 
 bilt Lodge shown on page 9 is very beauti- 
 ful, but such chimneys are difficult to do well. 
 
 Balconies are unfortunately little used in 
 this country, chiefly for the reason, I sup- 
 pose, that their place is taken by porches. 
 And yet nothing is more charming than a 
 well designed balcony such as is shown on 
 page 70. And a balcony such as that on 
 Mr. Dow's house on page 39 will appeal 
 readily to the imagination. In France and 
 Italy where it is common to use small iron 
 balconies the charm of the house is greatly 
 added to by their use. Moreover, a balcony 
 such as that shown on the Villa Gambreria 
 on page 8, though it is nothing more than a 
 railing between the jambs of the windows, 
 has a considerable practical value. Inside 
 this room, one can open the windows and feel 
 that he isn't altogether "cooped up." If 
 
 no 
 
DETAILS OF SMALL HOUSE DESIGN 
 
 the balcony is large enough to walk upon this 
 impression is largely increased. Small iron 
 balconies like this are beautifully adaptable 
 to houses built in the Italian style. But in 
 the best examples the iron work is severely 
 simple; just plain square rod about half an 
 inch thick, set about three inches apart. 
 Such balconies should be adequately sup- 
 ported, but the brackets, if brackets are used, 
 should not be gross and heavy. Frequently 
 one sees in American stucco houses the floor 
 of the balcony made of a huge slab of con- 
 crete supported by blocks of concrete each 
 large enough to support the world. The es- 
 sential qualities to search for and to ex- 
 press in designing a balcony are delicacy and 
 grace. 
 
 The leaders of your house should receive 
 ample consideration. We have the habit in 
 this country of conducting our roof rain 
 water to cisterns. In England they let the 
 leader run into a rain-water barrel, — which 
 is an infinite improvement, because a rain- 
 water barrel properly treated is a very in- 
 teresting object. We used to use rain-water 
 barrels, too, but they have somehow fallen 
 into disuse; and even at their best they were 
 rarely developed as the English have devel- 
 oped them. The sketch on page 29 shows 
 such a rain barrel. It adds a spot of inter- 
 est to the design,, and is a far more effective 
 thing than a simple leader which disappears 
 in the ground. Of course we can't use rain- 
 water barrels for every leader, but it is well 
 to remember that the barrel is a charming 
 motif to make use of. The best leaders 
 are those made of copper. If it is possible 
 to do so, it is very desirable to use leader 
 boxes. They, too, give interesting spots of 
 color. A very interesting example is that 
 shown on the Vanderbilt Lodge on page 46. 
 
 Now we have done with chimneys and 
 balconies and leaders. We come to the im- 
 portant matter — the door — of your house. 
 I have reserved it for the last because it re- 
 lates in its design to columns and to porches, 
 two subjects taken up in the two following 
 chapters. 
 
 The most formal of all doorways is the 
 classic type. The opening is usually half as 
 wide as it is high, and is surrounded by 
 an architrave door jamb, usually molded. 
 This is surmounted by a frieze and cornice 
 and sometimes by a pediment, as is shown on 
 this page and on page 36. 
 
 Inasmuch as these doors are derived from 
 the monumental doors of the classic tradi- 
 
 An old classic doorway at Annapolis, Maryland. Note 
 its simple dignity. 
 
 Ill 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 This old doorway which belongs to a house in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, is a fine example of the modest Co- 
 lonial doorway. The eight panel door and the side lights are characteristic. 
 
 tion it is absolutely essential that the man 
 who attempts to design such a door should 
 have an understanding of that tradition. 
 The Salem type of doorway which we have 
 shown on page 113 has a somewhat freer ex- 
 pression. Here it is possible to get an ex- 
 pression of width without having to increase 
 greatly the height, because we are using a 
 triplicate motif instead of a single motif. It 
 is best, however, that the side lights be nar- 
 row, and that the door itself maintain the 
 general proportion of its width being one 
 half its height. One of the common mis- 
 takes made in this kind of doorway lies in the 
 inaccuracy of the ellipse. The ellipse should 
 
 be a true one, or as closely approximate to it 
 as possible. 
 
 The exterior door should be painted to 
 match the walls or the shutters, or should be 
 stained and waxed to a quiet, flat tone. 
 Avoid doors of golden oak or mahogany, and 
 shun big panes of plate glass. A door should 
 not be so spick and span as to suggest the in- 
 terior of the house, and varnish and plate 
 glass are sure to grve this suggestion. 
 
 If you are absolutely sure of yourself (and 
 this surety comes from a keen appreciation of 
 the daring things done by artists and archi- 
 tects who know) you can take liberties with 
 your doorway. On a certain grimy, dusty 
 
 112 
 
DETAILS OF SMALL HOUSE DESIGN 
 
 Photograph by ^ - -^ 
 
 Frank Cousins. 
 
 The Andrew Safford house at Salem, Massachusetts, can boast one of the most perfect doorways of the later 
 Colonial period. In these Salem houses the walls qnd windows are kept severely plain and the doorway is treated 
 elaborately. 
 
 Can't you remember your friends' houses 
 by the impression you received of the door- 
 ways? We recall so many delightful door- 
 ways: pleasant, homely ones of ordinary 
 green boards with old hinges and latch 
 strings; serene and gracious white painted 
 ones, with shining brass knockers; quaint 
 Dutch doors, cut in half, the lower half be- 
 ing closed to keep dogs out and children in, 
 the upper half opening upon a pleasant in- 
 terior; dark doors studded with nails, sug- 
 gesting a great hall and complete privacy 
 
 street in London there lives an artist who 
 chose to make his house peculiarly his own. 
 He had his doorway lacquered Chinese red, 
 and gave it a huge knocker. Certainly the 
 neighborhood should bless him. But a New 
 York man who made over an old stable tried 
 very much the same thing with sad results. 
 He paneled his great door, and painted it a 
 gay, deliberate green. Before the next night 
 it was covered with chalk and pencil draw- 
 ings by the unappreciative youngsters of the 
 neighborhood. 
 
 113 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 within. All these are good doorways: they 
 beckon you to come and try them. But the 
 dreadful doorways, always hung on the in- 
 side with much lace and colored silk, or filled 
 with near-stained glass! We prefer to 
 
 forget them. You know them all, any- 
 way. 
 
 It is easy to have a good door in your house 
 by emulating the simple and effective doors 
 of the old houses we have mentioned. 
 
 Designed by H. T. Lindeberg. Albro & Lindeberg, Architects. 
 
 The difficulty in designing a hooded doorway lies in the danger of making the moldings too heavy, and the hood 
 too big. This detail from the house for Mr. R. S. Carter, Hewlett, Long Island, is a well studied example. 
 
 114 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 THE COLUMN AND ITS CORNICE 
 
 WE employ columns so exten- 
 sively in American architecture 
 that it never enters the head of 
 the ordinary man that there may be essential 
 differences of proportion and design. "A. 
 column is a column — ^just as a house is a 
 house!" That is his point of view. It is 
 because of the commonness of this point of 
 view that there is so much bad architecture. 
 
 Indeed, in some parts of the country a man 
 who has lived his working years in a plain 
 box-like house, usually b.uilds a new large 
 house with a lot of columns, when Fortune 
 favors him. The towering columns serve as 
 evidence of his prosperity. He has huge 
 porticos \vith tiers of columns built all around 
 his house, all kinds and shapes of columns. 
 
 Let us leave him with his gigantic house 
 and its multitude of columns, and turn our 
 attention to the reasons which justify the use 
 of columns. Let us try to understand 
 
 their real meaning. The column is almost 
 always used in the design of porches and 
 as it is almost invariably associated with 
 some kind of cornice, it will be profitable to 
 consider them together. 
 
 The element which gives greatest difficulty 
 to the untrained designer in the detail of a 
 house is the column and its cornice. The 
 column is used everywhere — for porches, en- 
 trances, , porticos, and pergolas, and for this 
 reason it deserves the most serious considera- 
 tion. Often an ugly house can be made at- 
 tractive simply by correcting the hideous de- 
 tail, of its columns and cornices. 
 
 A column is a very beautiful thing, used 
 rightly. But do you know a good column 
 when you see one'? 
 
 Perhaps your own house has "classic" 
 columns surmounted by some kind of cornice. 
 Do you know that such columns, from an 
 architectural point of view, are simply posts 
 
 115 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 designed to hold something up, but that they 
 must have certain definite dimensions of 
 height to diameter, and equally definite re- 
 lations with the cornice above and with the 
 adjacent columns'? Perhaps you have never 
 thought about it. 
 
 It is well at this point to remark that for 
 small domestic architecture the use of classic 
 columns is not absolutely necessary. Our 
 early Colonial architecture and the simple 
 English cottage which charms us all rarely 
 employed columns. It was only with the 
 introduction of the more monumental type 
 of Georgian architecture, such as was built 
 in the later Colonial days, that the column 
 was used extensively. Its use even then was 
 confined principally to the Southern colonial 
 work of the large and formal type. For the 
 small domestic architecture of to-day the 
 only place where the column is indispensable 
 is in the porch and the pergola. 
 
 In any case if you decide to use columns, 
 be sure you employ them rightly. If your 
 house is not of the pretentious sort, the sim- 
 ple square post treated as one sees it in an 
 unassuming farmhouse will give you the 
 most satisfactory and pleasing results for 
 your porches. 
 
 To use the column rightly you must un- 
 derstand something about it. Let us look 
 for a moment into its history. 
 
 Every one is familiar with pictures of the 
 Parthenon. It is not necessary to reproduce 
 it here. From the days of our history and 
 geography lessons it has been so familiar that 
 we have ignored its relation to our affairs. 
 If we thought of it at all, it was as we 
 thought of a picture of the Sphinx — as some- 
 thing with which we had no concern ! 
 
 Forget that you have seen the picture of 
 the Parthenon before, and consider it with a 
 
 new interest. After all, it is only a com- 
 position of columns, but they are so beauti- 
 fully proportioned that they make a deep 
 and lasting impression on the student of 
 architecture. 
 
 The building at the left looks like the 
 framework for a garage or a boat house, 
 and yet it is not different from the primi- 
 tive type of wooden building from which, 
 somewhere in the Orient, at some time in 
 Mesopotamian history, the Parthenon and all 
 the classic orders sprang. Beside it is shown 
 a sketch of the Parthenon columns. The 
 wood posts correspond to the stone columns. 
 On the wood. posts rest strong beams which 
 support cross beams, the ends of which are 
 visible. These in turn carry the roof rafters. 
 
 This wooden structure represents primi- 
 tive construction. Gradually the unperma- 
 nent wood was replaced by durable stone, 
 and although the two building materials are 
 very different yet it is easy to trace in the 
 stone temples of antiquity survivals of the 
 earlier wood construction and wood detail 
 from which they came. 
 
 At first the column was only a post, made 
 doubtless of a tree, or a bundle of reeds, just 
 as the cornice was originally nothing but the 
 rough projecting edges of the roof covering. 
 From these simple beginnings arose what we 
 16 
 
THE COLUMN AND ITS CORNICE 
 
 now call the Doric, the Ionic and the Co- 
 rinthian orders, which are distinguished from 
 one another most readily by their character- 
 istic capitals. 
 
 Under the Greeks and Romans these or- 
 ders were developed and perfected. When, 
 after the long night of the Dark Ages, the 
 Italian Renaissance came, certain architects, 
 inspired by the renewed interest in the civil- 
 ization of Greece and Rome, undertook to 
 classify and measure the various proportions 
 and parts of the ancient temples, in their 
 design. Among these architects was Vig- 
 nola. He established a system by which the 
 dimensions of the whole order, that is, the 
 height of the cornice, the projection of the 
 cornice, the size of the capital and base, 
 and so forth, — are given in terms of the 
 size of the diameter of the column near its 
 base. 
 
 In Chapter V we considered the matter of 
 proportion, and we touched on the classic or- 
 ders as examples of "fixed" proportions in 
 architecture, and of a canon of proportions 
 which has been accepted by the great ma- 
 jority of trained architects in. all countries. 
 To-day in the schools in this country the stu- 
 dent of architecture is first set to work to mas- 
 ter thoroughly the elements and proportions 
 of the orders, and the system of Vignola is 
 commonly employed. The student is taught 
 to combine columns with other motives, such 
 as arches, doorways, and the like, and this 
 method has been adopted because after sev- 
 eral thousand years of study and criticism, 
 the most highly trained architects are agreed 
 that these orders express a perfection in their 
 proportions which can be bettered only by 
 genius. Geniuses are rare ! 
 
 If we put ourselves in the position of the 
 student, we shall understand some of the 
 
 things there are to learn concerning the or- 
 ders. 
 
 The next thing to notice is that a column 
 is not simply a straight shaft, cylindrical in 
 form, nor is it like a tree which diminishes 
 in diameter as it goes up. The column has a 
 slight curve. This curve is called the entasis 
 of the column. If this curvature becomes 
 great enough to be noticeable, it is unpleas- 
 ant; it is simply to give the column more 
 grace and strength. Many stock columns 
 carry the entasis to excess, as is shown on 
 this page. It finds its extreme in the cigar 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 At the extreme left is shown the Doric column accord- 
 ing to the proportions established by Vignola. The pro- 
 portions of the Ionic and Corinthian columns have sim- 
 ilar systems of proportion. 
 
 shaped column, which is most unpleasant. 
 In the real Roman orders the curvature is 
 hardly perceptible. 
 
 On the other hand, pilasters are given no 
 entasis; they are usually made the width of 
 the column at its necking. A fine example 
 of the Doric pilaster is shown on page 91. 
 
 A common misuse of columns lies in their 
 application to porches of the type shown on 
 page 118, where the column rests on a railing 
 and is only about five feet high, and usually 
 
 117 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 If you use the classic pediment, let it have the right slope. If you use columns let their proportions be right. 
 
 thick out of all proportion. No misuse of 
 the column is more common or more hideous. 
 If you are to use columns, respect their dignity 
 and let them come to the floor. Use the 
 column without a pedestal, and it will gain 
 dignity and grace. It is almost a safe rule 
 to say that no column should be less than 
 eight feet high, if it is to be used in exterior 
 work, and provided it makes a pretense of 
 keeping the proportion of the classic orders. 
 
 Do not make the mistake of having a 
 column in the center of the portico. This 
 has an unpleasant effect. A column should 
 never come in the center of the front of a 
 house. One should feel the center of the 
 colonnade open and inviting. It may come 
 in the center of the side colonnade, however, 
 — as witness the Parthenon. 
 
 For the relation of the arches of the 
 columns, for the spacing of columns, and for 
 the full development of the orders it is neces- 
 sary to refer you to treatises which deal with 
 these problems. It is an extended study 
 which unfortunately lies without the province 
 of this book. We are simply trying to give 
 an indication of some of the common mis- 
 takes which are made by the untrained 
 
 builder who does not realize the fixed pro- 
 portions of the orders. A trained architect 
 can advise you wisely about your col- 
 umns. 
 
 In Chapter XI, in considering the termina- 
 tion of different kinds of roofs, the gable roof 
 in which the classic cornice is employed was 
 mentioned. In using this cornice the great 
 danger lies in getting the cornice too big for 
 ^the house. The sketch at the top of this page 
 shows two houses which are identical save 
 for the design of the pediment. On the 
 right the slope of the pediment is like that of 
 
 118 
 
 Another example of every-day American architecture. 
 It has so many faults that it is hard to find anything 
 good at all. about it. Note particularly the stunted col- 
 umns and the ungainly stone arches. 
 
THE COLUMN AND ITS CORNICE 
 
 Designed by H. T. Lindeberg. 
 
 Note the refinement of the detail in 
 
 the classic examples. On the left the pedi- 
 ment is much too steep. We frequently see 
 this error in American work. It is an error 
 which arises partly from our ignorance of 
 what the classic proportions are, and partTy 
 from the fact that we have changed the slope 
 to meet the hard conditions of our climate. 
 The Greeks and Romans had no snow to 
 contend with, and their roofs were not sub- 
 jected to the tests of harsh weather. But in 
 changing the slope of the pediment to the 
 requirements of climatic conditions we have 
 completely spoiled it. So, if you are going 
 to use the classic pediment, give it its right 
 slope, and find some way of making the roof 
 tight. Otherwise don't use it ; use some type 
 of architecture which adapts itself more 
 easily to the conditions. 
 
 In dealing with columns we have touched 
 on the most difficult subject which this book 
 
 Albro & Lindeberg, Architects, 
 this house at Hewlett, Long Island. 
 
 has to present. The architecture of simple 
 walls and the architecture of columns present 
 very different degrees of complication. To' 
 use a comparison: it is not hard for any of 
 us to understand the simple melodies of Schu- 
 bert; it is very difficult to understand the in- 
 tricate architectonic structure of the Bach 
 fugues. We can all hope to understand some- 
 thing of the little steep-roofed English cot- 
 tage, with its simple and free lines. Those 
 of us not architects rarely have the time or 
 patience to understand the immense diffi- 
 culty of using columns rightly. Therefore 
 it is well in small house design to use the 
 column as sparingly as possible unless you 
 are willing to take the time to unravel its 
 mysteries. Unfortunately this is not widely 
 appreciated and everywhere about us we see 
 architecture of which the house given on the 
 bottom of page 118 is a sad example. 
 
 119 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 Where columns are used in connection 
 with the cornice, it is easier to determine the 
 size of the cornice, because we know that it 
 should have a certain relation to the column. 
 Where, however, the columns are omitted, 
 how are we to determine how big the cornice 
 should be? Perhaps one of the best ways 
 would be to study the fagade as if it were to 
 have columns, and then remove the columns. 
 
 It is very difBcult to give definite informa- 
 tion concerning the proportion of columns. 
 It depends largely on the type of building 
 which you are designing. The best thing to 
 do is to go to the examples which are shown 
 in the books written on the subject of domes- 
 tic architecture by competent architects, and 
 study the cornices used on these build- 
 ings. 
 
 Ford, Butler & Oliver, Architects. 
 This house for Mr. Mestre at Sheffield Island, Connecticut, is interesting be- 
 cause of its long ridge line and its simple roof. 
 
 120 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE PLEASURE OF PORCHES 
 
 THIS business of living out-doors has 
 brought about a change in our ideas 
 of house building. We have actu- 
 ally found it desirable to drop Show and em- 
 brace Comfort. From boxlike houses with 
 no porches at all, or porches so narrow as to 
 be useless, we have jumped to an embarrass- 
 ment of porches. 
 
 We were once content with a long front 
 porch where we sat in six green rocking- 
 chairs with six turkey-red tidies at our backs, 
 and gossiped as the neighbors passed. And 
 we sat in our best clothes, and busied our- 
 selves with company sewing — lace or em- 
 broidery or such. We did n't take the darn- 
 ing basket to the front porch. We did n't 
 even go there in the morning. The porch 
 was reserved for afternoons and good clothes. 
 We sometimes had a back porch, but that 
 was n't intended to be enjoyed; it was a place 
 for chums and milk-cans and fuel and so 
 forth. The cook didn't think of sitting 
 there. 
 
 In short, most porches were then ugly and 
 meaningless excrescences, built for show. 
 
 The only good ones, from an architectural 
 standpoint, were the neat little stoops of 
 New England cottages, with their two stiff 
 settles and their formal air, and the great 
 verandas of the classic Southern houses. 
 Southern porches have always been pretty 
 good, because they have always been used; 
 and now people everywhere are insisting on 
 living a part of every day outdoors, and 
 porches everywhere are becoming noteworthy. 
 When we plan a new house, we feel that we 
 must have an entrance porch, very small and 
 very formal; we must have a great living 
 porch opening from the living room, a porch 
 that may be screened with glass in winter 
 or wire net in summer; we must have an 
 ample porch for the servants, and we must 
 have one, or two, or three sleeping porches 
 up-stairs ! We demand so many porches 
 that the poor architect tears his hair, for the 
 solution of the problem of porches is proba- 
 bly the greatest trial the American architect 
 has. 
 
 The architects of England and France 
 solve the problem easily: they simply have 
 
 121 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 no porches. They sometimes have what the 
 average American home builder would re- 
 gard as an apology for a porch, an entrance 
 hood which is very small and narrow. 
 
 In the early American work also, the 
 porch was largely absent. In the most pre- 
 tentious Georgian houses of the Southern 
 states there were fagades consisting of colon- 
 nades, and the effect of these porches was 
 usually imposing, but the floor space afforded 
 was usually small and narrow as compared 
 with the modern porch and piazza. The 
 wide spreading piazza is something distinc- 
 tively American, distinctively modern. That 
 it is a wonderfully comfortable institution, no 
 one will deny. That it is a difficult matter 
 to design is admitted by those who have tried 
 to do it. The architect declares that our de- 
 termination to have many porches will be 
 disastrous. What will become of the style 
 of the house'? he pleads. 
 
 I don't know what will become of the style 
 of the house, but I do believe that if we 
 really enjoy living and eating and sleeping 
 outdoors, our domestic architecture will have 
 a chance at a style of its own at last. Sim- 
 ple, honest living conditions have always 
 produced simple, honest architectural styles. 
 Something very desirable will come from our 
 recognizing the need of bringing outdoors 
 into our houses. Witness the delightful 
 style of the Mexican and Spanish houses, 
 with their open courts and patios, which 
 came from this same problem of bringing 
 outdoors in. We may make many mistakes 
 in arriving at this new style, but if we have 
 the courage of our common sense and employ 
 trained architects, we shall finally add some- 
 thing to the sum of traditional architecture 
 and decoration. We will find in ourselves 
 that rarest quality — originality. 
 
 It requires great ingenuity and restraint to 
 add porches to a well designed house. Look 
 at the photographs shown in this book. The 
 houses that please you most have no porches 
 at all, or very small stoops. There are nota- 
 ble exceptions, such as Mr. Lang's house at 
 Scarsdale and the cottage on the Tracy 
 Dow estate. There are many enclosed 
 porches, "sun rooms," but the old porches 
 tacked upon a house without rhyme or rea- 
 son are conspicuous by their absence. Two 
 or three of the Colonial cottages have porches, 
 it is true, but on the newer houses they are 
 missing. 
 
 The two usual types of porches are the 
 screened room incorporated as an integral 
 part of the house and the porch that is built 
 against the finished house. Of course the 
 porch that forms a part of the house itself 
 is much easier to treat successfully. It takes 
 away a minimum of light from the living 
 room, it can be glazed in winter and screened 
 in summer, and it is ample enough in size to 
 make it comfortable. 
 
 Another porch that seems to be a part of 
 the house proper is that which is obtained 
 
 122 
 
 This represents the idea of a seaside cottage as the 
 architect of 1880 conceived it. Note the ugly posts and 
 the fantastic railing. 
 
THE PLEASURE OF PORCHES 
 
 Photograph by Coutant. Designed by H. T. Lindeberg. Albro & Lindeberg, Architects. 
 
 Do not let the beauty of the setting of this small house on the estate of Mr. Tracy Dow at Rhinebeck, New 
 York, blind you to the excellence of the house itself. The house is so designed as to take full advantage of the 
 slope of the land. The roadway passes on the upper side of the house. 
 
 by letting the roof project over the porch, as 
 is shown in the cottage on page 108. This 
 is one of the earliest types of porches, and 
 still one of the most attractive. There 
 is also the modern example of which 
 Mr. Dow's cottage is an excellent illustra- 
 tion. 
 
 A type of porch which has come lately 
 into favor is that shown on pages 3 1 and 
 127. Here the porch is made into a sepa- 
 rate construction, almost like a little house in 
 itself, and it is an excellent solution of a diffi- 
 cult problem. 
 
 The different types of porch have certain 
 
 things in common and it is in the interpreta- 
 tion of these things that most mistakes are 
 made. They all have some kind of roof 
 support, usually consisting of a series of posts 
 or columns. If columns are used it is neces- 
 sary to see that they follow the rules for the 
 use of columns, which were touched on in the 
 foregoing chapter. If the supports are 
 wooden posts, a wide variation of interpreta- 
 tion is possible. Usually, however, for 
 small domestic work, a simple post five 
 inches square spaced about six feet from the 
 next post is an excellent solution. It is sim- 
 ple, unpretentious and adequate. 
 
 123 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 It is possible to use stone, stucco, and brick 
 piers, but stone piers used in connection with 
 a frame house of which the exterior is clap- 
 boarded or shingle, are usually disagreeable 
 because they suggest unnecessary brutality in 
 the use of materials. The main trouble with 
 masonry piers is their size, and unless they 
 are of the same material as the house they 
 will look awkward and bulky. 
 
 Often it is possible to use an arcade treat- 
 ment. In the old Italian work most porticos 
 are so designed, and nothing is more attrac- 
 tive. They have this fault: the arch cuts 
 •off a certain amount of light from the rooms 
 behind the arcade, but the rooms can be 
 lighted sufl^ciently by proper treatment. 
 
 If possible let your porch floor be of brick 
 ' or tile, rather than wood. Cement may be 
 
 marked off in squares and a tiled effect is se- 
 cured at small expense. 
 
 All porches have some kind of cornice. 
 We have touched on the subject of cornices, 
 and what applies to the house cornice applies 
 here also, except that the porch detail should 
 be finer in scale than that of the house 
 cornice which is much higher up and nat- 
 urally more important. 
 
 If you use lattice, use a simple design such 
 as is shown in Mr. Embury's house, or Mr. 
 Lang's house. Do not go into florid and 
 meaningless forms. 
 
 So much for the ordinary porch. Now 
 for the sleeping porch, which like the porte 
 cochere, is one of the nightmares of the archi- 
 tect. Why? Because in a small house the 
 sleeping porch means that we are going to get 
 
 Howard Greenley, Architect. 
 The small arcaded porch of the gardener's cottage on Mr. C. A. Coffin's estate at Locust Valley, Long Island, is 
 :;full of charm. The roof which is cut off on thp gable end might better have terminated in the usual way. 
 
 124 
 
THE PLEASURE OF PORCHES 
 
 Aymar Embury,' Architect.. 
 The use of the gable on Mr. Embury's cottage is questionable, but the house as a whole is agreeable. 
 
 a great, black, gaping hole in our wall, or in 
 our roof. Nevertheless, it is possible to treat 
 a sleeping porch attractively. The best ar- 
 
 First floor plan of Mr. Embury's cottage. 
 
 rangement, perhaps, is the treatment of it as- 
 a loggia, as is shown on page 126. 
 
 If there are enough trees about the house 
 it is much easier to manage a sleeping porch, 
 for if it can not be seen from the street or 
 the garden proper it is not a source of worry 
 to the architect. I once visited a house in 
 New Jersey which had an upstairs porch that 
 is most successful. It is broad and long, 
 and is roofed at each end. The center of 
 it is open to the stars, like a court. The 
 great trees swish over it, and of course if it 
 rains the sleeper can retreat to the sheltered- 
 ends. This porch is an exception, however^ 
 
 125 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 and was made possible by the fact that the 
 house is built against a steep hillside, and by 
 the great trees that screen it. 
 
 The large veranda which is to be used as 
 an outdoor living room should be at the side 
 or back of the house, if possible. In front 
 
 Eugene J. Lang, Architect. 
 
 One of. the best ways to treat the difficult problem of the 
 
 sleeping porch is that shown in this house at Scarsdale, 
 
 New York. The use of the Palladian motive is a happy 
 
 one. 
 
 we do not need more than a little square 
 porch with two trim settles for a bit of talk 
 with the parting guest. The real business of 
 living outdoors is reserved for a more private 
 place. Have n't you had the doubtful 
 pleasure of calling on your friends only to 
 find the whole family lounging in the ham- 
 mocks on the front porch, scattering hur- 
 riedly, when you come up the front walk? 
 This is not the most hospitable reception in 
 the world, but what else can you do when 
 there is only one veranda, and that a very 
 
 1 public place? 
 
 The porch must not only be inviting, it 
 must give you the comfort it promises. It 
 
 ■ must be as cool, as clean, and as gay as you 
 can make it. A screen of some kind is im- 
 perative, whether it be a lattice covered with 
 vines, awnings, or hanging screens of bam- 
 boo, or slat-like strips of wood. Screens 
 
 not only offer shadow: they temper thcheat 
 of the sun. 
 
 Standing screens of latticework are very 
 successful if they are planned ^well and se- 
 curely placed, so that they will not be pulled 
 awry by the growth of the vines upon them, 
 or by the strength of the wind. Where roses 
 are to be planted around a porch, these lat- 
 tice screens are the best solution of the prob- 
 lem. Last summer I saw a veranda one end 
 of which was screened with a white painted 
 lattice filled with small glass panes. This 
 house was on the sea, and the wind was so 
 strong at this particular exposure that the 
 glass screen was necessary as a real- shield. 
 You can sit on this veranda arid have the 
 pleasure of looking out at the sea through 
 the glass, and at the same time you are pro- 
 tected from the southwest wind. This is an 
 attractive but rather expensive screen. 
 
 You can do what you like with color 
 
 126 
 
 First and second floor plan of Mr. Barrett's house at 
 Concord. 
 
THE PLEASURE OF PORCHES 
 
 Derby & Robinson, Architects. 
 An attractive solution of the porch is to treat it as shown above in this house for Mr. Barrett at Concord, Massachusetts. 
 
 schemes inside your house, but when you are 
 planning the color scheme of your porch you 
 must consider the colors Nature has given 
 you to build on. The best of all colors for 
 porch furniture, awnings, and so forth are 
 white, gray, brown, light green, and very 
 dark green. The light green should be the 
 color of green apples, or green peas or lettuce 
 — if you are uncertain of the tone I mean. 
 The dark green should be the soft velvety 
 tone of the evergreen tree — the boxwood, 
 olive, gardenia, japonica, laurel, or any such 
 ^reen. Yellow is a good porch color, prop- 
 erly used. Red is extremely popular, and 
 extremely dangerous. 
 
 For some strange reason, four porches out 
 of five seem to have turkey-red cotton 
 
 cushions on the chairs, and red-and-white- 
 striped awnings, the only excuse being that 
 turkey-red is advertised as a "fast" color, and 
 it is believed, by people who do not think 
 for themselves, to be "cheerful." Why 
 should we bring this warmest of all colors 
 into the place that is supposed to be coolest 
 and most restful? These are the people 
 who plead for the combination of red and 
 green, arguing that "this is a nice contrast." 
 Certainly if we could manage our reds and 
 greens as Nature manages them, we might 
 be pardoned the use of this combination. 
 But we can't do it, so we had better leave 
 it to Nature. She will do it for us in a 
 flower-box of red genaniums and white 
 daisies. We will get all the red we need 
 
 127 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 in such flowers, and in the plain earthenware 
 pots, and perhaps in the dark red-brown tiles 
 of our floor. We must remember always 
 that green is the dominant outdoor color. 
 Nature provides pleasant greens, and we 
 must not destroy her fine harmony by intro- 
 ducing vivid fabrics colored with cheap 
 dyes. Our awnings should be green and 
 white, or gray and white — some cool color; 
 our cushions and rugs and things of green, or 
 brown, or gray — the natural tones of wood, 
 or stone, or foliage. 
 
 A masonry house will probably have its 
 porches floored with tile, bricks or cement, 
 but most of the wooden houses will have 
 porches made up of ordinary boards. When 
 you are painting such a floor, tones of gray 
 are good, and certain shades of green are also 
 pleasant. If any rugs are used they should 
 be rugs that will not be injured by rain or 
 dirt. 
 
 The furniture-makers are giving us really 
 charming furniture for out-of-doors, and it 
 is hard to decide just what we will have on 
 our ideal porch. I think there should be a 
 Gloucester hammock of green and white 
 drilling, fitted with green cushions and mat- 
 tress; a wing-chair of willow with a big 
 pocket for magazines; a large Canton hour- 
 glass chair with a tabouret of the same type 
 beside it; a chair built on the lines of the 
 familiar steamer-chair in willow or rattan; 
 a long bench painted dark green (this bench 
 may be eight or ten feet long, and it will 
 serve as a table as well as a seat when there 
 is company) ; a chest or seLtle with box seat 
 for tennis-rackets and such ; one or more tables 
 
 of green painted wood or willow; several 
 large jars of green things, and a bird-cage. 
 
 Surely, if there is ever an excuse for hav- 
 ing a bird in a cage, I think one might be 
 excused for having one of those enchanting 
 thrush cages of orange-colored reeds on one's 
 living porch. You need n't have a thrush 
 in it; have any bird you please. The cage 
 itself is such a charming thing that any bird 
 would be happy in it. 
 
 A wooden settle with a box beneath the 
 seat to hold outdoor things, or a long chest 
 of painted wood, will be found most useful 
 on any living porch. Such a settle or chest 
 offers a great chance to young people who 
 have been studying the applied arts, for here 
 is a fine opportunity to decorate a simple 
 straightaway object with some bold scheme 
 of design and color. 
 
 Don't allow your porch to become untidy. 
 Have as much freedom and gaiety and in- 
 formality as you please, but none of the 
 shabby disorder that is so distressing. The 
 cushions, for instance, should be covered 
 with water-proof cloth if possible, and then 
 with whatever you choose — denim, linen or 
 chintz; but the outer covers should be made 
 to button on so they may be washed. 
 Cushions that have faded or "run" in un- 
 sightly streaks are unpleasant. Gaudy, 
 sagging hammocks of many colors and un- 
 tidy fringe are also unpleasant, but the 
 modern Gloucester hammock is a comforta- 
 ble resting-place by day and a bed by night. 
 It is the ideal porch hammock, because the 
 lines are logical, and you are screened while 
 you are resting. 
 
 128 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE PLAN ARRANGEMENT 
 
 WHEN you start out to design 
 your house the probabilities are 
 that you do not worry about its 
 looks so much as about the arrangement of 
 its rooms. You want your house to have an 
 attractive exterior, but that is the architect's 
 business, and you are sure that you can do 
 as you please with the plan arrangement. So 
 you get out a calling card and draw your 
 floor plan on it, as casually as you 'd make a 
 memorandum, and all the king's horses and 
 all the king's men can't alter some whimsy 
 that you give that first rough plan. The 
 poor architect is expected to possess a leger- 
 demain that will enable him to develop any 
 sort of house from your proposed floor plan. 
 An architect told me recently that in one 
 of his recent houses he gave three French 
 windows to the living-room, two on the 
 south side and one on the east. There was 
 no view on the north side, and no windows 
 were needed there. Besides, the architect 
 considered that the wall space was necessary 
 for furniture, and that the exterior appear- 
 ance of the house required a blank wall to 
 make the design effective. 
 
 "But^we are building the house for_com- 
 fort, not^r looks, and we want a cross draft 
 in this room. After all, it is only your 
 opinion that the windows will spoil the looks 
 of the house!" said the client. So the win- 
 dows were put in and the appearance of the 
 house was spoiled. The house has been oc- 
 cupied several months now, and the north 
 windows have never been opened. The oc- 
 cupants forgot all about the cross draft the 
 moment they had bullied the architect into 
 spoiling his fagade. 
 
 It is difRcult to realize that whatever you 
 arrange for in plan is going to affect the 
 appearance of the exterior. If you reflect, 
 you will realize that there is no valid reason 
 why your plan and your exterior appearance 
 should not both be good. But to get them, 
 you must not be bigoted ; you must not make 
 unreasonable demands of the architect. 
 You must expect to make concessions. 
 
 In any problem dealing with any subject, 
 it is possible to impose conditions which 
 make a good solution impossible. So when 
 you are thinking of your room arrangement, 
 you must also be thinking, of what this par- 
 129 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 ticular room arrangement is going to force 
 you to accept for the exterior of your house. 
 
 You must think of your house as having 
 three dimensions, length, breadth, and height. 
 
 We are accustomed to think of our houses 
 in two dimensions only, mainly because our 
 architects offer us only floor plans and ele- 
 vations, blue prints that we are supposed to 
 visualize into an attractive mass. Only the 
 trained eye can imagine a roof line, for in- 
 stance, from a cold and regular blue print. 
 If we only had some one to make little clay 
 models of our proposed houses how delight- 
 ful it would be ! 
 
 Last winter, a young English architect 
 came over with the extremely sensible idea 
 of making models of houses in clay. He 
 was an artist as well as an architect, and his 
 charming little models of Devonshire cot- 
 tages and spreading Tudor manor houses 
 were most convincing. His theory is that 
 client and architect should work together 
 while the model is being made. If his client 
 insists on a certain group of windows, he can 
 show the effect of those windows in the clay 
 model, and the client is convinced. 
 
 Surely nothing can be more interesting 
 than to watch the dream of your little- house 
 gain form, to see the roof lines find them- 
 selves, to find this chimney absolutely beau- 
 tiful and that window a surprising defect. 
 It savors of magic to see the architect thumb 
 your roof into more poetic lines, and soften 
 the window frames until they look like 
 weather beaten stones. If you plan to build 
 a wing, some day, he models the wing now 
 and fits it to the house, and you know exactly 
 what your house will look like when all your 
 plans are realized. These little models are 
 irresistible. You cannot but agree with 
 their maker that eventually every one who 
 
 plans a good house will have a model made 
 before he makes fatal mistakes. Hasten the 
 day! 
 
 Your architect would like to show you a 
 model, you may be sure. But his ofBce is 
 not organized to produce models, and so he 
 must do the best he can with the meager 
 information you give him. Given the sur- 
 vey of your site, he would much prefer a 
 long letter setting forth ideas to a crude plan 
 of your proposed plan. You can propose 
 a hundred plans later, but unless you have 
 a clear idea of the arrangement of your rooms 
 you 'd better let him do his own groping at 
 first. Send him all the information you can 
 — the amount you can spend, the number of 
 rooms you must have, and get just as much 
 of your personality over to him as you can. 
 
 A woman went to an architect I know and 
 said that she wanted a house with a staircase 
 of the curved balustrade sort. That was all 
 she could offer to help him. The architect 
 was set adrift on an ocean of possibilities, 
 and made dozens of sketches of different 
 house designs only to find that none of them 
 were satisfactory. He had been given no 
 real guide post or indication, because his 
 client was either unable to define her wants 
 to him, or too lazy to find out what they were 
 for herself. 
 
 Another client gives him a problem pretty 
 much as follows: 
 
 "We must have a huge living-room, no 
 matter what happens to the rest of the 
 house. We will do without a real hall — a 
 tiny little box of a place will serve — and 
 we will do without a proper dining-room, 
 and have a breakfast room instead. The 
 breakfast room will be sun parlor and con- 
 servatory as well, with flowers and vines and 
 a tiled floor. It must be very gay and sunny. 
 
 130 
 
THE PLAN ARRANGEMENT 
 
 with comfortable chairs and a gate-leg table 
 and a built-in dresser for our blue china and 
 pewter, and magic sliding partitions that will 
 make it a part of the living-room. We will 
 have most of our meals alone, and sometimes 
 one guest, or two — ^but only a dozen times 
 a year will there be as many as six people 
 or more — then we can "repair" to the living- 
 room and eat on the great black oak table. 
 
 "We will do away with the conventional 
 kitchen. Please plan us a compact labora- 
 tory of a place, with a big laundry in the 
 basement that will serve also for overflow 
 kitchen things. We will never require more 
 than one servant, so the kitchen may be very 
 small. People who build kitchen closets 
 and pantries are such idiots — ^having wide 
 shelves eighteen inches apart, when many 
 narrow shelves close together and a few 
 deeper ones at the bottom would hold all the 
 utensils and provisions for a hotel. Please 
 plan a long cupboard in the laundry, with an 
 ironing board that will swing down, and 
 many six-inch shelves below it that will hold 
 irons and wax and holders and such. And 
 the long outside panel will be painted with 
 — with — I don't just know what, yet. 
 Something gay, with yellow and orange in 
 it. And there will be many shelves in the 
 laundry, where I can display my cherished 
 tins and jars and things full of provisions 
 and jellies and jams. There will be one ver- 
 milion chair for the washlady, and quite a 
 lot of color, for it must never become a 
 dreary place. 
 
 "And there must be casement windows 
 everywhere, and thin glass curtains, and 
 thick inside curtains of shimmering stuffs 
 that will be drawn at night, and no window 
 shades. And many closets — a cedar lined 
 one for linen, and so many in the kitchen. 
 
 The kitchen must be fairly walled with 
 closets and drawers." 
 
 Essentially a woman's letter, but the archi- 
 tect gets a feeling of her real needs, her per- 
 sonality, the quality of her family's life, and 
 he has inspiration to go ahead. The flowers 
 and vines and pewter and ironing wax and 
 jellies are not in his specifications, but they 
 linger in his imagination and become a part 
 of the invisible house that gives him inspira- 
 tion. 
 
 You probably have just such personal 
 ideas. Note just what you wish to spend, 
 and just what these personal idiosyncrasies 
 are, and then go ahead. Before you reach 
 the end you will probably have reasoned 
 yourself out of believing that certain of these 
 idiosyncrasies were very important, after all ! 
 
 Of course we not only have our idiosyn- 
 crasies, but we usually have a lot of them. 
 Unfortimately, when we come to build we 
 have to forego a good many of them, — sim- 
 ply because the house is n't big enough to 
 hold them all. 
 
 There are two kinds of houses, big and 
 little. This may seem a most arbitrary 
 classification. So it is! Nevertheless, it 
 holds true as a basis for discussion. > Obvi- 
 ously, when you have money enough to build 
 a fifty room house, the possibilities of ar- 
 rangement in plan and in elevation are far 
 greater in their variety than when you have 
 money enough to build only a six room house. 
 If we except cabins and camping cottages, it 
 is rare that we build a house with less than 
 five or six rooms. The house with from five 
 to ten rooms is the home of the average home 
 builder. It costs from $3,000 to $15,000, 
 and we call it a "small house." 
 
 It is noticeable that a great many small 
 houses are square, or approximately square, 
 
 131 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 in plan. A common type is planned with a 
 central entrance hall, and the second floor 
 hallway is thus reduced to a minimum. 
 With a rectangular house, longer in one di- 
 mension than in the other, the second floor 
 hallway must usually be longer. But 
 what is saved in space in the square plan is 
 usually lost in appearance. The square 
 plan house is less flexible and less suitable 
 to a variety of room arrangements. More- 
 over, the longer house will as a rule give a 
 better looking house for the reason that one 
 gets the impression of a dominant sense of 
 direction. Of course this does not mean 
 
 that a square house is always bad. The 
 house shown on page 29 is excellent, but of 
 course in this particular case the impression 
 of length is gained by the addition of the 
 porch. 
 
 A group of small single houses placed at 
 regular intervals along the street has some- 
 thing discouragingly monotonous about it. 
 In many suburban communities where land is 
 expensive, the houses have about twenty feet 
 or so between them. These houses, often 
 built on speculation, are usually of about 
 the same size, and the impression they give 
 altogether is of an overcrowded community. 
 
 JcAZEOrTiANJ 
 
 e rr Srr /orr" 
 
 Floor plans of the twin house shown on page 133^ 
 132 
 
THE PLAN ARRANGEMENT 
 
 rsFT- ^^ 
 
 
 Edmund B. Gilchrist, Architect. 
 This house, located at St. Martins, Philadelphia, is a fine solution of the twin house problem. The plans are shown 
 on page 132. 
 
 The space between the houses is too small to 
 count as a real breathing space, and the 
 houses are too far apart to look like a con- 
 tinuous building. Many architects are turn- 
 ing to the type of dwelling called the twin 
 house as a solution of this problem, two 
 houses being gathered into one building com- 
 plete in itself. Such a plan is shown on 
 page 132. Sometimes as many as five 
 houses are planned in this way. 
 
 Under this system, it is easy to see that the 
 space which would exist between separate 
 houses goes to augment the space between 
 the twin building and its next neighbor, and 
 in this way we get a piece of land and an air 
 space which is big enough not to look 
 cramped. That is the first benefit gained 
 from this type of house. The next is 
 hardly less important. By joining two small 
 houses into one, we are able to get a greater 
 variety of expression for the elevations of 
 the house, a long roof line. This is tre- 
 mendously important. The charm of the 
 low lying English cottages often consists in 
 the long unbroken roof line. 
 
 A house may have either an "open" or 
 
 "shut" plan. The Colonial house with its 
 central entrance, its staircase in full view as 
 one enters, and the living-rooms all opening 
 from the hall and all visible to the visitor, 
 is an examples of an open plan. In a house 
 planned like this, there is little or no sense of 
 privacy. 
 
 The "shut" plan is one such as is shown 
 on this page. When the visitor enters, he 
 sees little except the room in which he finds 
 himself. He does not penetrate at once into 
 the privacy of the house. He is received, so 
 to speak, in a waiting room. 
 
 These two types correspond to the types 
 of humanity which we meet every day. 
 Some people like the sense of privacy, and 
 others don't care. As for me, I am sure I 
 should always declare for the shut plan when 
 
 Note the seclusion of the living quarters. 
 
 133 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 it is possible to get it. This type of plan 
 has an importance in its relation to the sur- 
 roundings of the house, as has been touched 
 on in the chapter on the entourage. It en- 
 I ables the house to turn its back to the street, 
 landjo reserve its better rooms for jts garden. 
 
 In m^TEnglish country houses of any pre- 
 tense, a forecourt is always arranged for the 
 reception of visitors and strangers. The 
 house and its garden are screened by trees 
 and bushes from this entrance court, so that 
 the sense of privacy is not destroyed. If you 
 are a guest or a privileged person, you. are 
 taken out into the garden. 
 
 Most American houses are so planned that 
 the only privacy is on the second floor, and 
 when an unwelcome visitor comes, every one 
 is forced to flee to the security of his bedroom 
 to escape detection. 
 
 With these general observations over, I 
 am going to note some of the essential things, 
 which should be striven for with a view of 
 
 convenience in your room arrangement. 
 In order to have your house beautiful as well 
 as convenient, you must resign yourself to 
 make concessions on both sides, and it is nec- 
 essary to look at what constitutes the essen- 
 tial practical conveniences. You should not 
 be forced to sacrifice the appearance of your 
 house to obtain these. 
 
 Economy of space is most important, since 
 it has a direct relation to the cost of the 
 house. Often houses are built with rooms 
 that are never used. I know of a house in 
 New York which has a small reception room 
 to the left of the hall as you enter. The 
 only person who has ever been known to go 
 into it is the maid who dusts it. Everybody 
 else rushes into the living-room which opens 
 directly upon the hall. We all know the 
 country house parlor which is entered even 
 less frequently; which through the livelong 
 year preserves its chilly respectability and is 
 disturbed only at rare intervals on the occa- 
 
 These plans, of which the elevations are shown on page 135, will repay careful study. 
 
THE PLAN ARRANGEMENT 
 
 Edmund B. Gilchrist, Architect. 
 This house is so planned that it "turns its back to the street," thus giving its fine rooms the advantage of facing 
 the garden. The garden elevation is shown below. 
 
 sion of a funeral or a wedding. That parlor 
 is waste space. 
 
 Build your house to live in. Count on 
 'usiiig^//_of_rt 
 
 You can waste space by the bad planning 
 which results in long second story hallways, 
 in kitchens whijjijire joojai g, and wh ich re- 
 quire many steps to cross, in badly shaped 
 rooinsTnto wHicITTt is impossible to arrange 
 ordinary furniture conveniently. All these 
 mistakes of plan cost money, and they can 
 all be avoided. 
 
 Nothing is more uncomfortable than a 
 long narrow room. In a bedroom of this 
 
 shape, one has 'always the feeling of sleeping 
 in a hallway. In general, in a small house 
 of from six to eight rooms, the living-room 
 should not be. legs than 14 feet wide and at 
 least 22 feet long; preferably more. The 
 dining-room, unless it Ts'to be used only as 
 a breakfast room, should not be less than 
 11x12 feet if it is to be used by more than 
 four people. 
 
 The kitchen is variable; it should be 
 planned in reference to the size^h3~iieeds of 
 th^house~and piarticularly in relation to the 
 question of servants. If the house is to re- 
 quire one servant, the kitchen can be made 
 
 ■runs"" 
 
 135 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 as small as 9x10 feet, if it has adequate 
 closets and ice space in addition. 
 
 For the bedroom, the closets are best ar- 
 ranged between rooms, so that the rooms 
 shall be of good shape, always rectangular if 
 possible, and without any closets or strange 
 angular forms projecting themselves into the 
 rooms. 
 
 A clear height of 8 feet 6 inches is usually 
 adequate for small house rooms. 
 
 If^you contemplate the employment of 
 one or two maidservants, the house plan 
 should be considered as having two distinct 
 divisions: — the living and service quarters. 
 Tn the latter are grouped the kitchen with 
 its dependencies, such as the pantry, laundry, 
 service porch, and servants' bedrooms. If 
 the house is of two or more stories, the service 
 quarters should, if possible, have an inde- 
 pendent staircase. 
 
 Of an eminently practical nature are the 
 matters of heating and plumbing. The in- 
 stallation of these two systems adds greatly 
 to the cost of the house, and should be 
 reckoned with from the beginning. 
 
 An attempt should be made to keep the 
 plumbing fixtures in close proximity. You 
 can easily see that if your house is planned 
 so that your kitchen is on one side of the 
 house, the laundry on another, and the bath- 
 room on a third, your water supply pipes 
 
 have to run a considerable distance to con- 
 nect to various fixtures. If they are near 
 together you save the expense of this piping. 
 
 This applies also to the heating system. 
 If your heater is placed in a central position 
 under the house, you will get better use out 
 of it and you will not have to pay for long 
 runs to connect distant parts of the house. 
 This, of course, is Utopian. It is not al- 
 ways possible so to arrange your plumbing 
 and heating, but it is worth the effort. 
 
 It is well to note here that when you begin 
 to plan your house, you must keep in mind 
 the uses to which your house is to be put. If 
 it is to be a farm house, it must be planned 
 as a farm house. If it is a suburban house, 
 it must be so planned. 
 
 By this I mean, that if it is to be a farm 
 house, it is well, for example, to have the 
 side entrance into a vestibule lavatory, so 
 that heavy boots and coats may be removed 
 there. Also, if you have a growing family, 
 you must plan your house so that it may be 
 expanded; so that it can be added to with- 
 out spoiling its beauty or its convenience. 
 For this reason, it is well to keep your house 
 as simple as you can in plan. A complicated 
 house plan is always difficult to modify. 
 
 The front hall must be reduced to a mini- 
 mum in a small house, so as to serve only for 
 stair and coat room accommodations. The 
 
 First and second floor plan of Mr. Dayton's house. 
 136 
 
THE PLAN ARRANGEMENT 
 
 An excellent modern example of the Dutch gambrel 
 sylvania. 
 
 hall may even be omitted, and the front door 
 opened into the living-room with the coat 
 closet and the stairs on one side of the room. 
 To insure protection against the weather on 
 entering the house, the entrance can be under 
 a covered porch. The living-room should 
 face the south. It should be light, but you 
 must beware of too many windows and doors. 
 
 A complete lay-out showing every piece of 
 furniture accurately drawn to scale in its 
 proper place should be made previous to 
 building. Wall space is essential for the 
 placing of furniture. 
 
 Light and room are necessities. A fire- 
 place can hardly be called a luxury. It 
 means many things to the room. It affords 
 good ventilation; it is the best ornament a 
 room can have, it is a place for a clock and 
 candlesticks; it gives out warmth and good 
 
 De Armond, Ashmead & Bickley, Architects, 
 roofed house is Mr. Dayton's house at Wynnewood, Penn- 
 
 cheer; it gives a raison d'etre for the hearth 
 rug, the symbol of a home, it provides a place 
 to hang the stockings on Christmas Eye, and 
 finally it generously offers a place into which 
 to throw all kinds of waste papers. 
 
 The dining-room should have an easterly 
 exposure, as the only family meal at which 
 it is possible in winter to have the sun is 
 breakfast and this is also the time in the day 
 in winter, spring and fall, when the warmth 
 of sunlight is most welcome. In the dining- 
 room it is a fine luxury to have a bay window 
 if you can. The room should open from the 
 hall or living-room, and should be directly 
 accessible to the kitchen. It may be made 
 a thoroughfare from the kitchen to the front 
 door, although this is not an ideal arrange- 
 ment. A fireplace here is of much less im- 
 portance than it is in the living-room. 
 137 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 The kitchen should be a laboratory pure 
 and simple, if the mistress is to use it alone. 
 If it is to be used by a domestic it may be 
 a combined laboratory and living-room. Di- 
 rect access from the kitchen should be had 
 to the cellar without the necessity of going 
 out of doors. It is a bad thing to put the 
 cellar stairs so that one has to reach them 
 by going into the pantry. The plan at the 
 top of this page shows the design of a 
 kitchen arrangement which may serve as a 
 basis for the discussion of what a kitchen 
 ought to be. 
 
 It is a model which in actual experience 
 would be modified in a hundred ways to 
 suit the conditions of the particular problem. 
 It shows : — 
 
 (a) Ice-box with door to permit filling 
 from the, outside. Mechanical refrigerators 
 are better than the ordinary ice-box, but they 
 are not ,yet made and sold at reasonable 
 prices for small houses. 
 
 (b) Fireless cooker. This should be com- 
 bined with the range, if the latter is a gas 
 range. 
 
 (c) Range. It is preferable to use a gas 
 or electric range, insulated for fireless cook- 
 ing. An oil range is an alternative. 
 
 (d) Sink. A pantry sink set into the 
 mixing shelf is a convenience. 
 
 (e) Cabinet. Whether "built in," or 
 merely set against the wall, such a cabinet, 
 supplemented by a cupboard under bread 
 shelf, and pot-hooks and shelves over range 
 and sink, provides place for utensils and sup- 
 plies. 
 
 (f) Slide. A slide from the dining-room 
 opening upon bread shelf for the passage 
 of dishes is very convenient. This slide is 
 shown dotted on the plan at the end of the 
 shelf near the dining-room door. 
 
 'KlTCHEJf'i^LAN' 
 
 (g) Stool. From this stool everything in 
 the laboratory can be reached. 
 
 The larger and more usual type of kitchen 
 is commonly used also as a sitting-room 
 for the "domestic." It should be laid out 
 in principle like the laboratory kitchen. A 
 good solution of the larger kitchen is to use 
 the laboratory kitchen with an alcove or ad- 
 ditional room to be used for a service dining- 
 and sitting-room. 
 
 The cellar should extend under the whole 
 house if possible, and should be adequately 
 lighted. An exterior entrance to the cellar 
 should be arranged. If the land slopes, the 
 cellar can be lighted by windows on the side 
 of the house which is the highest out of the 
 ground. If the land is fiat, it is far better 
 to use areas, so that adequate light will be 
 obtained without the necessity of raising the 
 first floor level high above the ground. 
 Many houses are so designed and the result 
 is that the houses have a very stilted appear- 
 
 138 
 
THE PLAN ARRANGEMENT 
 
 ance. Page 1 1 8 shows such an example. 
 
 The piazza or covered porch, in regions 
 where the southwest is the prevailing sum- 
 mer wind, should be on the northwest, or on 
 the east of the house. It lends itself to a 
 greater variety of uses if it is broad and 
 short, — that is, if it has the shape and size 
 of a room, — than if it is long and narrow. 
 It is also much more easily decorated and 
 much more distinctly a part of a private 
 house. If it is built so that it can be 
 screened in, it will afford still greater variety 
 of use. 
 
 The bedrooms of the house should be like 
 hospital wards, if one can use the word hos- 
 pital without running the danger of suggest- 
 ing unpleasant things. They should be 
 clean, gay, simple and airy. In any bed- 
 room much depends upon the closet. Size 
 alone is only a part of the need. Closets 
 should be designed with special fitness for 
 the clothes to be accommodated with drawer^, 
 poles and presses. Wherever possible, out- 
 side ventilation for the closets should be se- 
 cured but this does not mean that small, ec- 
 centric windows are permissible. 
 
 The sleeping balcony or sleeping porch is 
 a valuable adjunct, but I believe it is no im- 
 provement on a good bedroom, if it is built 
 with a solid rail and sash to fill the openings. 
 These effectually hinder the free movement 
 of air, which is the only virtue of out-of-door 
 sleeping. An open balustrade, with screens 
 of light canvas or duck above it permits of 
 free passage of air and allows the sun and 
 air to keep the floor and all its corners sweet 
 
 and dry at all times. The duck screen can 
 be swung from the ceiling during a shower, 
 and let down during a snow storm. 
 
 The bathroom nowadays takes care of it- 
 self. It is as much standardized as a tele- 
 phone, with its white porcelain and white' 
 enamel. If possible, the tub should sit ^ 
 squarely on the floor, so that there will be no 
 difficult cleaning. There should be a large 
 mirror and a large medicine cabinet, not one 
 of those silly shallow boxes that refuse to 
 hold a fat bottle. There should be an ample 
 supply of towel rods, and if a towel closet 
 can be managed it will be a great con- 
 venience. 
 
 Discuss and amplify all these things with 
 your architect, and you will probably get a 
 very good house. The temptation to quote an 
 architect who is still a friend of all his clients 
 is great. The architect is Mr. Harrie T. 
 Lindeberg, and he disproves the adage that 
 you can't build a proper house without mak- 
 ing an enemy of your client. His theory of 
 sjaccessful house planning is this : 
 
 "If you wish a successful house, give your 
 architect a free hand, not into your pocket- 
 book, but into your confidence and faith, be- 
 lieving he will work many times the harder, 
 knowing that you trust his judgment and 
 stand behind his decisions; and when all is 
 said and done, and your house is built, and 
 you are proud of being its owner, give now 
 and then a little credit where it is due, and 
 don't be guilty of that bromidic speech, 'We 
 designed the house ourselves; the architect 
 just drew it out for us !' " 
 
 139 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 Photograph by Coutant. Parker Morse Hooper, Architect. 
 
 Dr, Abbott's house at Cornwall, New York, is an example of small house architecture at its best. 
 
 140 
 
'ler/iAtm-'''^- 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 GOOD TASTE AND COMMON SENSE 
 
 BEFORE you begin considering the 
 interior of your home, you must con- 
 sider your own point of view. You 
 must take stock of yourself, and discover just 
 what you have to put into your house that 
 will make it a home. Things won't do it. 
 
 A home is not so much a place as it is a 
 state of mind. Lots of people who own 
 houses have n't really homes, and, by the 
 same token, lots of us who have a tiny apart- 
 ment or even a mere hall bedroom have 
 homes in the real sense of the word. We 
 will take the homes and home feeling for 
 granted. I assume that what we all want is 
 to make our homes a little finer and cleaner 
 and more beautiful. 
 
 By finer I mean more genuine. 
 
 By cleaner I mean freer from shams and 
 imitations. 
 
 By beautiful — well, that is a word that 
 holds its own meaning for each of us. There 
 is n't any better word, if you apply it hon- 
 estly. 
 
 Women who have a healthy interest in 
 their surroundings, who realize that no real 
 growth is possible in an unfriendly, jarring 
 
 atmosphere, who see the intimate relation of 
 environment and family life — these are the 
 women who have fun^iamentally good taste. 
 They need only an honest self-analysis to 
 become real home-makers. 
 
 The woman who asks for help and admits 
 that she does n't know everything, can de- 
 velop her sense of appreciation so that her 
 life will be full of a genuine joy that she has 
 never before realized. And this applies also 
 to men. Men are interested in developing 
 the interiors just as women are interested in 
 the building of their homes. Somehow the 
 greater interest in the practical problem be- 
 longs to the man, however, and the job of 
 making the house decorative and comfortable 
 is the woman's. And so one falls naturally 
 into discussing certain subjects with men, 
 and others with women. But every subject 
 discussed in this book should be of equal in- 
 terest to both. 
 
 Cheap and changing fashions have done 
 much to deter American women from real 
 appreciation of the principles of home 
 making. Prosperity has come so easily, and 
 there is such a fatal facility of imitating 
 
 141 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 good things, that we have ever changing epi- 
 demics of fashions in house furnishing that 
 are disastrous to the development of taste. 
 
 There are always new developments and 
 improvements in certain house furnishings, 
 .as in everything else, but there is no such 
 thing as the "latest wrinkle" in good taste. 
 If your grandmother left you a kitchen chair 
 that was made a hundred years ago from a 
 good model, it is better than the "latest" 
 chair of gilt legs and tawdry satij:i, or any 
 chair constructed from a worthless model to 
 meet the needs of women of no taste. But 
 if she left you a chair that was ugly, when it 
 was new, age has n't made it~^beautifulvv 
 
 It is the women who try to follow the 
 fashions' in house furnishings who have the 
 dreadful, dishonest hpiases that flourish all 
 over America. It is these women who have 
 furniture of every style, of every wood, of 
 every period, jumbled together in rooms 
 equally bad. 
 
 The intelligent woman when she buys a 
 chair demands that it shall be comfortable 
 to sit upon, beautiful to look at, and simple 
 and sturdy of construction. Even given these 
 things, it must be suitable to her needs or it is 
 not the chair for her. It must be in harmony 
 with her other furnishings and in scale with 
 her husband's means. 
 
 There are French chairs of damask and 
 carved wood that are comfortable, beautiful 
 and of exquisite workmanship, but they are 
 not suitable to the needs of the woman who 
 lives in a small house. Suitability is the first 
 and most important law of good taste. If a 
 thing is suitable it must necessarily be com- 
 fortable and beautiful and of sound construc- 
 tion. 
 
 Oh, the dishonest and pretentious spirit in 
 which so many women furnish their homes! 
 
 And the pity of it is that they are proud of 
 their shams, their imitations, their petty 
 hypocrisies. They glory in being a little 
 more magnificently gilded than their neigh- 
 bors. The only excuse for them is that they 
 are bewildered by a sea of things of no value. 
 "Bewildered" is a nicer word than "stupid." 
 
 How many houses we all know that have 
 not violenit p'ainti:ngs and grotesque crayon 
 "portraits" on the walls'? Is your house in- 
 nocent of them? None of these things are 
 beautiful. You know that. Every one 
 knows it. They are on our walls because 
 they iinitate the real things, because they are 
 "done by hand !" 
 
 There^ arethousands of beautiful prints 
 and engravings tcrbe-had for less money, and 
 yet we ^aje^ contented- with ifhrtations. A 
 _^print is not an imitation. It is a mechanical 
 copy, and i_t_doesji!r43j-etend to be anything 
 else. But a print gives us the picture the 
 master painted, and a cheap imitation gives 
 us merely an absurdity that is neither copy 
 nor cartoon, that has neither beauty nor value. 
 
 We live in an age of just-as-good-as things. 
 We hear daily of the high cost of living, of 
 the shallowness of religion, of superficial 
 education, of untrained daughters, of dis- 
 sipated sons, .of tired husbands, restless 
 wives. Much of this discontent, I firmly 
 believe, comes from the prosaic matter of 
 badly chosen chairs and tables and wall- 
 papers. A red wall-paper with fiendish 
 scrolls gives a man mental indigestion just as 
 surely as fried foods give him the other kind. 
 
 I believe that the houses of women who 
 are "pizen neat," who have uncomfortable 
 chairs placed just so, who have no logical 
 center for the family gathering, no reading 
 light, no books and magazines, no real touch 
 of home — these houses will result in disap- 
 42 
 
GOOD TASTE AND COMMON SENSE 
 
 Edmund B. Gilchrist, Architect. 
 
 Could anything be more suggestive of cool tranquillity than this charming picture of the library in Mr. W. W. 
 Gilchrist's house at St. Martins, Philadelphia? The fireplace with its front of artificial stone, framed by an ade- 
 quate molding, does not need the customary mantel-shelf. Note the entire absence of unnecessary ornament. 
 
 pointing children. Who could blame the 
 youngsters for preferring other people's 
 houses ? 
 
 Did you ever know a real, shabby home 
 room, with pjenty_^of books~and__cquches and 
 big chairs and flowers in the window, swarm- 
 ing with happy children? Didn't you get 
 a thrill of the real spirit of home from it? 
 If you have a real home room, the children of 
 your neighbors will get happiness from it, as 
 surely as your own. 
 
 If we could all follow William Morris's 
 
 advice, and have nothing in our houses that 
 we did not know to be useful, and believe to 
 be beautiful, how clean and genuine our chil- 
 dren would be ! 
 
 Lose your temper in a stately, well-ordered 
 room, and you will be shamed by the very 
 dignity of your surroundings. Go mto a 
 sunshiny family room when you are despond- 
 ent, and your mood will change; it can not 
 resist sunshine and good cheer. 
 
 You have n't time for petty jealousies if 
 you are surrounded by simple furnishings 
 
 143 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 and quiet colors and well-used books and ex- 
 cellent pictures. The friendly spirit of the 
 room gives you new poise, and petty things 
 are forgotten. 
 
 And — you could n't think great thoughts 
 in a dirty, cluttery room, for if the great 
 thoughts were there, you would be busy 
 making decent surroundings for yourself. 
 
 It is true that in the last generation we 
 have gone far on the road to good taste, but 
 think how far we had retrograded! Think 
 how beautiful were the simple houses of our 
 great-grandparents, — ^beautiful because of 
 their enforced simplicity, perhaps, but beau- 
 tiful just the same. They had the things 
 they required, and nothing more. 
 
 Thirty years ago women were so far from 
 this simplicity that they hung gilded shovels 
 and clothes-pins in their parlors. The sit- 
 ting-room, the living-room, and the drawing- 
 room were too "old-fashio"ned" for this gilded 
 period. "Parlor" was the word. 
 
 The accomplished ladies of the period 
 filled their parlors with "tidies." They tied 
 ribbons on chair backs, around vases, and I 
 have heard of a lady who tied ribbon around 
 the newel-post of her staircase! They 
 painted snow scenes on the tin tops of lard- 
 cans, and sunflowers on empty wine-jugs, 
 and cattails inside honest mixing bowls. It 
 is hard to conceive of the colossal stupidity 
 which made this epidemic possible, and yet we 
 have modern epidemics of china-painting and 
 burnt wood and crude stenciling that are al- 
 most as bad. I suppose we always shall have 
 them until we open our eyes and use them. 
 The best way to open our eyes to the es- 
 sential differences of good and bad taste is 
 to hold hard to our sense of humor, and to 
 let sentiment go. The excuse of sentiment 
 covers much that is banal and meaningless. 
 
 More than any other one thing, it retards 
 the growth of good taste. 
 
 Last winter a number of us who were in- 
 terested in the advancement of the decora- 
 tive arts arranged an exhibition of bad taste. 
 We were inspired by coming upon a large 
 statue of the Venus of Milo with a clock in 
 her stomach. The Venus reminded us of all 
 the atrocities in bad taste we had observed, 
 and we decided an arrangement of very bad 
 objects would be much more impressive than 
 all the good things that ever were. 
 
 We did not purpose to laugh at our grand- 
 mothers, or ourselves: we planned to pre- 
 sent a retrospective view of the art of home 
 decoration from which instruction and 
 amusement might be gained by the sensible 
 visitor. We showed the things that had 
 gone before rather than the things of to- 
 day because we wished to amuse our friends. 
 There. is nothing amusing in our modem cut 
 glass, our gaudy lamps, our disgusting orna- 
 mentation of things that were bad to begin 
 with, but there is always amusement in bad 
 things that happened a long while ago. A 
 lamp made to-day of stag antlers, a quart 
 of glass beads, and a few yards of puffings 
 of silk saddens us. A lamp made many 
 years ago of a milk jar covered with putty 
 and encrusted with a hundred odds and ends 
 — nails, ear rings, sea shells, buttons — af- 
 fords us unholy mirth. So we showed the 
 things of many years ago, depending on the 
 imaginations of our visitors to point the 
 parallel. 
 
 The exhibition was approved by over a 
 thousand visitors. Its lessons went home. 
 But there were disgruntled dozens who 
 called the wrath of their pet newspapers 
 down upon us because we "violated sacred 
 sentiment." They were entirely unable to 
 
 144 
 
GOOD TASTE AND COMMON SENSE 
 
 Harrie T. Lindeberg, Architect. 
 This bedroom in the Boardman Robinson house at Forest Hills, Long Island, owes much of its charm to the sub- 
 stantial old furniture. A gay, English chintz covers the four-post bed. The French windows lead to the sleeping 
 porch. 
 
 distinguish between filial sentiment and es- 
 thetic appreciation, and they found them- 
 selves in the ridiculous position of defend- 
 ing bad taste. 
 
 Good taste comes slowly, but it is the final 
 standard by which our homes must be judged. 
 
 When you study other people's houses and 
 analyze your own, consider always your own 
 needs. 
 
 Ask yourself: "What sort of home is 
 suitable to me, to my husband, to my chil- 
 dren? What furnishings do I actually re- 
 quire in my house — not my neighbor's house, 
 but my own house? What things have I 
 
 that will grow more beautiful the longer I 
 live with them? What things have I that 
 are worth leaving to my children?" 
 
 And, having worthy things, what sort of 
 house have you to place them in? Are its 
 walls pleasant in color ? Are they real back- 
 grounds for the life that must be lived in 
 your rooms? 
 
 Are your floors made to walk on, or are 
 they piled with rugs upon rugs? 
 
 Are your windows fulfilling their object 
 of giving light and air, or are they draped 
 and redraped with dusty curtains of no 
 utilitarian or artistic value? 
 
 HS 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 Is your woodwork grained to imitate some 
 wood, or is it real wood, waxed to a soft 
 glow? And if it isn't real, why haven't 
 you given it a coat of honest white paint? 
 
 Are your fireplaces real, or shams'? 
 
 Is your piano a piano, or is it a catch-all 
 for fringed velvet and motley bric-a-brac? 
 
 Happy the woman who has a few good 
 things to build upon, for a good thing is 
 always good — you may be sure of that. It 
 may not be always suitable. For instance, a 
 spinning-wheel that was both beautiful and 
 useful a hundred years ago is not at home 
 in a city apartment nowadays, but it is 
 the usefulness that has passed. The beauty 
 lives always. 
 
 The training of the eye is a long process. 
 
 but most amusing ! Its lessons are never tedi- 
 ous, though they are sometimes very shocking, 
 but you live through it all and watch your ap- 
 preciation grow as though it were a wonder- 
 ful plant. You cannot see actual growth, 
 but you discover by looking back from day 
 to day and from year to year that there has 
 been growth. You find yourself in a room 
 that yesterday seemed unobjectionable, and 
 to-day you resent its ugliness. You look at 
 a vase that you once thought beautiful, and 
 realize that it is impossible. When you 
 know that the room is ugly and the vase is 
 impossible ask yourself why it once appealed 
 to you, why it now offends you, and if you 
 can answer you have traveled far toward 
 good taste. 
 
 An old hooded doorway at Germantown, Pennsylvania. Note the delicacy of the moldines 
 
 146 
 
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 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE SHELL OF THE HOUSE 
 
 THE average woman's idea of beauti- 
 fying her home is to buy new things 
 for it. She covets a rug like Mrs. 
 Brown's, a cut-glass punch-bowl like Mrs. 
 Jones' and brand-new furniture like Mrs. 
 Robinson's. She thinks if she could only 
 add new household gods her home would 
 be a very fine place. She does not concern 
 herself with the possible beauty of the house 
 itself. It does not occur to her to work at 
 fundamentals first, to begin at the shell of 
 her house and work inward. 
 
 By the shell of the house I mean the walls, 
 floors, ceilings, woodwork, doors, windows, 
 mantels, cupboards, and in fact all the archi- 
 tectural details that make or mar the interior 
 of a house. The placing of a picture-rail is 
 of more importance than any amount of new 
 furniture, and a too elaborate mantel is worse 
 than any detached possession. 
 
 There is one period in house-building 
 when your house is potentially as beauti- 
 ful as you care to make it: when the shell 
 of it is ready for the workmen who will 
 smooth its rough edges and make a home of 
 
 it. I love to visit a house in the rough, to 
 wade through sand-piles and climb over 
 heaps of timber, to explore and speculate on 
 this promising home in the making. There 
 is a great fascination in the rough frame of 
 so much possible beauty and happiness. We 
 are free to wander through it, to anticipate 
 closets here and bookshelves there, to hang 
 its skeleton walls with the pictures that mean 
 beauty to us, to fill its fireplaces with log fires, 
 to cover its floors with magic rugs, to people 
 it with congenial friends — in short, to make 
 believe a home for ourselves. 
 
 How many houses I have enjoyed in the 
 rough, only to shudder over them when they 
 were finished and filled with unworthy 
 things! I have a strong sympathy for the 
 architect who plans beautiful interiors for 
 people of no appreciation. It must be hard 
 to plan an honest house for linen-and-ging- 
 ham people and then have them try to live 
 silk-and-plush lives. 
 
 Many of you have houses already, proba- 
 bly, and do not wish to make structural 
 changes. You may not be able to have new 
 47 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 Samuel Howe, Architect. 
 During the past decade the bungalows have become popular with bome-builders. Most of them, however, have 
 little value from an architectural point of view; they are too frequently overornamented and awkward in design. 
 This bungalow of Mr. Howe's has the merit of unpretentiousness. Its plan, somewhat modified, is given at the bot- 
 tom of this page. 
 
 doors and windows and mantels, but you can 
 improve those you have. You can deter- 
 mine the finish of your walls and ceilings. 
 You can make your floors good or bad. 
 You can at least empty your rooms, one at 
 a time, of furniture, and go to the root of 
 your troubles. When you have made the 
 best of the shell of the room you '11 be so 
 pleased with the restfulness of space that 
 you will be tucking your excess furniture 
 away in the attic, instead of coveting new 
 things. 
 
 Of course, if you are planning to build a 
 148 
 
THE SHELL OF THE HOUSE 
 
 new house, anything is possible for you. It 
 does n't matter how little you have to spend : 
 "Good taste builds a house for peasants to 
 live in." It is n't the lack of money that 
 makes so many houses commonplace, it is the 
 lack of forethought. Few of us will build 
 more than one house in a lifetime, therefore 
 we should build it wisely. I approve of 
 building your house with words and pencil 
 and paper. It does n't matter if you are n't 
 going to build for five years, or ten, you can 
 read books on architecture and decoration, 
 you can fill note-books with observations of 
 the mistakes and successes of your friends, 
 you can make scrap-books of house plans and 
 photographs and such, and when your house 
 is at last realized it will be well worth while. 
 
 As with the exterior, so the interior of your 
 house will be a success or not depending 
 largely on whether the detail, architectural 
 and other, is good. The three rooms which 
 ordinarily have the most detail in them are 
 the hall, the living room, and the dining 
 room. In these rooms it is not uncommon 
 to have fireplaces, wainscoting, cornices, 
 beamed ceilings, and built-in furniture in ad- 
 dition to the door and window trim which 
 is common throughout the house. Now all 
 these elements are architectural, and they 
 need as much consideration as the details on 
 the outside of your house. 
 
 A room consists broadly of three elements, 
 the floor, walls, and the ceiling. Of these 
 the walls of course present the greatest op- 
 portunity for bad design and bad treatment. 
 In the treatment of the room, to give an im- 
 pression of lightness, keep the tone of your 
 floor darker than your wall, and your walls 
 darker than the ceiling. The theory of this 
 treatment of the interior finds its parallel in 
 an out-of-doors landscape. If you look first 
 
 at the ground and then raise your eyes slowly, 
 you will see that the ground and the immedi- 
 ate foreground with its bushes and grass has 
 a stronger value than the distant fields and 
 hills, and the value of these fields and hills is 
 stronger than the value of the sky at the 
 horizon, and the value of the sky at the hori- 
 zon is stronger that that of the sky higher up. 
 This is why the arrangement of an oak floor 
 covered with dark blue or green oriental rugs, 
 with the walls papered or tinted in some tone 
 of light gray or light yellow and the ceiling 
 
 Drawn by Charles S. Chapman 
 
 There is fine dignity in the uncluttered spaces of this 
 room in the Casa Blanca, San Angel, Mexico. 
 149 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
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 Photograph by Lillian Baynes Griffin. 
 
 This house, on the north shore of Long Island Sound, fits well into its surroundings. 
 
 treated with the plain white or the faintest 
 tinge of color, gives an impression of gayness 
 and space. 
 
 If you wish to have an interior which is 
 gloomy, keep the ceiling darker than the 
 walls, and the walls darker than the floor. 
 
 Not so long ago people generally refused 
 to admit the presence of floors in their houses. 
 They concealed them with carefully fitted 
 velvet carpets, thi?ck of pile and gaudy of 
 coloring. They pretended to like walking 
 on beds of cabbage roses and bows of ribbons. 
 They even added insult to injury by piling 
 rugs upon carpets, and insulted the hearth by 
 flinging a rug representing a life-size collie 
 dog, done in red and green and brown, before 
 it. They did n't question the wisdom of 
 having dogs and sheep and flowers beneath 
 their feet — ^but accepted them as being finer 
 than plain boards, because their neighbors ac- 
 cepted them. 
 
 Then came the wave of interest in sanita- 
 tion, in hygiene, and the dreadful carpets 
 
 gave way to expensive parquetry floors. 
 The floors probably had intricate patterns of 
 different colored blocks of wood. I have 
 seen may parquetry floors that were quite as 
 bad as flowered carpets. The parquetry man 
 has a devilish ingenuity, as any one who will 
 take the trouble to enter his shop can see. 
 He can execute squirrels cracking nuts, palm- 
 leaf fans, American flags, lilies-of-the-valley, 
 and lions in the jungle, all in many colored 
 woods. But do you want picture-puzzle 
 floors'? I don't think so. Good honest 
 boards, well polished, with just enough rugs 
 to give warmth and softness, are good enough 
 for any house. 
 
 I am not condemning parquetry floors. 
 Those made of blocks of wood of uniform 
 size and of not too abrupt a gradation in 
 color are very good. The floor to be avoided 
 is the conspicuous floor, the floor that ceases 
 to be a background and jumps up to meet 
 you when you enter the room. A floor of 
 bricks or tiles is beautiful, because we ex- 
 150 
 
THE SHELL OF THE HOUSE 
 
 pect bricks and tiles to come in small squares 
 and oblongs. But we expect lumber in long 
 pieces, and a floor composed of boards that 
 have 'been carefully cut apart and then put 
 together again reminds us of the mere man 
 who pondered over the eyelet embroidery 
 that occupied his wife: What could be the 
 wisdom of punching holes in cloth just to sew 
 them up again? 
 
 If you have an old house with floors made 
 of wide boards, paint them. Hardwood 
 floors are preferable to. painted floors, but 
 painted boards are infinitely better than car- 
 pets. One of the best houses I knQw is a 
 New England farmhouse now used as a sum- 
 mer home by people who appreciate its good 
 points. It was necessary to lay new floors 
 in the bedrooms, but the downstairs rooms 
 were floored with eighteen-inch boards, en- 
 tirely too fine to be discarded. The old 
 house is square, four rooms to a floor, each 
 room wainscoted with plain white boards 
 on three walls and paneled to the ceiling on 
 the fireplace wall. The woodwork is all 
 white, the walls painted a soft robin's-egg 
 blue, and the wide boards of the floor are 
 painted a bright leaf -green. This treatment, 
 with simple New England furniture, rag 
 rugs, Swiss curtains, open fireplaces with 
 well used brasses, and huge jugs of wild 
 flowers, is somehow exactly right. You feel 
 that the green boards are responsible for the 
 rightness of it. 
 
 It might be safely said that all New Eng- 
 land ceilings are too low, and all Southern 
 ceilings too high. The cause is obvious : the 
 New England house was built to conserve 
 warmth in winter, and the Southern house 
 was built for summer comfort. Architec- 
 tural effects were n't often considered in 
 either; perhaps that is why they are so good, 
 
 despite their ceilings. Carpenters were con- 
 tent to be carpenters in those days, and they 
 built for utility and comfort. They had n't 
 begun to pretend to be architects. 
 
 The matter of the height of your ceiling 
 depends to a certain extent on the amount of 
 window space you have. It was the fashion 
 formerly to make the story heights consider- 
 able. In the period of 1880 a room height 
 of eleven feet was not unusual, whereas now 
 in modest country work a room height from 
 eight to nine feet, except for a very large 
 room, say over sixteen feet by twenty-five 
 feet, is generally recognized as adequate. 
 One great advantage of the lower room is 
 that it is much easier to decorate. If you 
 use a beamed ceiling, count your ceiling 
 height from the bottom of the apparent 
 beams, and do not make your beams project 
 much from the ceiling. Beams four inches 
 deep and five inches wide spaced about two 
 feet on center is an average good arrangement 
 for a span of fifteen feet. 
 
 The treatment of a low-ceiled room is 
 simple: the wall color should meet the ceil- 
 ing, with a narrow molding as dividing line. 
 
 There are many ways of lowering a too- 
 high ceiling. The simplest method is' to 
 drop the picture-rail four or five feet, and 
 treat the wall-space above the rail as a part 
 of the ceiling. Then you will not be con- 
 scious of where frieze-space stops and ceiling 
 begins. The eye will travel no higher than 
 the picture rail. 
 
 The other method is to have a simple 
 wainscoting three or four feet deep, painted 
 or stained to match the rest of the woodwork, 
 and a smaller space between picture-rail and 
 ceiling. Wainscotings are very good in any 
 high-ceilinged rooms that have cream or 
 white woodwork, but a wainscoting of dark 
 
 151 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 Drawn by Charles S. Chapman 
 
 Here brown woodwork is used with brown beamed ceiling and cream washed walls, 
 of the settles, the "built-in" cupboard, and the English treatment of the fireplace. 
 
 Note the generous width 
 
 wood is too formal a finish for any room, ex- 
 cept halls and libraries, or living-rooms with 
 dark tinted walls. 
 
 The treatment of your ceiling should be 
 determined by the finish of your walls and 
 woodwork. Plain whitewashed ceilings are 
 always safe, but a cream wash is better than 
 dead white, just as cream paint is better for 
 woodwork than white. Pure white is the 
 most difficult of colors for the amateur deco- 
 rator. It should be used sparingly. 
 
 If you are fortunate enough to have a 
 beamed ceiling, the beams should be scraped 
 to the grain and waxed. I have seen brown 
 oak beams in a room finished in white wood- 
 
 work, and the effect was excellent, but usu- 
 ally it is better to have beams and woodwork 
 of the same wood and finish. If you have 
 brown oak woodwork and beams, the plas- 
 tered space above the picture-rail and the 
 spaces between the beams may be cream or 
 yellow or gray or tan. If your beamed room 
 has mahogany doors and furniture and white 
 woodwork, paint beams and ceiling white. 
 
 The next stumbling block is the window 
 and door trim. Here is where the carpenter 
 designed house again betrays itself; because 
 in it the trim is almost sure to be too heavy 
 and the moldings too coarse. There is no 
 need of using a "stock" molding, which is 
 
 152 
 
THE SHELL OF THE HOUSE 
 
 almost invariably ugly. One of the cheap- 
 est and best looking window and door trims 
 is shown below (A). It is not only inex- 
 pensive, but is easy to put in position. The 
 double hung window as it is generally built 
 requires a width of trim of at least five inches 
 to cover the plaster. It can be designed so 
 that it will be narrower, and as a rule the 
 narrower it is made, the better it looks. 
 
 If your trim is of this type, the flat part 
 of the trim may be kept narrow by using a 
 back-molding as shown (BB), and thus gain 
 the necessary width. 
 
 There is a saying that " interior detail can- 
 not be made too small in scale" and while it 
 is an exaggeration, there is much truth in it. 
 Keep your trim as small as you can, and 
 
 keep it simple, if you wish to get an attrac- 
 tive and restrained effect. 
 
 If the trim is painted white it can afford 
 to be molded, and the moldings can be finer 
 in scale, than if it is stained. With stained 
 woodwork the shadows of the molding do not 
 stand out clearly, whereas with white painted 
 woodwork the trim may be so flat that it may 
 seem bald and uninteresting. 
 
 If you wish to stain your trim, go warily. 
 Dark woodwork is an absolutely compelling 
 precedent: you have to follow its de- 
 mands. Chestnut, or oak, or redwood, or 
 whatever wood you please may be used with 
 excellent results if you plan every stick of 
 your furniture to harmonize with it. Other- 
 wise, there is great danger of clashing effects. 
 
 Both these types of door trim avoid the necessity of mitered corners. The examole at the left is taken from an 
 old house on Long Island. Its charm rests on the excellence of its molded section. It is better, however, in small 
 houses to employ as narrovy a trim as possible; sJ4" is a maximum width; 4" to 4^4" is far better. For general 
 purposes for doors and windows the trim shown at the right is excellent; easy to construct and effective in its sim- 
 plicity. Note the paneling of the doors. 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 If you have been tempted by some arch fiend 
 of a "painter and decorator" (generally a 
 near-American who does n't speak English 
 and who believes that a cut-out border of 
 pink roses or purple grapes is the last word 
 in wall decoration) to stain all your wood- 
 work to imitate mahogany, for instance, I 
 pity you. You have set the mark of indiffer- 
 ence upon yourself. A birch chair may be 
 stained to imitate mahogany, and it may re- 
 main unobtrusive. But the moment mahog- 
 any woodwork asserts itself we "look it in the 
 grain." It must be real. There is the chance 
 of" changing the chair, you see. The wood- 
 work is a fundamental, and should be what 
 it seems. 
 
 This does not mean that your woodwork 
 will lose in character if you paint it. Paint 
 is paint — if it is applied properly. It may 
 be streaked and wiggled to imitate graining 
 and knot holes, and it becomes a nameless 
 thing that has no excuse for being. We are 
 accustomed to think of painted woodwork 
 as being white, cream, or French gray, but 
 given proper consideration there are many 
 other colors that may be applied to the trim 
 of a room. Yellow, putty-color, a dull 
 green-blue, a gray green or a yellow green, 
 — all these colors may be applied to wood- 
 work if the color of the room is worked out 
 skilfully. 
 
 I know a kitchen in an old Long Island 
 farmhouse that has dark blue woodwork 
 and pale gray plaster walls. The dark blue 
 doors are relieved by gray trees painted 
 upon them. The room is very successful. 
 There is a room in another house where the 
 walls and woodwork are painted bright yel- 
 low, and the curtains are of a blue that has 
 a tinge of green in it. Another has the 
 woodwork painted cream, with an orange 
 
 line outlining door panels and moldings. A 
 little cottage has all its walls washed with 
 dull green and all its woodwork painted a 
 very, much darker shade of the same color. 
 All these rooms were planned by people who 
 understand color, and therefore were able to 
 do as they pleased. 
 
 This freedom that comes with sound taste 
 applies also to staining woodwork: gray, 
 green, and even violet may be rubbed lightly 
 into raw wood by a man who knows what he 
 is doing. If you are n't sure of yourself, stick 
 to neutral colored paints and stains. Avoid 
 imitation mahogany always, but use brown 
 or gray stains on almost any wood you 
 please. If you have real oak or chestnut 
 trim, by all means give it the effect of oak 
 or chestnut, if you don't care for painted 
 trim. 
 
 Granted that you are willing to choose all 
 your furniture and rugs and wall-papers to 
 go with oak or chestnut woodwork, avoid var- 
 nishes 'if you would keep your self-respect. 
 Almost any wood may be stained lightly and 
 waxed, and it will be good in effect, but there 
 never was a wood that would stand a thick 
 coat of varnish. Polish it as much as you 
 please, stain it judiciously to heighten the 
 shadows of the grain, but don't varnish it. 
 
 There is a deplorable fashion in the South 
 and West that has sprung from the vogue of 
 yellow-pine woodwork. This is to make 
 the floors, ceilings, wainscoting and wood- 
 work of a room of yellow-pine boards, oiled 
 or varnished to a slippery degree, and to 
 plaster the walls a ghastly white. The 
 floors will take on a good color with age and 
 use, but the shiny ceiling, eternally threaten- 
 ing, is unpardonable. Yellow pine may be 
 made very beautiful by rubbing in a tan or 
 gray or brown stain, but in the natural finish 
 
 154 
 
THE SHELL OF THE HOUSE 
 
 Howard Greenley, Architect. 
 An excellent adaptation of the English type of small houses. The plans, shown below, are carefully thought out. 
 
 it has the color of a bar of laundry soap. 
 No matter how good your furniture may be, 
 yellow pine kills it. 
 
 The only thing to do with such a room is 
 to paint every bit of the wood, except the 
 floor, white or cream. If the varnish were 
 not so thick you might stain the woodwork 
 and paint the ceiling white or cream, but 
 
 whatever you do, paint the ceiling! It will 
 no longer hang like a pall over your room. 
 And do something to those ghastly white 
 walls ! If you don't like wall-papers or col- 
 ored walls, if you are waiting for your house 
 to settle, paint the walls a soft cream or tan 
 or gray. White walls are as mistaken as. 
 oiled pine ceilings: all physicians and ocu- 
 
 155 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 lists deplore the distressing effects of the 
 white glare on the nerves. There is no rea- 
 son in the world why white should be con- 
 sidered cleaner for walls than cream or tan 
 or yellow. 
 
 There is another mistaken ceiling treat- 
 ment that has been brought about by cata- 
 logues of wall-papers probably, and this is to 
 paper ceilings with moire papers, or papers 
 sparkling with stars. Moire suggests a 
 watered surface, and why should we wish our 
 ceilings to remind us of the rippling of 
 waves? As for the stars — go outside for 
 them. Forego the indulgence of a papered 
 ceiling, and buy a better paper for your 
 walls. 
 
 These are the general first considerations 
 of the shell of the house — floors, ceilings, and 
 woodwork. T^ treatment of walls will be 
 discussed in another chapter. 
 
 There is another subject which really 
 should be considered while the house is in the 
 shell, and that is the matter of built-in furni- 
 ture. It does n't matter whether your house 
 is still in embryo; whether you are making 
 over an old house planned and built by some 
 one else, you can make it very much more 
 your own by building certain things. You 
 may have lived in your house for years, and 
 still find there are advantages in built-in 
 furniture that you cannot afford to disre- 
 gard. 
 
 To be good at all, it must be very, very 
 good. Otherwise, it is n't furniture. Grant- 
 ing that it is well designed, well constructed, 
 and a logical part of the room, its case may 
 be summed up pretty much as follows : 
 
 It is more interesting than "detached" 
 furniture because it has a flavor of the de- 
 signer's personality, a suggestion of judicious 
 planning. 
 
 It is more dignified, because it has been 
 planned for permanency. 
 
 It is more decorative, because it has been 
 considered as a part of a whole, and there- 
 fore has an architectural relation to the room. 
 
 It is more reposeful, because it keeps its 
 place as a part of the wall. 
 
 It is more durable, because it cannot be 
 mauled about by the careless. 
 
 It is more economical because it may be 
 constructed at a nominal cost of labor and 
 material, and, once finished, it invites no 
 further outlay. 
 
 Built-in furniture is very good in a small 
 room, because it takes and keeps its place as 
 a part of the wall, and increases the floor 
 space. It is advantageous in a room of great 
 size,, because it then becomes of architectural 
 importance, and may be of great decorative 
 value in mass and color if its conception is in 
 scale with the architect's conception of the 
 room as a whole. 
 
 Built-in furniture, on the other hand, is 
 for the permanent home, not for the transi- 
 tory one. If you are n't satisfied with the 
 house you live in, you 'd better buy things 
 you can move. 
 
 It must be well built, because you. cannot 
 change it as you would an unsatisfactory 
 chair or table. 
 
 It must be logically placed, because there 
 is no latitude of change in a room that has 
 been so furnished, and what normal woman 
 does n't love to move furniture about? So 
 it will be best to build in only the things that 
 belong inevitably where you place them. 
 
 It has a dignity which must be respected; 
 it will not stand being "prettified." Give it 
 no laces and ribbons, or you '11 destroy its 
 reason for being. Its restraint and formal- 
 ity must be preserved. The ideal built-in 
 .56 
 
THE SHELL OF THE HOUSE 
 
 Drawn hy C. S. Chapman 
 
 This fireplace is in a remodeled barn near Brookhaven, Long Island, 
 boards is ingenidus and decorative. 
 
 The treatment of the useful little cup- 
 
 furniture represents great simplicity and per- 
 fect craftsmanship. 
 
 For so many years we women were slaves 
 to bulky things ! We did n't think for our- 
 selves. Our classic houses had too much of 
 geometrical exactness to permit closets, or 
 window-seats, or open book-shelves, and we 
 meekly endured the colossal furniture that 
 was thrust upon us. Some of us still endure 
 — more 's the pity ! There are still incredible 
 houses where ponderous wardrobes serve in- 
 stead of closets, and heavy bookcases tower 
 to the ceiling, with dim glass doors efEectu- 
 ally concealing the books. 
 
 Haven't you seen those beautiful old 
 
 secretaries with diamond-paned doors, and on 
 the broad projecting shelf the collection of 
 family bric-a-brac which had to be removed 
 piece by piece before you could open the door 
 and get a book? Such bookcases were not 
 very encouraging to the children's love of 
 reading. Surely there could be nothing 
 more sensible than open bookshelves, with the 
 friendly books spread out invitingly and the 
 mosaic of their bindings adding to the decora- 
 tion of the room. And yet I know many 
 people who protest at open book-shelves. 
 
 The smaller our house, the more necessary 
 it becomes to consider its possibilities. We 
 must not forget that the fireplace with its 
 
 157 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 surmounting mantel, the windows with their 
 ■broad sills, the closets and cupboards, are 
 all architectural furniture, and must be 
 studied in relation to the detached objects to 
 be brought into the room, as well as in rela- 
 tion to the window-seats, the settles, the open 
 book-shelves, that will become a part of the 
 room. A closet with well placed shelves 
 and glass doors becomes as definite and use- 
 ful a part of the furnishings of the dining- 
 room as the chairs and table. The chimney- 
 piece invites book-shelves in the recess flank- 
 ing it, and the book-shelves invite settles, 
 and so an ordinary corner becomes a place 
 for foregathering. The turn of the stair in- 
 vites another settle, with a woodbox beneath 
 
 its seat. A group of windows invites a long 
 window-seat, with a latticed paneling that 
 conceals the necessary, but hideous, radiators. 
 The kitchen, of course, is practically madie up 
 of built-in furniture. It needs no argument. 
 Every angle of the house should be given 
 the furniture it invites, and convention 
 should be subordinated to ingenuity. When 
 the house is finished it will be pleasantly 
 furnished : only tables and chairs will be im- 
 mediately necessary. You can wait com- 
 fortably for the things you really want. 
 There will be no temptation to rush in and 
 buy recklessly, and in the fullness of time you 
 will be able to furnish your home with 
 "finds" that will become real household gods. 
 
 „ Kilham and Hopkins, Architects. 
 
 Here advantage has been taken of the steep slope of the hillside in order to give an interesting and unusual 
 appearance to the house. 
 
 158 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 A PLEA FOR THE HEARTH 
 
 BEFORE we go further into the treat- 
 ment of walls and windows, of 
 woodwork and built-in furniture, I 
 want to talk about the most important fea- 
 ture of the shell of the house : The Hearth. 
 I like to think that all houses, no matter 
 how dreary they may be at times, become 
 homes once a year, at Christmas. If happi- 
 ness does n't fill your house at Christmas 
 there is something radically wrong with the 
 house or the people in it. I wonder if the 
 fault is with the house? I wonder if it is 
 built around a hearth? 
 
 There was a time when the hearth was to 
 the house what the heart is to the body; 
 when the hanging of the crane was the 
 symbol of the birth of a home; when fire- 
 glow was the evening light; when the spin- 
 ning wheel whirred here, and the meals were 
 prepared here, and the hooded cradle was 
 snug in the shadows of the settle; when fam- 
 ily traditions and folk songs and fairy tales 
 and prayers were handed down from one gen- 
 eration to another; when the problems of 
 the family and the nation were discussed 
 
 here; when the passing traveler was wel- 
 comed for the sake of hospitality, and for 
 the sake of news of the world outside. The 
 hearth was the foundation. The home was 
 an elastic place built aroimd it. 
 
 The hearth stood for something more than 
 mere physical comfort then. It stood pre- 
 eminently for family loyalty, and we must 
 be skilful indeed to give our children this 
 saving quality in the mechanical shoe boxes 
 that jerry-builders thrust upon us and call 
 "homes." 
 
 Certainly none of us wishes to revive the 
 primitive customs of our ancestors. We are 
 vastly better off materially; we understand 
 hygiene and sanitation and many things our 
 forebears had no time to contemplate. We 
 read by well-shaded lights and save our eyes. 
 We buy our cloth ready spun and woven, 
 and have no regret for spinning-wheel days. 
 We are done with the drudgery of the crane 
 and its ungainly pots, and we no longer re- 
 quire the services of the warming pan — ^we 
 treasure it for decorative purposes! Our 
 houses are as warm as toast, Aladdin-warm, 
 
 159 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 Edmund B. Gilchrist, Architect. 
 This shows the advantages of a well-arranged foreground. The house is Mr. W. W. Gilchrist's at St. Martins, 
 Philadelphia. 
 
 and we have no material need of the old- 
 time hearth. 
 
 But — there is another side to the picture. 
 Are the fairy stories in gaily covered bind- 
 ings as wonderful as were those we heard 
 from our mother's lips when we were chil- 
 dren? Do the illustrations compare with 
 the marvelous pictures we saw in the flames ? 
 Can the modern wedding trip be as soul-sat- 
 isfying as was the ceremony of the hanging 
 of the crane"? Are the newspapers more in- 
 teresting than were the travelers from the 
 outside world? Are grandfather's Memoirs, 
 bound in tooled leather, worth as much to 
 our children as the family traditions those 
 other grandfathers passed on to the crackle 
 of the logs and the flare of the flames'? 
 Have we any such logical home center, where 
 we may meet and talk, or listen, with the 
 
 feeling of home and family strong within 
 us? 
 
 Think it over: when you were a child, 
 did n't most of the things that really mat- 
 tered have the hearth as background? I am 
 sorry for our modern children, with their 
 orderly lives and their rigid routine and 
 nothing to touch the spark to their imagina- 
 tions. Poor dears! What chance have 
 they in our smug, shiny little houses that are 
 so empty of tradition? Material things 
 have improved amazingly, but if we have 
 lost a jot of the strong feeling for family 
 that should be ours, all our gain is as noth- 
 ing, for the happiness of the whole world 
 depends upon the conservation of family 
 life. 
 
 Two of my friends, young married people, 
 recently built a house in a suburb of New 
 
 160 
 
A PLEA FOR THE HEARTH 
 
 York. They had lived for years in apart- 
 ments, and were quite happy until the chil- 
 dren came, and then, Mary said, she had to 
 have a real home with a Hearth. She 
 couldn't tell her children fairy stories be- 
 side a steam radiator, and, more important 
 still, - she wanted them to say their little 
 prayers at her knee before an open fire. 
 
 So the house was built and became a home, 
 because thoughtful people made it. The 
 home room was planned to last forever and 
 ever, the walls paneled with brown oak, with 
 many built-in bookcases as a logical part of 
 
 the paneling. Many windows flooded the 
 room with sunshine, and the furniture was 
 comfortable and simple. The whole room 
 led up to a great chimney-piece, with an open 
 fireplace of red brick. At right angles to 
 the chimney-piece was a huge settle:, roomy 
 enough for comfort. The climax was the 
 portrait enclosed in the paneling above the 
 mantel-shelf, a charming old gentleman with 
 white hair and ruddy cheeks and smiling lips. 
 Mary confessed to me that she bought 
 him! She said she didn't feel that a home 
 was a real home without a grandfather or a 
 
 Edmund B. Gilchrist, Architect. 
 This mantel is in the dining-room of Mr. W. W. Gilchrist's house at St. Martins, Philadelphia. Note the air 
 of simplicity given by the unframed painting. 
 
 161 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 great-aunt or some nice old person who could 
 teach the children the things that only old 
 people can teach. She was the young 
 daughter of a younger daughter, and so the 
 family portraits had gone to others, and 
 when she needed an ancestor she calmly went 
 forth and bought him. She calls him the 
 General, and Sir, and all sorts of lovable 
 names, and the children call him Uncle Jim. 
 They are in the secret and quite approve of 
 him, and he — well, Mary declares that he 
 positively twinkles with joy at his adopted 
 family. 
 
 "Hestands for dignity, and Sunday-quiet, 
 and time-to-live," says Mary; "and just let 
 me tell you that we mothers of this mechan- 
 ical age have to give our children a feeling 
 for these things. My home is a home, 
 thanks to our love for it, and the Hearth, 
 and Uncle Jim. We have open fires on cool 
 evenings the year 'round, and on winter 
 Sundays, and on all our birthdays and high 
 days. I have n't a piano yet, because I can't 
 afford that and logs too, but at this stage of 
 the game open fires mean more to children 
 than music. We have story-tellings and 
 songs and beautiful times before the fire. 
 The children hear all the legends and stories 
 we heard when we were children, and they 
 can hang up their own stockings before a 
 real chimney at Christmas, which is every 
 child's divine right. 
 
 "I could sing for joy at the development 
 of their imaginations, for they tell me amaz- 
 ing stories of things they see in the flames. 
 Can you imagine a child telling his mother a 
 story out of his own insides, as Billy says, 
 before a radiator^ I can't! I tell you 
 there is nothing that can take the place of 
 the Hearth." 
 
 Now Mary is what I call a real home- 
 
 162 
 
 maker. She feels the Spirit back of the 
 Thing. 
 
 I suppose that to the mothers who have 
 real homes this chapter seems unnecessarily 
 strong. But I have seen so many false man- 
 tels, and filled-in fireplaces and hearthless 
 houses lately that I am alarmed at the trend 
 of it all. I appreciate the high cost of liv- 
 ing and the formidable cost of coal and 
 wood, but we can always find a way to enjoy 
 the things we very much desire. The very 
 poor have no hearths, perhaps, but they can 
 make the kitchen stove a substitute, and find 
 in it something our expensive "false man- 
 tels" can not give; something to gather 
 around. No one ever had a desire to pull 
 his chair up to a false mantel or a radiator. 
 
 A living-room without a fireplace is un- 
 satisfying, but it is infinitely better than a 
 room that is dominated by a false mantel, of 
 the kind so often seen in apartment-houses, 
 and indeed in thousands of private houses. 
 A false mantel is a dreadful imitation of an 
 honored tradition. It is a mere excrescence, 
 with no grate behind the elaborate "bronze" 
 fire-front, no flue, no excuse for being. 
 The jerry-builder knows that traditions die 
 hard, and this is his way of giving you a 
 hearth. 
 
 You can forgive people who tolerate one 
 of these mantels in an apartment, because 
 you know that often the landlord admires 
 the thing and refuses to allow its removal. 
 But how can any man tolerate such a sham 
 in his own house? Somehow, one feels that 
 a man will be honest in his own house, even 
 if he does blink at shams in other people's 
 houses. 
 
 Contrast these sham mantels with the big 
 homelike chimney-pieces on pages 152 and 
 157. Doesn't the one with the settle sug- 
 
A PLEA FOR THE HEARTH 
 
 In this remodeled Colonial house the huge fireplace has been preserved intact. Note the flagstone floor. 
 
 gest a good book and a basket of apples and 
 a long winter evening? Does n't the other 
 one — the more informal brick one, with its 
 useful little cupboards — suggest real warmth 
 and hospitality? 
 
 Granted that fuel is a luxury; couldn't 
 you provide an open fire for your family on 
 gala occasions'? How did we ever dare 
 eliminate the hearth from our homes, I won- 
 der? I dare say the day will come when 
 some one will invent a system of illumina- 
 tion that will make sunshine unfashionable, 
 and a system of ventilation that will result 
 in windowless houses, to those who lose all 
 the spirit of home-making. 
 
 And yet I think there will always be 
 homes where the hearth will be the honored 
 center of things. Even in New York, where 
 the cost of living is felt most keenly, and 
 home-making is most difficult, I know many 
 people who put up with the inconven- 
 iences of old-fashioned apartments that they 
 may have fires in open grates. Old Father 
 Knickerbocker provides wood for his chil- 
 dren at a small consideration — in his munic- 
 ipal woodyards. Surely, then there is no 
 part of the country where fuel is an impossi- 
 ble luxury. 
 
 The French have a thrifty custom that is 
 very pleasant for people who have a little 
 
 163 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 fireplace and no fuel for it. They save all 
 the waste paper and dried leaves and flowers, 
 and every evening make it into a "fagot." 
 The fagot is made by emptying the contents 
 of the waste-baskets upon several thicknesses 
 of newspaper, rolling up the paper until it 
 becomes a "log," and twisting the ends 
 tightly. Then the fagot is wrapped with a 
 cord, placed in the fireplace, and a light is 
 touched to each end. In a moment there is 
 a wonderful fire. 
 
 Try it, and you will soon become a 
 connoisseur in fagots, and discover that 
 orange-peel makes a wondrous blue flame, 
 and that laurel leaves crackle delightfully 
 and that for special occasions a few chunks 
 of old rotting wood will give a flare worthy 
 of a Fourth-o'-July fireworks-maker. 
 
 What can we bring into our homes that 
 
 will give the beauty and cheer of an open 
 fire? Music and books and good appetite 
 and sunshine and sound sleep and clear water 
 — all these are essential luxuries in our 
 homes, but the supreme luxury is the open 
 fire on the hearth. 
 
 So I plead for one real fireplace, as big or 
 little as you please, and an occasional fire in 
 it. It will be worth any sacrifice you may 
 have to make for it. Have all the radiators 
 you need, but have also this one hearth, 
 where you can gather your children around 
 you and teach them the things the hearth has 
 stood for for hundreds . of years : a place 
 where Christmas is Christmas, where stock- 
 ings can hang, and where, in the long years 
 to follow, the children may come in their 
 day-dreams, and bless the memory of the 
 place you made home. 
 
 Harrie T. Lindeberg, Architect. 
 The Boardman Robinson house at Forest Hills, Long Island, is unusually successful in its suggestion of old- 
 world picturesqueness. Note the unbroken roof surfaces, the plain walls and the ample chimneys. 
 
 164 
 
r*-^ 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 DETAILS OF INTERIOR DESIGN 
 
 JUST as windows, doorways, porches 
 and chimneys determine the appear- 
 ance of the exterior, so do the chim- 
 neypieces and their mantels, the staircases, 
 doors, and the lesser details such as hard- 
 ware and lighting fixtures add to or detract 
 from the attractiveness of the interior of 
 your house. 
 
 We have considered some of the architec- 
 tural details of the interior, such as the built- 
 in conveniences that are a part of the shell of 
 the house, but there are so many things still 
 to. be said that it seems hopeless to do more 
 than count them off on our fingers, and leave 
 their real consideration to you. 
 
 The design of the staircase is almost always 
 a stumbling block. If the staircase is in evi- 
 dence at all, it is the most important thing 
 in sight. If you don't wish it to dominate 
 your hall, or living-room, you can keep it 
 out of sight by having it go straight up be- 
 tween two walls. Indeed, in a small house 
 where there is to be only one stairway, this 
 
 is the ideal arrangement. It makes for pri- 
 vacy, obviates draughts, and simplifies to a 
 certain extent the heating of the halls into 
 which it opens. Given plenty of light and 
 headroom, an enclosed staircase is most de- 
 sirable. 
 
 Of course, there will always be houses in 
 which the treatment of the staircase will fol- 
 low the traditions : Colonial houses with their 
 wide, long halls, would seem queer without 
 their long stairways of white spindles and 
 mahogany handrails. Certairi houses of the 
 English type will always invite open stair- 
 ways with interesting screenwork of oak tak- 
 ing the place of spindles. 
 
 Study the staircases of the good houses 
 about you. Study their columns and posts in 
 the same spirit in which you examine out-of- 
 door columns and railings. The same prin- 
 ciples apply to both. It would be possible 
 to go into great detail, but the main thing to 
 remember is that the usual defects lie in over- 
 ornamentation of the stairposts and balus- 
 
 165 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 trades. Observe the modest detail of the 
 staircase on page 167. It is a lesson in sen- 
 sible detail. The staircase in the Colonial 
 hallway shown on page 185 is equally good, 
 but of an entirely different type. Here 
 there is a gracious quality in keeping with 
 the broad spaces of the Colonial hall. 
 
 A staircase coming directly into the living- 
 room is a mistake, unless the family is very 
 small indeed. There should be at least a 
 possibility for privacy, even if it be obtained 
 by the use of a screen or a curtain cutting off 
 a small stairhall. If there are several living- 
 rooms, this is not so. important, for a chance 
 visitor may be left in some other room until 
 the family room is ready fpr him. 
 
 All staircases, whether they be- conspicu- 
 ous or concealed, should have easy treads and 
 should be reasonably broad. It is necessary 
 not only to provide for people with eccentric 
 headgear, but for the occasional moving of 
 trunks and furniture, and so the headroom 
 should be more than ample. Otherwise, you 
 will pay for it with badly scarred walls. 
 
 Ordinarily, stairs stained in dark tones 
 have oak treads and risers. Where white 
 woodwork is used the handrail and treads are 
 usually of oak or mahogany, and the spindles 
 and risers of white. 
 
 Doors are of great importance, architec- 
 turally, and must be treated accordingly. In 
 a small house it is usually best to have all the 
 doors of uniform size, but wherever possi- 
 ble it is advisable to place closets where their 
 doors will not invite chance callers. It is 
 very embarrassing to open several closet 
 doors when you are trying to find your way 
 out of a room. 
 
 Doors for large spaces are often difficult 
 to manage, and there is a never ending dis- 
 cussion as to the merits and demerits of fold- 
 
 ing and sliding doors. French doors filled 
 with small panes of glass are deservedly 
 popular, because they protect us from 
 draughts without cutting off light and the 
 sense of space that comes from long vistas. 
 Provision should always be made for curtain- 
 ing glass doors, however, as there are times 
 when privacy is welcome in any room. 
 
 There is an architectural axiom, "never 
 make a doorway without a door," which is 
 often violated, and occasionally with reason. 
 Often a large opening between two small 
 rooms is a great improvement. The opening 
 ceases to be a doorway, however, when it is 
 large enough to be of real service, so perhaps 
 the axiom is not violated after all. Cer- 
 tainly the many "open doors" of certain 
 houses, openings with only flimsy curtains to 
 cut off noise and draughts, are a nuisance. 
 
 The consideration of the chimney-piece 
 and its mantel might easily fill a book, so 
 varied are the possibilities for good an3 evil 
 effects. The decorative value of the chim- 
 ney-piece is not sufRciently appreciated by 
 most home makers. The chimney breast 
 should be treated architecturally, as a part 
 of the woodwork of the room, and as a fit- 
 ting frame for the center of interest — the 
 hearth. 
 
 There are more dreadful mantels to be 
 seen to-day than ever before, cheap stock 
 mantels, seemingly designed in a lunatic 
 asylum, are turned out by the thousands. 
 New suburban houses are flooded with the 
 most atrocious, unstudied mantels imagi- 
 nable. Again the word of caution is, play 
 safe! Use only the simplest motifs. The 
 familiar mantel found in so many Colonial 
 houses is an excellent one. Such mantels 
 are shown on pages 161 and 183. It is not 
 true that a mantel is good just because it was 
 
 166 
 
DETAILS OF INTERIOR DESIGN 
 
 Edmund B. Gilchrist, Architect. 
 No part of the interior is more difficult to design than the staircase. This example, taken from a house at York 
 Harbor, Maine, is most commendable for its simple straightforward detail. 
 
 built in Colonial days, but it is safe to say- 
 that if its design is simple it will prove ac- 
 ceptable. The more complex it gets, the 
 more it incorporates columns of unusual 
 shape and strange supports, the more likely 
 is it that you should leave it alone. 
 
 It is always safe to avoid ready-made 
 mantels that have superstructures of mirrors 
 and shelves, like the corner what-not. After 
 all, the chimney-piece is the important thing, 
 the mantel is a part of it. The chief duty 
 of the mantel is to frame pleasantly the 
 opening for the fire. 
 
 The chimney-piece that projects into the 
 
 room should have a certain reserve, an ap- 
 pearance of strength and dignity, and this 
 effect can be obtained by the simplest 
 method, by building a rectangular opening 
 for fire and paving it with plain bricks; 
 by carrying the framework — be it wood, or 
 plaster, or brick, or tile — around the open- 
 ing and crowning it with a plain mantel- 
 shelf if the lintel of the fireplace is set flush 
 with the walls of the room. The hearth need 
 not project into the room more than sixteen 
 inches from the face of the fireplace. 
 
 The space between mantel-shelf and ceil- 
 ing may be filled in with paneling if the 
 
 167 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 design is carried to the cornice, or the space 
 may be used decoratively for a mirror, a 
 good picture, or a plaster cast. If the 
 frame of the fire opening is flush with the 
 wall, the space above the mantel-shelf may 
 be treated as a part of the wall, and the 
 decoration will suggest itself when you look 
 through your belongings for just the right 
 picture, or mirror, or whatever seems most 
 suitable. 
 
 Until recently, it was impossible to get 
 tiles for fireplaces. We were offered thou- 
 sands of ridiculous little dabs of white 
 cement with thin colored glazes that were 
 sold as "tiles," but^hey are libels. These 
 fancy little tiles are associated with cabinet 
 mantels, and are an insult to an honest tile 
 maker. There are three factories that I 
 know of making beautiful tiles at reasonable 
 prices, tiles that are good enough for any 
 house. They copy the fine ^d Dutch and 
 Spanish and English tiles, and of late they 
 have begun copying Persian ones that are ob- 
 jects of art in themselves. If you can't 
 afford such tiles as these, use bricks for your 
 fireplace and hearth. Avoid fancy brick, 
 and use good red ones, the cruder and rougher 
 the better. 
 
 It is well to remember that the mantel is 
 a structural part of the room, and should be 
 made of the same wood used for the doors 
 and window frames and so forth. It is not 
 to be treated as a thing apart, as if it were 
 a grand piano or an easy chair. A mantel 
 of oak, introduced into a room of walnut 
 woodwork, is in a distressing position. A 
 mantel of mahogany in a brown-oak room is 
 just as mistaken. 
 
 The old-fashioned marble mantel was not 
 so bad as the modern cabinet mantel, be- 
 cause, despite its bleakness and its chilling 
 
 effect, it was simply formed to fit around a 
 real fire, and it had no hideous overmantel. 
 And, furthermore, a marble mantel was to 
 its owners a sort of object of art, a thing 
 apart from the woodwork of the room. 
 White painted woodwork, a white marble 
 mantel, and a quaint gilt-framed mirror fill- 
 ing the wall-space above the shelf — this 
 was n't an undignified combination, . The 
 marble might be very bad from the stand- 
 point of an architect or a sculptor, but it was 
 at least dignified in effect. 
 
 There are princely American houses where 
 old majble and stone mantels may be tised, 
 but these mantels are really works of art, and 
 are treated as such. They are the product 
 of master sculptors, and are perfectly at 
 home in dark paneled rooms. Lately, 
 makers of cement and terra-cotta have copied 
 many of these old mantels, but no matter 
 how good the copies may be, they are out of 
 place in little houses. A huge drawing room 
 or hall or library may welcome such a 
 mantel, but in a small room it would be an 
 absurdity. 
 
 The Colonial mantel, however, would fit 
 almost any room where white or cream or 
 gray woodwork is used, or it would be good 
 in brown or gray stained wood. The first 
 principle of this mantel is simplicity, and 
 the square panel between cornice and mantel- 
 shelf offers a tempting space for decoration. 
 An old portrait flanked by mahogany candle- 
 sticks would be suitable for it, and one can 
 imagine a quaint circular mirror or a good 
 cast being equally good. Or, if you liked, 
 you could leave the square panel to its own 
 decorative devices. I recall one mantel of 
 white painted wood with the space between 
 mantel and ceiling filled with a white panel- 
 ing. The center panel was framed in a slen- 
 
 i68 
 
DETAILS OF INTERIOR DESIGN 
 
 m 
 
 H H. Van Buren Magonigle, Architect. 
 
 The Gardener's Lodge on the estate of Franklin Murphy, Wendham, New Jersey. The design of this house, 
 
 •which in general is excellent, would be improved, perhaps, by the omission of the horizontal band on the gable end. 
 
 der molding. Lighting fixtures of brass were 
 placed at the extreme' edge of the molding, 
 and the only effort at decoration was a blue 
 Chinese vase of field grasses on the mantel- 
 shelf. 
 
 The bungalow is responsible for the chim- 
 ney-pieces made of field stone, or rough 
 brick, that are omnipresent nowadays. 
 Such a chimney-piece is at home in a real 
 bungalow or ip a mountain camp, where 
 rafters and beams are exposed, but can you 
 imagine anything worse than a towering 
 mass of stones in a room where polished 
 furniture and silk curtains are used? 
 
 Recently I saw a fireplace that would hold 
 a five-foot log, with the chimney-piece tower- 
 ing to the rooftree and disappearing through 
 
 the rafters, and on the slab of granite that 
 formed the mantel-shelf was a row of cut- 
 glass vases! I felt sorry for the poor, in- 
 sulted old chimney-piece. 
 
 Finally, there is the question of hardware 
 and lighting fixtures. Hardware is an al- 
 most hopeless subject. The best you can do 
 is to select the very simplest door handles 
 and hinges offered you. American makers 
 have not yet gone in for careful design in 
 hardware, more 's the pity. The French 
 and English hardware shown at the Metro- 
 politan Museum should be an inspiration to 
 our designers, but the designers await the 
 public demand, and people who have opened 
 their eyes to the badness of many details, 
 such as lighting fixtures, are still content 
 
 169 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 with spun-brass door-knobs and hinges and 
 so forth. Buy the simplest thing offered 
 you, and let it go at that. 
 
 Lighting fixtures are being improved 
 rapidly. It is possible to buy reproductions 
 of most of the good ones from France and 
 England now, if you are very judicious in 
 your selections and if your purse is long. 
 
 It is always the tendency to underrate the 
 expenses of lighting fixtures, when the plans 
 of the house are being made. One hundred 
 dollars seems a liberal apportionment for a 
 small house of, say, seven rooms. But there 
 are unexpected difficulties. It seems very 
 simple to go forth and buy lighting fixtures 
 — until you see the innumerable varieties of- 
 fered you. And the good ones are as rare as 
 the proverbial needle in the haystack. You 
 must determine whether ceiling or side lights 
 are best, and whether direct or indirect lights 
 will best fill your needs. Your architect 
 will probably decide much of this for you 
 before you go forth to buy, but the chief 
 difficulties and advantages may be consid- 
 ered here. 
 
 There are two kinds of illumination com- 
 monly in use to-day. They are called direct 
 and indirect lighting. By "direct" lighting 
 I mean that the light shines directly in the 
 room, so that you see it. For example, 
 when you are out-of-doors with the sun shin- 
 ing overhead you are enjoying the best kind 
 of "direct" lighting. When you are in the 
 house, let us say in a room on the north side, 
 where the sunlight does not reach, you are 
 enjoying diffused lighting. The source of 
 light is not visible, and we call this indirect, 
 or semi-indirect, lighting. 
 
 Now in our houses we have to use feeble 
 imitations of the sun. We use, most of us, 
 electric light. Even the strongest lights we 
 
 can use are feeble compared to the light of 
 out-of-doors, and the rooms we live in are too 
 small to admit much light. We have to face 
 this difficulty, to look at the source of light, 
 whether we want to or not. Out-of-doors, 
 in the full sunlight, the sun is so far away 
 and yet it is so brilliant that we don't have 
 to look at it. In fact, we can't look at it for 
 more than a moment, or we become blinded. 
 
 We are not blinded by the intense glare of 
 the lights in our rooms, but we are greatly 
 annoyed when the lights are so placed that 
 they shine in our eyes. One of the first prin- 
 ciples of good lighting is to use that method 
 of lighting which will adequately illumine 
 our rooms, and to select fixtures that will veil 
 the source of the light as much as possible. 
 
 In recent years the system of lighting 
 called "indirect" has come into common use. 
 In its simplest terms it means only this : you 
 place your lights (the incandescent bulbs) in 
 a bowl and hang this bowl from the ceiling. 
 The light is thrown up to the ceiling and re- 
 flected back again to the walls and floor of 
 the room. If this bowl is opaque, this 
 method is called "indirect." If translucent, 
 so that the bowl itself is softly lit, it is called 
 "semi-indirect." In this way the source of 
 light, that is, the brilliant incandescent bulbs, 
 is hidden. 
 
 For this system it is imperative that the 
 ceiling be cream or white, so as to reflect the 
 light to the greatest advantage. Moreover, 
 the walls should be fairly light in tone. If 
 your ceiling is dark in color, you will succeed 
 in lighting only the ceiling, and nothing 
 else. 
 
 The light obtained from indirect lighting 
 is diffused, and is good only for general il- 
 lumination. It should be supplemented by 
 special wall or baseboard fixtures conven- 
 
 170 
 
DETAILS OF INTERIOR DESIGN 
 
 A light in the center of the room, at the level of the eye, 
 blinds one to the size of the room. 
 
 iently located, so that when a brilliant con- 
 centrated light is necessary lamps may be 
 used. 
 
 Having accepted as an axiom of good 
 lighting that the source of light should be 
 veiled as much as is consistent with obtain- 
 ing good lighting, the next important thing 
 is to place the lights to good advantage. In 
 a large room with a high ceiling the problem 
 is much less difficult than in a small room. 
 By small I mean the ordinary dining-room or 
 living-room such as is found in a small dwell- 
 ing house, a room perhaps fifteen by twenty 
 feet in area and nine feet high. 
 
 In general it is a most unfortunate thing 
 
 to use a center light in a small room of this 
 kind. This center light is almost sure to 
 take a position about as high as a man's head, 
 and consequently the light of the fixture it- 
 self is always in one's eye. This means that 
 the size of the visible room appears dimin- 
 ished. Now you want to make the room 
 look as large as possible, and with a light 
 in the center this object is defeated, because 
 you never can look past the light. If the 
 light is very bright, you see the other side of 
 the room very imperfectly. 
 
 On the other hand, if the room is lighted 
 by side lights, or brackiet lights, you see all 
 parts of the room clearly, and the light is 
 
 Lights disposed along the walls give a restful effect. 
 
 171 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 more agreeably diffused. It is advisable to 
 have as many wall lights as possible, and to 
 use center lights only in such places as the 
 ^kitchen, where overhead light is really valua- 
 ble. 
 
 In using wall-lights you can employ semi- 
 indirect lighting, screening the incandescent 
 light with a shade of some sort. The best 
 shades are those made of silk. There are 
 jmany fanciful types of shades made of differ- 
 •ent materials, such as metal, leather, glass, 
 and parchment. Often they are decorated by 
 hand-painted designs, but they are nearly 
 always too dark or too gaudy, or too some- 
 thing. The most successful shades are of 
 ^ilk. When you cannot get silk, use paper; 
 those made of the yellow silks and the yellow 
 papers are most attractive. The glass shades 
 made of gaudy stained glass are usually ut- 
 terly offensive; the colors are garish and 
 ■crude. 
 
 Choose your fixtures always for their sim- 
 plicity. Choose your colors always for their 
 •delicacy and their harmony of combination. 
 The reason that yellow is an advisable color 
 is because it looks well under ordinary con- 
 •ditions of daylight as well as when the elec- 
 tric light is turned on. 
 
 Avoid very ornamental fixtures — at least 
 till you have made a study of ornament. 
 TJnless you- feel that your knowledge of the 
 forms employed in design is considerable, 
 play safe. Choose the simplest thing that 
 you can find. In doing this you will never 
 lay yourself open to the charge of vul- 
 garity in your taste. Remember that in 
 
 these matters you have to rely on your own 
 judgment. 
 
 Curiously enough, you will find the sim- 
 plest fixtures are either very cheap or very 
 expensive. All the ornate fixtures are priced 
 at medium low or medium high figures. 
 Have the courage of your taste and demand 
 the least expensive modern fixtures, if you 
 can't afford the reproduction of the severely 
 fine old ones. Often a three dollar fixture 
 that is commonplace in spun brass is excel- 
 lent in a pewter or bronze finish, and the cost 
 is no more. 
 
 No matter how good your lighting fixtures 
 may be, you will need a certain number of 
 special lights, lamps or tall candlesticks, for 
 reading. If your supply of electricity is 
 stable, it is sensible to have a few base plugs 
 in each room in the house, so that a reading 
 lamp may be attached at will. If your elec- 
 tric lights have a habit of failing you at in- 
 opportune times, oil lamps and real candles 
 are necessary. The principles of decoration 
 are the same : the shade should never be too 
 heavy for the lamp; the lamp itself should 
 never be over-ornamented; a candlestick 
 should be graceful, with a shade that has 
 some relation to it, and so on. 
 
 Beware of too great a flood of light. It 
 is very trying to most people's eyes. Learn 
 to enjoy shadows. Have your wall lights so 
 screened that they will give you an even dif- 
 fused light for ordinary occasions, and have 
 special lights when intensity is desired. The 
 comfort you will enjoy will repay you for 
 your painstaking work. 
 
 172 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE TRADITION OF WOOD PANELING 
 
 WE may borrow ideas from the 
 European and the Oriental for 
 the small elegancies of our 
 houses, but for the substantial things we de- 
 pend on the English tradition. We may 
 feel ourselves quite superior to our English 
 neighbors in many things, but we must ad- 
 mit that when it comes to building a home 
 the Englishman builds best; because he 
 places his family first, and determines to 
 make a house that will be home to his family 
 for generations. We build small houses, or 
 buy them, and then when we can "afford" 
 it we buy bigger ones, and on and on and on ! 
 Not all of us, but an appalling number of 
 us look upon our homes as temporary stop- 
 ping places en route to a vague affluence. 
 We do most things very much better than we 
 do our houses. 
 
 We think of the things that make old 
 English castles and manor-houses distin- 
 guished for their beauty as being remote 
 from our possibilities. The superb oak fur- 
 niture, the historic paneling, mellow with 
 age and hard usage, are not for the likes of 
 
 us I And yet, the humblest Tudor farm- 
 houses that are left have the same dignified 
 paneling, the same well-built furniture, made 
 by the hands of the ignorant themselves. 
 We assert that we are the most "efficient," 
 the most "successful" people in the world,, 
 and yet with all our efficiency we can not 
 embellish the interior of our houses with our 
 hands. We cannot build a joint stool, or 
 plan a panel wall. In sharpening our wits 
 we have forgotten how to use our hands. 
 The unlettered peasant can produce furni- 
 ture that will last for hundreds of years, but 
 the carefully educated son of America is un- 
 able to put up a kitchen shelf for his mother. 
 Now this matter of paneling. It seems 
 expensive and remote to most of you, and 
 yet it is within the means of the average 
 man who builds a house. Of course, the 
 cost of paneling varies with the locality, but 
 machine-made lumber has lessened the cost 
 everywhere. There are few sections in 
 America where there is not plenty of lumber 
 available at reasonable prices. Except in 
 the desert country of the Southwest, there are. 
 
 173 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 dozens of native woods to be had in all lo- 
 calities that are suitable for paneling. The 
 country is full of little sawmills where you 
 can have your lumber finished to order, and 
 it would be the simplest thing in the world 
 for a man to plan paneled walls for one of 
 the important rooms of his house — the hall, 
 stairway, living-room, dining-room — which 
 could be executed by any carpenter. Once 
 paneled, it will last forever. There will be 
 no after cost. 
 
 The trouble with us is we have not learned 
 to look about us, to utilize the materials 
 nearest us. We have so many beautiful 
 woods — ash, oak, elm, birch, maple, poplar, 
 yellow and white pine, chestnut, cypress, 
 cherry, walnut, the California redwood, and 
 other local woods, all suitable for interior 
 woodwork. The English ideal of paneling 
 is oak, but certainly many other coarse- 
 grained woods are very beautiful when prop- 
 erly stained and waxed. New woods have 
 an unpleasant rawness, and with the excep- 
 tion of a few of the more expensive woods 
 (notably walnut and cherry) they should be 
 stained before being waxed. Even the 
 woods of the most beautiful grain and color 
 are improved by an application of a light 
 stain, because a stain brings out the lights and 
 shadows of the grain as nothing else can. 
 
 We have seen so many houses with wood- 
 work of yellow pine covered with a thick 
 coat of shellac and then a coat of varnish, 
 applied directly to the raw wood. The re- 
 sult is a hideous, cheap, glaring and glassy 
 wood. We have seen other houses which 
 had trim paneling of the same wood with a 
 little brown stain rubbed in, and then an 
 application of black wax, and the effect was 
 as good as an English oak paneling. Hard- 
 wood should always be waxed, never var- 
 
 nished. The glare of the varnish kills the 
 soft mellow quality of the wood. 
 
 In old England, before paneling was used, 
 walls were rough and primitive masses of 
 stone and mortar, hung with arras and tapes- 
 tries and leather to keep out the cold. The 
 first paneling (and indeed much of modern 
 English paneling) was hand-cut and carved, 
 the result of great labor and thought and 
 nicety of workmanship. The paneling of a 
 family was handed down in the wills, along 
 with the plate and the tapestries. If the 
 family moved to another home, the paneling 
 was moved too. 
 
 Paneling began as a wainscot at the bot- 
 tom of the wall, with the heavy hangings 
 above it, and as the beauty of cleanliness and 
 comfort became appreciated the loose hang- 
 ings were removed and used as isolated dec- 
 orations, and the walls were lined with 
 carved oblongs of wood to the line of the 
 ceiling, or to the line of a frieze. It is said 
 that Henry III was the first king to use 
 paneling, and he embellished the wood with 
 gay colors and gold. From this painted pan- 
 eling to the simple rectagonals of oak of 
 Elizabeth's time is a great jump, and many 
 beautiful and elaborate patterns of the in- 
 tervening periods are still in evidence. 
 
 The Elizabethan paneling might be called 
 the standard English paneling, because it is 
 to be found in thousands of English houses, 
 old and new. The wall is made up of 
 rather small rectagonal panels, framed with 
 a flat and narrow molding. On page 176 
 I am giving a working drawing of this panel- 
 ing, with approximate dimensions. Some- 
 times the oblong is larger, and sometimes 
 smaller, but whether it be found in Powis 
 Castle or an humble farmhouse the propor- 
 tions of the panels are much the same. 
 
 174 
 
THE TRADITION OF WOOD PANELING 
 
 An effective example of formal interior design. 
 St. Martins, Philadelphia. 
 
 Edmund B. Gilchrist, Architect. 
 It shows the hallway leading to the dining-room in a house at 
 
 I have seen this pattern used in ever so 
 many small houses lately, and it is always 
 good, whether it be stained brown or gray 
 or painted cream or white. I have seen a 
 room with the pattern on a foundation of 
 pulp board, the oblongs framed with two 
 and one-half-inch strips of wood, the whole 
 painted white. This, of course, reduced the 
 cost of paneling to a nominal figure, and the 
 effect was very good. Some one may argue 
 that such a use of pulp board is not honest. 
 The chief use of paneling is to give the 
 walls of a room dignity and beauty. I 
 should not advocate the combination of pulp 
 
 175 
 
 board and wood when the wall was to be 
 stained, but when it is to be painted cream 
 or white or gray what difference does it make "? 
 White painted paneling is a perfect back- 
 ground for furniture of woods of fine grain 
 — walnut, mahogany, rosewood, and so 
 forth. The first vogue of white paneling 
 was in the time of Queen Anne, when much 
 of the heavy oak furniture gave way to the 
 elegant new woods, and it became necessary to 
 find a new background. Obviously, oak pan- 
 eling belonged to oak furniture, and so white 
 paint was applied to paneling of cheaper 
 woods, and was quite in keeping with the 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
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 3£> 
 
 
 The important things to remember in designing a pan- 
 eled wall are: — the shape of the panels and, the widths of 
 the stiles between. The panels should have a width about 
 two-thirds their height, and the stiles should not be, in 
 general, over three inches wide. 
 
 satiny furniture and the soft damasks. The 
 crude tapestries and the sturdy oak furniture 
 and the velvety brown of oak paneling is 
 first in every Englishman's favor, however, 
 and always will be. 
 
 The linen-fold pattern is as well known 
 as the plain rectangular panel, but the old 
 linen-fold work was always done by hand, 
 when every man was his own carpenter, archi- 
 tect, and furniture maker, and now it is so~ 
 expensive that it is seen only in the more 
 costly houses. Certain English firms sup- 
 ply the linen-fold paneling carved by hand, 
 but it costs about two dollars a square foot. 
 The same firms supply a plain rectangular 
 
 paneling at about fifty cents a square foot. 
 You may now appreciate our advantage over 
 the Englishman, for we can panel our walls 
 at a fraction of this amount. I have seen 
 recently a Colonial hall, long and wide and 
 high of ceiling, paneled in white rectagonals 
 for twenty dollars! Old wood and home 
 labor made this possible. 
 
 The linen fold is not available for many 
 of us Americans, but it is full of suggestion 
 to the man who likes to use his tools. I 
 saw a beautiful oak chest made up of squares 
 carved in the linen-fold manner, built by a 
 young student of a technical school. An 
 over-mantel made of small linen-fold panels 
 is also very beautiful, and easy of accom- 
 plishment. 
 
 In a house recently built on Long Island 
 there is an enormous living-room paneled in 
 chestnut. Ordinarily chestnut is expensive, 
 but in the localities where the chestnut trees 
 are dying, the lumber can be bought for very 
 little, and these people were wise enough to 
 seize this opportunity. Chestnut has a won- 
 derful rosy tone in its natural state, and a 
 soft, gray stain has been rubbed into the pan- 
 eling, showing rosy lights. 
 
 There is a house in Boston in which the 
 huge living-hall is paneled with cypress, an 
 upright paneling of broad boards running 
 from the baseboard to the frieze line. Nar- 
 row boards of the same wood are applied 
 where the broad boards meet, just as the nar- 
 row boards are applied to the rectangular pan- 
 eling, except in the upright paneling they run 
 straight from the baseboard to frieze line, 
 where they are finished with a projecting 
 molding of the same wood. This cypress 
 paneling had a little brown stain rubbed in 
 and was then waxed, and the effect is very 
 soft and mellow. 
 76 
 
THE TRADITION OF WOOD PANELING 
 
 An unusual farmhouse paneling composed 
 of old pew doors came to my attention re- 
 cently. Only a little while ago, it seems, 
 the old village meeting-house was torn down, 
 and of course the old lumber went for a song. 
 The owner of this farmhouse, who had the 
 seeing eye, bought all the pew doors and 
 paneled his dining-room with them. The 
 dining-room has quaint corner cupboards, 
 also, and the effect of the diamond panes 
 and the graceful white panels is very pleas-' 
 ant. 
 
 We are all familiar with the old New 
 England farmhouses that had at least one 
 wall, usually the chimney wall, made up of 
 white painted wood paneling, and the other 
 three walls plastered and papered. This 
 treatment is always pleasing in an old house, 
 but it would be mistaken in a new one, un- 
 less the new one happened to be a replica 
 built to please some lover of quaint old cot- 
 tages. 
 
 In Westport, Connecticut, there is a colony 
 of artists who have bought old farmhouses 
 and remodeled them, keeping the open fire- 
 
 places and big timbers and beams, but adding 
 many modern conveniences — sleeping porches 
 and hardwood floors, and adequate heating 
 systems. 
 
 Most of the houses are a hundred years 
 old, or thereabouts, and have heavily beamed 
 ceilings, and that of course invited paneling. 
 I wish you could see those paneled dining- 
 rooms — all planned by the artists them- 
 selves, and executed by local workmen. The 
 walls of one charming dining-room have a 
 white painted paneling of an upright design, 
 similar to the one shown on this page. This 
 paneling is finished at the top with a molding 
 broad enough to be used as a shelf, which 
 is just the place for a collection of Colonial 
 things — ^pewter and brass, and such — that are 
 in keeping with the room. 
 
 Another house has a low-ceiled dining- 
 room with most interesting woodwork. This 
 house was built in 1730, and the new owner 
 is very proud of his huge brown beams. The 
 room is paneled with cypress of a brown 
 tone. One whole wall is given up to two 
 big china-closets, with a door between. An- 
 
 Drawn by C. S. Cliapmaa 
 
 Here a simple rectangular paneling in brown oak is used effectively in connection with the English bay window. 
 
 177 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 other wall is broken by the chimney-piece, 
 and a third by a glass door which leads to 
 the sun-room. 
 
 The space between the top of the paneling 
 and the ceilirlg of the fourth wall is filled 
 with a row of little casement windows, about 
 fourteen inches deep. In the center of the 
 wall, just opposite the fireplace, the panels 
 are recessed to make room for a long radia- 
 tor, and in the space left between the top of 
 the radiator and the top of the paneling, 
 about thirty inches, are built two long shelves 
 which may be used as warming-shelves, but 
 usually hold pitchers and tea things. 
 
 A soft- toned curtain hangs just under the 
 lower shelf, hiding the radiator, and the 
 effect suggests recessed bookshelves. So 
 much of the wall space of this room is filled 
 with the cupboards, radiator space, windows, 
 doors, and mantel, that very little paneling 
 was required. 
 
 These old farmhouses often have paneled 
 walls in the most unexpected places. Often 
 three outside walls of a long room are plas- 
 tered, and the fourth wall — that leading 
 into another room or a hallway — is made 
 up of oblongs of wood, usually painted 
 white. 
 
 The stairs are finished with an upright 
 paneling that creeps up, one board at a time, 
 like the treads, and now and then you will 
 find little cupboards and cabinets hidden in 
 these stair-panels. The paneling beside the 
 chimney-piece usually hid a cupboard, cor- 
 responding to the oven on the other side. 
 That is one of the fascinating things about 
 wood-paneling — it invites secret cupboards 
 or patent ones, little cabinets for a few 
 
 treasures or big cupboards for magazines and 
 books and smoking things. 
 
 There are so many excellent stains and 
 wood-dyes and wax-oils to be had now, you 
 can experiment on a board of your chosen 
 wood. 
 
 Oak furniture may be treated in a dozen 
 different ways, from the soft grayish stain to 
 the black-brown, but if your woodwork has a 
 brown tone, light or dark, and a dull waxed 
 finish, you need not worry about the har- 
 mony. The many shades of gray and brown 
 are best, usually, but in a bungalow an up- 
 right paneling might be stained one of the 
 many wood greens. If you are to use ma- 
 hogany or such iine-grained furniture, your 
 paneling may be stained a soft gray, or 
 painted cream or white. 
 
 There is another method of paneling that 
 is much used in modern American drawing- 
 rooms, indeed wherever fine French furniture 
 is to be used. This paneling comes to us 
 from France, and Miss Elsie de Wolfe has 
 been largely responsible for its vogue in 
 America. The French method breaks the 
 walls of a room into a series of large and 
 graceful panels by the use of narrow mold- 
 ings applied directly to the plaster. The 
 plaster, it goes without saying, must be 
 good. If it has n't been done by a man who 
 knows his business, it will crack, and. that 
 spoils everything. The woodwork and the 
 moldings of a room paneled in this manner 
 are painted a faint shade lighter or darker 
 than the walls. Cream, ivory white, putty- 
 color, and French gray are the colors used, 
 and the paint is invariably flat, affording a 
 suave background to elegant furniture. 
 
 178 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE DECORATION OF WALLS 
 
 THE fundamental principle of mural 
 decoration is: Walls are back- 
 grounds. Keep that in mind and 
 you cannot go far wrong. The surface of 
 the wall is supposed to be flat, and this flat- 
 ness must be preserved, but structurally a 
 wall has thickness as well as length and 
 breadth, and therefore this solidity must not 
 be concealed by flimsy coverings. For in- 
 stance, if you paper a wall from ceiling to 
 floor with a flowered paper it would look 
 as unstable as a muslin curtain, but if there 
 is a baseboard at the bottom of the wall and 
 a cornice or molding at the top, the strength 
 of the wall is obvious, and you can use any 
 paper or decoration you please. 
 
 The most distinguished wall treatments — 
 the hangings of tapestries and other tex- 
 tiles, the tooled leathers, the beautiful 
 painted panels of the mural artist — are not 
 within the province of these articles. The 
 average householder employs two methods of 
 wall covering, wood paneling and plaster. 
 We have discussed the possibilities of wood 
 paneling in a former article. Plastered 
 
 walls may be divided into three groups: the 
 walls which depend upon the natural color 
 and uneven texture of the plaster for decora- 
 tion, the walls that are painted or distem- 
 pered, and the walls that are papered. 
 
 If you are building a new house, pay a 
 little more for an expert plasterer and do 
 without wall-papers. A good wall offers op- 
 portunity for real decoration, but an imper- 
 fect wall must always be covered with paper 
 or textile in order to become a background. 
 
 Papered walls are very good indeed when 
 the paper is carefully selected after due con- 
 sideration of the uses of the room, the ex- 
 posure of the windows, and so forth, but 
 papered walls cannot be compared with 
 painted walls for cleanliness and dignity if 
 the plaster beneath the paint has been prop- 
 erly applied. We see so few good painted 
 walls that it seems hardly worth consider- 
 ing them at all. Most people take it for 
 granted that the plaster will crack and set- 
 tle. They wait patiently until that ordeal 
 is over and then paper the walls. 
 
 Plastered walls are very pleasant when 
 
 179 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 left in the natural color of the plaster. In the precious colors, and should be used spar- 
 every locality this color Vsries, according to ingly and skilfully, and not for large areas. 
 
 the sand used. Sometinies the plaster is a 
 pale biscuit color, sometimes a clear gray, 
 but usually it is a soft tan. The colors may 
 be varied indefinitely by the addition of a 
 little pure color when the plaster is being 
 mixed. The grain of the plaster is like the 
 texture of a fabric, pleasing in its rough- 
 ness. 
 
 Given a good plastered wall, you can do 
 many things. You may paint it cream or 
 gray or tan, using a flat paint always, or 
 you may tint it with one of the many cold- 
 water paints sold for the purpose. A 
 painted or distempered wall may be broken 
 into large panels by the use of a narrow 
 molding, the molding being painted the same 
 tone as the walls, or a lighter tone of the 
 same color. Walls so painted should always 
 be light in color. 
 
 Whitewashed walls are all very well for 
 tropical countries, but they are the most dif- 
 ficult of all walls to make beautiful. An 
 artist can plan a room with white walls and 
 achieve something worth while, but an ama- 
 teur cannot. In the first place, the glare of 
 white walls is very bad on the eyes. Again, 
 white is not a background color, it is too 
 cold and downright; you cannot get away 
 from it. Walls are primarily backgrounds, 
 so there you are. White may be softened 
 and mellowed by mixing a little yellow with 
 it, and it becomes cream or ivory or buff, 
 suave and aristocratic. But dead white 
 walls are never pleasant. A white marble 
 bust, or a white porcelain figurine outlined 
 against a darker background is distinguished 
 in effect, but the same object placed against 
 a white wall would be pale and as uninter- 
 esting as skimmed milk. White is one of 
 
 In some parts of the country, notably the 
 extreme South, walls are always white- 
 washed. This treatment is either very good 
 or very bad. If a room has white woodwork 
 and a few pieces of handsome old furniture, 
 white walls give it a severe formality that is 
 commendable in a warm climate, where the 
 inclination is to let things go. 
 
 White plastered walls with dark wood- 
 work are distressingly glaring. Such a room 
 requires masses of green things to make it 
 homelike. I know one Georgia drawing- 
 room that has white walls and ceiling and 
 woodwork, and a floor of wide boards 
 painted a dull green. A faded old rug of no 
 particular color, a square piano, a davenport 
 and several chairs of dark mahogany, and 
 one old portrait above the mantel furnish the 
 room. It is not necessary to comment on 
 the quality of this room; few churches give 
 you a feeling of greater quiet and reverence. 
 
 One can imagine whitewashed walls being 
 very appropriate to the stucco houses of 
 Mexico and southern California, where the 
 glare of the sunshine is tempered by thick 
 walls and embrasured doors, and windows 
 and many hanging vines. There the interi- 
 ors have the atmosphere of sun-rooms with 
 tiled floors and light furniture and many 
 growing plants. I am told that in those 
 queer little islands, the Bermudas, every 
 householder is required by law to whitewash 
 his walls twice a year. The inhabitants are 
 largely English people, and they know the 
 decorative value of chintz, so they temper 
 the glare of too-white walls by hanging 
 lengths of gay fabrics against the white- 
 washed surfaces, as we would hang pictures. 
 
 I had the entire lower floor of my own 
 
 180 
 
THE DECORATION OF WALLS 
 
 Wilson Eyre, Architect. 
 The pergola at "The Garth," Strafford, Pennsylvania. Note the effective contrast between the vines and the white 
 columns. 
 
 house painted a flat, soft gray, walls and 
 woodwork. I considered having a slightly 
 darker tone for the woodwork, but decided 
 that it would serve merely to emphasize the 
 smallness of the rooms. One unbroken tone 
 would make the hall, living-room and dining- 
 room one large apartment in effect. Un- 
 wisely, I gave the painter a scrap of soft 
 velvet carpeting of a delightful gray-tan, 
 the color of a little woolly animal, and went 
 away 'serenely expecting him to get just that 
 color. He did n't. He got a deep middle 
 tone of gray that is very lovely ,on sunny 
 days, and when it snows in winter, but at 
 night it darkens to a deep gray. I love the 
 
 quiet tone of it all, and I actually like the 
 deep shadows at night. 
 
 With this deep gray as background, I have 
 been able to use strong color in small things. 
 I made a deep orange velvet cover for the 
 living-room couch, and several large pillows 
 are covered with this orange velvet and an 
 orange and gray figured challie. There is a 
 small table, painted black, at the head of this 
 couch to hold a lamp and smoking things. 
 The lighting fixtures are all of pewter, al- 
 most exactly the color of the walls. The 
 reading lamp is made of a creamy-white jar, 
 with a shade of orange colored silk. This 
 color, which lies between red and orange, is 
 
 181 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 repeated in many small things — in the pic- 
 ture over the mantel (a color print of one 
 of Jules Guerin's French chateaux), in many 
 of the book bindings, in a little lacquer vase, 
 and in flowers. Somehow there are always 
 flowers to be had of orange and red and sal- 
 mon color. Just now my vases are filled 
 with fat rose hips and bitter sweet berries that 
 will last all winter. 
 
 The dining-room, which is really a part of 
 the living-room, has the same color plan. 
 Oak furniture of a warm, waxed brown, 
 linen colored curtains ; a rug with much old 
 red and dark blue in it; a gay Carl Larrson 
 color print with splashfes of his wonderful 
 red; an orange- lacquer tray and a big green 
 jug of yellow flowers on the sideboard; and 
 a blue and yellow Spanish bowl on a square 
 of Chinese red brocade on the table. Every- 
 where spots of old blue, Italian yellow, or- 
 ange, and deep Chinese red against the gray 
 walls. 
 
 Upstairs, the gray walls and woodwork 
 continue in the hall. There is a group of 
 four windows on the stairs, bringing light 
 and air to both floors, and in order to pull 
 the two floors together and bring a little 
 color into the gray hall I had long side cur- 
 tains made of gray challie, with Japanese 
 figures of flame red and very dark blue in it. 
 These long curtains are beautiful by day 
 and by night. The flame red is repeated in 
 a number of pictures — black and white 
 prints with mats of Chinese paper exactly 
 this color, and narrow black frames. No 
 other color is needed in the hall. 
 
 If the walls of your house are too badly 
 scarred and cracked to be painted, there are 
 hundreds of excellent papers to be found. 
 For most rooms plain papers, or papers plain 
 in effect, are best. For long hallways and 
 
 occasional rooms there are fascinating fig- 
 ured papers, reproductions of the landscape 
 papers of the early nineteenth century, of 
 the grotesque Chinese papers, or the tapestry 
 and foliage English papers designed"by Wil- 
 liam Morris and Walter Crane, and hun- 
 dreds of gay bedroom papers that are almost 
 irresistible. 
 
 I admit the temptation of figured papers. 
 When I go into a wall-paper shop I have 
 the same greedy feeling I have in the early 
 spring when hundreds of flowered muslins 
 and sweet-smelling linens are spread out in 
 the shops. I should like to buy dozens and 
 dozens! But flowered wall-papers" become 
 very tiresome if you live with them long, 
 and you would n't want to wear the sweetest 
 rose-sprigged muslin that ever blossomed for 
 years and years. 
 
 When you buy wall-papers, consider the 
 rooms in which they are to be used. Con- 
 sider also the rooms that connect one with 
 another, for your open doors will bring about 
 discord or harmony. 
 
 Figured wall-papers are not to be con- 
 demned wholesale; many of them are beau- 
 tiful. The main thing to guard against in 
 selecting your paper is too realistic design. 
 The more fantastic and conventionalized the 
 paper is, the better the result will be. A 
 realistic wall-paper is dreadful for the simple 
 reason that walls are supposed to be flat sur- 
 faces, and "natural" objects destroy this flat- 
 ness. The trouble with most people who use 
 figured wall-papers is that they are not con- 
 tent to let the design of the paper decorate 
 the room, and they pile on pictures and mir- 
 rors until the general effect is that of a gro- 
 tesque crazy-quilt. 
 
 One of the most beautiful halls I have 
 ever seen had a paneled wainscoting about 
 82 
 
THE DECORATION OF WALLS 
 
 Harrie T. Lindeberg, Architect. 
 The dining-room of the Boardman Robinson house at Forest Hills, Long Island, has walls -of pongee color and 
 woodwork of cream-white. Black chintz curtains patterned in birds and flowers are used in the casement windows. 
 
 four feet high, a whitewashed ceiling that 
 dropped two feet to a picture-molding, and 
 the space between filled with a Chinese paper 
 made up of impossible . trees and vines and 
 flowers, with hundreds of gorgeous birds 
 perched among them. This papc tis 
 copied from one of the rare old hand-pain:ed 
 papers of a century ago. The ground color 
 was a deep yellow. Each length differed 
 slightly in design, there were different birds 
 swinging on different colored branches, but 
 the flat arrangement of the background and 
 the brilliant plumage of the birds and the 
 queer greens of the branches gave the effect 
 of an orderly, well-balanced design. Of 
 course no pictures are used on a paper of this 
 
 kind, and the furniture used in the room with 
 such a paper must be carefully chosen. This 
 particular hall had furniture of black oak, 
 and rugs of plain green velvet, just the tone 
 of the branches. This is an example of a 
 daring paper well used. 
 
 In my own little house I have used a paper 
 very fantastic in design, but very subdued 
 in color, with excellent effect. The room in 
 question is an upstairs sitting-room, with 
 four big windows that give us vistas east, 
 west, and south. The design of the paper 
 is made up of peacocks with sweeping tails, 
 perched on flowery boughs. But it is the 
 softest paper in tone, in color, in quality. 
 It has no sheen. The colors are dull blues 
 
 183 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 and greens and gray-mauves on a dark gray 
 ground. The woodwork has been painted 
 a light blue-green, just the color of the tail 
 feathers of the peacocks. The ceiling was 
 supposed to be of shimmering silver, but it 
 does n't shimmer, and sooner or later I am 
 going to go over it with a thin coat of gold. 
 That will make it lovely. The furniture in 
 the roorri includes a black oak desk, a black 
 oak table for books and magazines, a pair 
 of old Japanese chests of black and gray 
 cedar, and a large day bed painted blue- 
 green. 
 
 The color of this room is so joyous it 
 does n't seem possible that it took so long 
 to plan it. The curtains were easy — a 
 lovely Japanese chintz of blue and green and 
 silver, with the silver dominant. This stuff 
 looks like a brocade, stiff with metal, but it 
 costs only fifty cents a yard. The rug was 
 a hideous thing of velvet — a gift — heavy of 
 pile and shocking in design. I had it dyed 
 black, jet black, and it is very fine indeed, 
 not gloomy — it is soft and deep and warm 
 looking, and throws all the other colors in 
 the room into proper importance. I tried all 
 sorts of colors on the day bed, and they were 
 all too low in key. Finally I brought out 
 a piece of deep sulphur yellow velvet, and 
 it was just what the room needed. So I 
 made a cover and pillows of it. There is 
 also a pillow of the curtain stuff, and an- 
 other of yellow with Chinese figures in it. 
 Later, I brought in several things of vivid 
 flame color and peacock blue — and a tall gray 
 jar of real peacock feathers for my desk, and 
 now the room is full of color but not in the 
 least jarring. 
 
 There are hundreds of papers of good de- 
 
 beauty. The power of selection is all that 
 is needed. 
 
 The hall is the most formal and least used 
 part of the house, and therefore the very 
 place for papers of bold design. The old 
 landscape papers that were planned for the 
 halls of Colonial houses are being revived, 
 but they are suitable only to those long halls 
 with doors opening just so, and stately stair- 
 cases, and massive mahogany furniture. The 
 hall shown in the illustration on page 189 
 is admirably planned. The white of the 
 woodwork and the polished wood of the stair 
 and the furniture is perfect with the dark 
 landscape paper. 
 
 There are hundreds of foliage papers on 
 the market. Some of them have designs in 
 the tapestry colorings, and are very allur- 
 ing. They may be used as friezes above the 
 wainscoting or paneling of a hall or dining- 
 room. Recently I saw a hall in a city house 
 papered with a foliage paper made of many 
 gray and white leaves, and the effect was 
 very cool and prim. A similar paper of 
 green leaves would be delightful in a country 
 cottage hall, used in combination with white 
 paint and green painted furniture. 
 
 Of course this does n't apply to halls that 
 open directly into living-rooms with no 
 doors between them. A bold paper should 
 alw!3iv>. be used in a room that has doors that 
 open and shut. 
 
 Be careful of your bedrooms. Bedrooms 
 invite gay papers copied from old English 
 chintzes and French fabrics of the eighteenth 
 century. You can do almost anything you 
 like with your bedroom, but it must be 
 planned just as carefully as the other rooms 
 of the house. If you have a collection of 
 
 sign and color in the market to-day, papers small pictures and photographs you cannot 
 decorative enough to carry rooms far toward put away, paper your walls with a plain 
 
 184 
 
\ \ 
 
 THE DECORATION OF WALLS 
 
 Drawn by C. S. Chapman 
 
 A Colonial hallway with its generous staircase, and 
 large wall spaces decorated by an old-fashioned landscape 
 wall-paper. 
 
 color, as gay as you please, and be happy. 
 You will lose your good spirits and friends 
 if you cover your walls with a paper of large 
 design, and then cover the paper with photo- 
 graphs and bridge score-cards, and calendars 
 and odds and ends. 
 
 ' In selecting my own wall-papers, I de- 
 cided to give up pictures and odds and ends 
 and to have just the paper I coveted for 
 my own bedroom. All my bedrooms have 
 cream-colored woodwork and cream ceilings, 
 by the way, and so it was necessary to select 
 papers with cream grounds. My bedroom 
 paper is a reproduction of an old Japanese 
 one with all sorts of legendary flowers and 
 trees and temples and birds upon it. The 
 prevailing colors were soft jade green and 
 mulberry, on a cream ground. The dress- 
 ing table, the chest of drawers, a high back 
 chair, and the wooden bed were all painted 
 exactly the green of the little islands in the 
 paper. 
 
 There is to be a little green bedside table, 
 and a bedspread of cream, and a large rug 
 of cream and mulberry, when I find them. 
 The little rug I have is a wee one, but it is 
 exactly right in color. The dressing table 
 
 has a glass top inset, and under it I have a 
 length of green and blue and silver cloth. 
 All the little bottles and things on the dress- 
 ing table are of queer Chinese blues and 
 greens. I picked them up in Chinatown. 
 The curtains are of a sunproof material of 
 silk and linen, of mulberry with little yellow 
 threads in it. 
 
 Another one of my bedrooms is papered 
 with a plain clover pink paper. The furni- 
 ture is lacquered black, the woodwork cream, 
 and the chintz an English one with birds of 
 paradise and funny flowers in dark red, clover 
 pink, dull green and yellow on a cream 
 ground. Another little room has an old- 
 fashioned paper sprinkled with little baskets 
 of blue and rose posies. Here I used a black 
 chest of drawers, and covered the bed with 
 an old blue woven coverlet. You see, so 
 much of rny house is gray I feel I can afford 
 gay papers in these rooms. 
 
 The shops have been very proud to offer 
 figured wall-papers and chintzes to match, 
 the last few years, though why any one 
 should wish to have so much of the same 
 design in a room, I cannot understand. The 
 plain wall-paper always invites figured 
 chintz hangings, and the figured paper in- 
 vites plain colored hangings. 
 
 I once spent a night in a bedroom that was 
 supposed to be a "sweet-pea room" by its 
 misguided owner. The walls were cov- 
 ered with sweet peas, millions of them, so 
 violently colored as to be a libel to the frag- 
 ile butterfly flowers that inspired the paper. 
 The curtains were of a sweet-pea chintz "to 
 match." The furniture covering and the 
 hangings were of the same chintz, and every 
 innocent wooden space — drawer fronts and 
 chair backs, and so forth — was painted with 
 more sweet peas. I never wanted to see an- 
 
 185 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 other sweet pea when I left that unhappy- 
 
 room 
 
 Another custom the shops have thrust upon 
 us is the scalloped border for bedroom pa- 
 pers. I am so tired of pink-rose wall-papers 
 with carefully scissored and scalloped bor- 
 ders in bedrooms! The nicest thing about 
 roses is that they are n't prim and careful, 
 and they do not repeat themselves. I am 
 sure we should all grow frightfully tired of 
 them if we had every petal in replica. 
 
 But the color of the rose — that is differ- 
 ent. That we may take for our own and en- 
 joy. When I was a little girl we called soft 
 pink "pink," and that dreadful candy-pink 
 that is so vulgar we called "pank." 
 
 Rose color is as different from pink or 
 pank as orange is from canary. I always 
 think of them as pinks and panks now, the 
 pleasant and unpleasant tones. Rose is a 
 young girl's own color. Another good pink 
 is the shade the Chinese use so much in their 
 porcelains, and the English use so much in 
 their chintzes — a deep pink with a hint of 
 gray in it. This is really my clover pink. 
 
 Gray and tan are good wall colors, but 
 they absorb the light most extravagantly. I 
 like brown walls when they are of paneled 
 wood, but usually brown is not a pleasant 
 color in paper. 
 
 There is a dark tobacco-brown paper 
 (Japanese of course) that is lovely in tex- 
 ture, soft and changing and shadowy, and 
 not very expensive, but the ordinary brown 
 papers are coarse, and dirty looking. A cool 
 tan is much pleasanter. 
 
 Gray papers are charming in south rooms. 
 I saw a wonderful room lately with walls 
 covered with gray Japanese grass cloth, wood- 
 work stained a silver gray, and ceiling cov- 
 ered with that silvered Japanese paper that 
 
 is so indescribably lovely. There was much 
 color in the room, in small things, but the 
 effect of it was as refreshing and cooling as 
 a group of silver birches in a deep wood. 
 You could shut your eyes and feel the color. 
 
 Brown and buff and cream and tan have 
 been the well-bred friends of homemakers for 
 years, but gray has just recently come into 
 its own. Gold papers are sometimes good, 
 when they are made by Orientals, but do- 
 mestic gold paper usually has a greenish 
 tinge, and blackens unpleasantly with age. 
 A room with one of these tarnished papers 
 has the effect of plated table-ware when the 
 silver has worn off — it tempers your pleas- 
 ure. 
 
 The gold-leaf and silver-leaf papers of 
 Japan are very beautiful, and are rnuch used 
 by artists for covering ceilings and screens 
 and occasionally for walls, but gold-leaf pa- 
 pers must be used with discrimination, and 
 the hangings used with them must be care- 
 fully chosen. 
 
 Gold papers are more often used success- 
 fully on ceilings than on walls. Many a 
 gloomy hall would be vastly improved if its 
 ceiling were washed in gold, or covered 
 with gold paper. Gold invites Chinese red 
 lacquer, and bronze green velvets, and dark 
 waxed oak furniture. The silver paper that 
 Japanese artists use so well is a perfect 
 background for violet, and old blues, and 
 pale yellows, and vivid light greens. Grass 
 cloth is a sort of betwixt-and-between. stuff 
 that has the sheen of gold or silver and the 
 texture of coarse linen. It costs more than 
 wall paper, but it lasts well. Grass cloth 
 has horizontal lines, and should not be used 
 in low-ceiled rooms. In silver-gray, gold, 
 cream, tan or buff it is an unobtrusive back- 
 ground for good furniture. 
 
 186 
 
THE DECORATION OF WALLS 
 
 Drawn by C. S. Chapman 
 
 These rooms have the serenity which comes from bare 
 floors and plain walls. A glimpse of the Casa Blanca at 
 St. Angel, Mexico. 
 
 Blue is the nicest color in the world, the 
 heavenly color, but it is not for walls. It 
 is too precious a color for large spaces. 
 Think twice about blue. Blue hangings and 
 porcelains, and gray or tan or cream or buff 
 or sage green walls, and rugs with rose and 
 more blue — you could make hundreds of 
 color plans with blue as the dominant color, 
 but it is n't necessary to spread it out on your 
 walls. Blue and white figured papers are all 
 
 187 
 
 right, for then there is more white than blue, 
 and a bedroom with such a paper and white 
 woodwork and furniture and muslin curtains 
 would be as sweet as a spring morning. Blue 
 when used as a house color should always be 
 a soft blue or a darker Chinese blue. Baby 
 blue is a feeble color for decorative pur- 
 poses. 
 
 Green and red have been so long and so 
 badly misused that I'd rather say, do not 
 use them at all, than give any advice that 
 will lead to the perpetration of further mis- 
 deeds. 
 
 Green we love because Nature loves it so, 
 but we bring greens into our houses that Na- 
 ture would not tolerate. The strong greens 
 and the strong reds are best left outdoors. 
 There Nature takes care of them, and masses 
 other greens with them. 
 
 But for interiors we had best use the de- 
 rivatives of these colors, and use the pure 
 greens and reds only in embellishing soft- 
 toned backgrounds. In a sunroom or a room 
 with many windows you can use an amazing 
 amount of green but it must be the right 
 green. 
 
 The outdoor greens are only suitable for 
 sunshiny rooms that are to be treated as out- 
 door rooms. For interiors blue-greens and 
 bronze-greens and sage-greens and black- 
 greens are best. They, should be used as blue 
 is used, with some softer color for back- 
 ground. 
 
 Yellow is the pleasantest of all wall colors. 
 Books have been written in its praise, of its 
 aristocratic influence in city drawing-rooms, 
 of its sunshiny atmosphere, of its smiling sug- 
 gestion of prosperity. You could not get 
 very gloomy in a room with walls of warm 
 yellow. But — there are yellows and yel- 
 lows! I once knew a man who protested 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 that blue was blue; you couldn't get away 
 from that! 
 
 Now every woman knows that blue is a 
 most versatile color; it is a hundred things, 
 pleasant and unpleasant, but you cannot mix 
 blues recklessly and expect harmony. 
 
 Yellow also has to be handled with careful 
 thought and consideration. If it has a 
 creamy tone, it is suave and gracious, just 
 the color for a painted wall that is to be 
 broken into large paneled spaces by narrow 
 molding. 
 
 If it has a rosy tone, it is delicious enough 
 to eat, smiling and gay and full of the cheer 
 of sunshine, and the proper color for the walls 
 of the family living-room. If it is deeper, 
 "with a leaning toward orange, it will be su- 
 
 perb in a darkened north room, with heavy 
 brown furniture and much cream paint and 
 muslin and an occasional splash of coral red, 
 or flame red, as you prefei^. 
 
 Green-yellow is ugly and depressing, like 
 a sour smile. I have seen canary yellow used 
 with mauve and gray in a French wall-paper, 
 but I should not like to live with it. Sul- 
 phur yellow is also ugly in large masses. But 
 both these yellows can be used successfully 
 by any one who can handle color. 
 
 Orange, pure and simple, is a magnificent 
 color, but it should be used sparingly. Too 
 much of it is distressing. A cream bowl of 
 orange flowers and green leaves against a 
 creamy-yellow wall — that is one of the things 
 that makes one appreciate the gift of eyes ! 
 
 188 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THE RIGHT USE OF CURTAINS 
 
 ONE of the New York papers re- 
 cently contained a scathing editorial 
 on the city women who make cave- 
 dwellers of their families by having curtains, 
 and then more curtains, and more curtains, 
 so that whatever light and air may be out- 
 side, very little ever gets into the rooms of the 
 city house. 
 
 The editorial was well deserved, for the 
 present mode of curtaining New York win- 
 dows seems to be to hang an expensive lace 
 curtain flat against the glass, the full length of 
 the window; inside that, there is usually a 
 holland shade (as if the many curtains were 
 not enough!) ; then another pair of lace cur- 
 tains, looped back to give just a little tri- 
 angular view of the glass curtain; then a 
 pair of very heavy velvet or brocade cur- 
 tains, lined and interlined, hanging straight 
 or looped slightly and finished with a deep 
 fitted top, similar to the hideous lambrequins 
 of the Victorian era of decoration. 
 
 By the time all these draperies have been 
 adjusted there is very little chance for light 
 or air. The editor in question remarked that 
 
 while the people of the tenements are forced' 
 by law to have a certain amount of light and 
 air, the cave-dwellers of the brownstone 
 houses have no one to say them nay, and so 
 bring up their pallid families in air-tight 
 houses. 
 
 The city woman is not peculiar in her dread, 
 of light and air. Every little town has a. 
 goodly number of houses with windows al- 
 ways tightly shuttered. I have seen tidy cot- 
 tages in New England with windows that 
 have not been opened in years. There was. 
 a time when people had to pay taxes for the 
 privilege of windows, so much for each win- 
 dow. One can imagine that those early win- 
 dows were really appreciated, that they were 
 allowed to give their full measure of light 
 and air. 
 
 Perhaps some day, when health is just as- 
 much a matter of law as honesty, it will be 
 a misdemeanor to be ill or cross, and a tax 
 will be imposed on closed windows ! 
 
 You can walk along the street and "size 
 people up" by the way they treat their win- 
 dows. When you see huge vases of artificial 
 
 189 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 flowers between the lace curtains and glass, 
 for outsiders to enjoy, you may be sure the 
 people are "showing off." Closely drawn 
 curtains and shades pulled down just-so sug- 
 gest a too-neat housekeeper with a dread of 
 light and air, or a room too fine to use. 
 
 Rooms should n't be too firie to use. Here 
 is , a house with lace curtains at the parlor 
 windows, ragged net ones at others, and 
 shabby dotted Swiss ones at servants' rooms 
 and basement — you know, very well what to 
 expect of the people behind the windows. 
 Then you come to a plain little shoe-box of 
 a house, such a humble little house no one 
 would think of looking to it for a lesson in 
 decoration, and you find real windows, shin- 
 ing and clean, with fresh white curtains hang- 
 ing straight and full, and green paiiited win- 
 dow-boxes full of growing things fastened to 
 the ledges outside. You know the dwellers 
 in the little house are nice people, and that 
 they appreciate thg privilege of windows. 
 
 Windows are intended primarily as dis- 
 pensers of light and air, but like all archi- 
 tectural details that are of practical value, 
 they are also of the greatest decorative im- 
 portance. • Too many windows are as bad 
 as too few. It is n't that we need so many 
 more windows, but that we need a better 
 grouping of those we have. That is one 
 thing the modern architect does supremely 
 well: he makes the most of windows inside 
 the house and out. Instead of spotting the 
 exterior of a house with many windows, 
 badly proportioned and badly balanced, he 
 groups the windows so that they decorate the 
 exterior and make the interior a place of 
 sweetness and light. 
 
 The single windows in Colonial houses are 
 placed with geometrical precision, and are 
 dignified in effect, but in so many nonde- 
 
 script houses the windows are spotted singly 
 over the surface with no apparent rime or 
 reason, and are very ugly. Often these 
 scattered single windows may be pulled into 
 a group. For instance, if a room has one 
 side wall broken by two windows, about four 
 feet apart, the space between may be filled 
 with a new window. The room will be much 
 pleasanter, and the exterior will have a new 
 interest, for the three windows will form a 
 logical break in the wall. People are al- 
 ways "improvifig" their houses by adding 
 bay windows, which usually look like ex- 
 pensive excrescences, when by expending 
 about the' same nibn'ey and a' little more 
 thought they could make the whole" house 
 more interesting by pulling the scattered win- 
 dows into well-balanced groups. 
 
 A group o'f windows often invites a 
 broad window-seat. The window-seat rriay 
 be constructed to cover a long, low radiator, 
 with a. lattice for the heat to filter through. 
 Such a seat should have a long fitted pad, 
 mattress fashion, of some fabric that will 
 be in keeping with the other fabrics and 
 colors of the room, and that will fade to an 
 agreeable tone, for fade it will, you may be 
 sure of that. However, grays and browns 
 and tans fade to even pleasanter tones than 
 they had when they came from the dye-pots. 
 
 In a small dining-room a group of win- 
 dows will invite a square or an oblong din- 
 ing-table, placed at right angles to the win- 
 dow-sill. I have often watched women 
 scramble for the tables nearest the windows in 
 tea-rooms and restaurants, and yet their own 
 dining-tables are always placed exactly in 
 the middle of the room, no matter how small 
 or how gloomy it may be. It is not always 
 practicable to place your dining-table under 
 the windows, but when it is — do it! You 
 
 190 
 
THE RIGHT USE OF CURTAINS 
 
 Mellor & Meigs, Architects. 
 This fascinating detail of the entrance to the office of the architects in Philadelphia is full of helpful sugges- 
 tions for small house work. The casements are of metal. 
 
 can make the room even more delightful by 
 building a long shelf under the three win- 
 dows, and having a row of plants on the 
 shelves. You will always have fresh green 
 things, and you '11 always feel that meal- 
 time is a gala occasion. 
 
 The dining-room in my own little house is 
 really a part of the living-room, and I did 
 not want it conventional, with a table set 
 squarely in the middle of the floor, so I 
 
 placed the dining-room table against the east 
 wall, under a group of four windows. The 
 table is a reproduction of an old English re- 
 fectory table, seven feet by four. It was 
 much too large to be placed in the middle 
 of the floor, but is most successful under the 
 windows. We pull the chairs up around it, 
 and look out the windows. When the dog 
 wood is in bloom, or when the first snow 
 storm comes, we can offer our friends real 
 
 191 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 In this drawing note the method of screening the radiator which is under the seat. Note also the picturesque- 
 
 in inis arawing nore ine meinoa oi screening ine rauiaior wnicn is unc 
 ness of the window arrangement with its small panes and simple hangings. 
 
 entertainment with their dinner. Then in- 
 deed do we appreciate the privilege of win- 
 dows. There are so many trees outside that 
 there is no glare in your eyes, facing the 
 light, and our friends find it a very happy 
 arrangement. You can see how it is placed 
 in the photograph on page igg. On gala 
 occasions we pull the table out into the mid- 
 dle of the floor and seat twelve people com- 
 fortably. But there are few such occasions. 
 If you have a bay window in your house, 
 use it! Take down the heavy curtains and 
 draperies, and remove the marble-topped 
 table with its fine vase that has been viewed 
 by passers-by for these many years, and make 
 the little recess a useful place. A -big arm- 
 chair and a sewing-table, or a broad window- 
 seat with narrow shelves for books at the 
 ends, or a low table with a big chair on 
 each side of it — any of these combinations 
 will make the recess most inviting. If it 
 has a sunny exposure, you can easily make 
 a flower room of it. In this case, take 
 down all the thin curtains and build many 
 
 shelves to hold plants. A lattice may be 
 built around the windows, and ivy trained 
 over it. This, of course, if there are other 
 windows in the room. The flowers will 
 darken the room slightly. 
 
 Don't permit curtains that will interfere 
 with the pleasure of living. The best cur- 
 tains in the world are made of sheer white 
 Swiss muslin. You can be sure they 're al- 
 ways clean. You are n't worried about peo- 
 ple looking in, and if you want to look out 
 you can pull them aside. 
 
 The most beautiful windows are treated 
 architecturally, and require only a heavy side 
 curtain that may be drawn at night. Made 
 up of well-balanced sashes subdivided into 
 rectangular or diamond panes by leads or 
 small moldings, such a window is a joy in 
 itself. It does n't need curtains. If you 
 can afford the glass that is uneven in quality 
 (amber is the nicest color of all) your win- 
 dow will be a jewel, as full of changing color 
 as an opal. I love those stately old houses 
 on Beacon Hill in Boston, with their panes 
 
 192 
 
THE RIGHT USE OF CURTAINS 
 
 of violet and lavender glass. If one of these 
 precious panes is broken the Bostonian's 
 heart is broken also, and he seeks until he 
 finds another piece of misty gray or lavender 
 glass that will fit into his window. 
 
 If your house is built with thick walls ask 
 your architect to see that you have broad in- 
 terior window sills. Nothing adds more to 
 the attractiveness of a room than a row of 
 flower pots on a broad window sill. Some- 
 how I can't imagine an English cottage case- 
 ment window without a very crisp white mus^ 
 lin curtain and an orderly row of red geran- 
 iums on the sill. A bird sings merrily in 
 a yellow reed cage, the flowers always bloom, 
 the curtains never lose their crispness, in my 
 imagination. This vision of mine has been 
 
 fostered by the pictures of hundreds of art- 
 ists, and grim reality does not change it. 
 Therefore, this must be the ideal window 
 treatment — all poets .will agree with me ! 
 
 We are so cursed with flies and mosquitoes 
 in America that we can't consider our win- 
 dow curtains iantil we have arranged for 
 wire screens. Window, shades are almost as 
 great a nuisance, but- we can do without them 
 by having two sets of. curtains. Window 
 shades temper the light, and are usually 
 necessary, to bedrooms, even if you manage 
 to do without them in the living-room. If 
 you must have them, be sure that they look 
 well from the outside of the house. If they 
 are tan or ecru or linen colored they will 
 not be objectionable, but if they are white 
 
 Wilson Eyre, Architect. 
 The kitchen, when well considered, may be gay and cheerful, — as it is in this house at Forest Hills, Long Island. 
 
THE HONEST HOtJSE 
 
 •or dark green they will be very glaring. Of 
 course if your house is painted white, you 
 can use white shades, but be careful not to 
 get a sickly blue-white. 
 
 It is almost impossible to use a holland 
 shade at a casement window. The wire 
 screen is almost as difficult. If you have the 
 screen placed outside the window, you can 
 have a built-on window-box outside, but the 
 casement will have to swing in. If you have 
 the casement swing outward, the screen will 
 have to be removed every time you wish to 
 open or close the window. 
 
 Casement windows are best curtained with 
 thin white net or muslin, shirred at the top 
 and bottom on small brass rods so that the 
 window may be opened without the vexation 
 of flapping curtain. Casements made of 
 leaded panes of colored glass do not require 
 thin curtains. A heavy curtain that may 
 be drawn across the window at night is all 
 that is necessary. 
 
 A heavy curtain has great possibilities for 
 beauty. When you choose the fabric, select 
 some stuff that is good in design and texture, 
 especially at night, for while almost any 
 heavy curtain is attractive enough when 
 pulled to one side in heavy folds by day, 
 when it is drawn at night it. should be even 
 more so — it should be decorative. I like a 
 curtain that shimmers at night, a soft fabric 
 with silk threads, or one of those lovely Jap- 
 anese cottons that are printed in metals and 
 dull colors — bronze and silver, orange and 
 brown, on a tan ground. Such fabrics cost 
 no more than ordinary reps and velveteen. 
 
 The day of lace curtains has gone for- 
 ever. This is one of the reforms of which 
 we are sure. Despite the fact that millions 
 of pairs of lace curtains are sold each year, 
 no one that you know buys them. Really, 
 
 there might be an adage: By their lace cur- 
 tains ye shall not know them! 
 
 I am so often asked "how; long parlor cur- 
 tains should be," or how new curtains are 
 made, or whether curtains are draped. The 
 treatment of window curtains is exceedingly 
 simple because it is invariably based on com- 
 mon sense. The drapings and puffings of 
 other days are unknown to the modern decor- 
 ator. The main things to remember are : 
 
 Glass curtains are nicest when they are 
 of white or cream net or muslin or scrim. 
 Natural-colored linen scrim also is good. A 
 two-inch hem on both sides and the bottom 
 and a two-inch casifig at the top are the usual 
 finish.. Sometimes they are finished with 
 hemstitching, if you care to -take the trouble. 
 
 These thin curtains ar^ strung on a small 
 brass rod and are hung as close to the glass 
 as possible. The lower hem barely escapes 
 the sill at the bottom. The curtains may 
 hang in straight folds, or may be pushed to 
 the sides by day. If they are made of net, 
 it will not be necessary to push them aside, 
 for net is thin enough to see through. Ruf- 
 fled curtains, crossed and looped back, often 
 appeal to us just because of their cleanly, 
 fresh appearance, but plain ones are nicer. 
 Ruffles belong on wearing apparel, not on 
 house-furnishings. Occasionally one sees 
 muslin curtains finished with an old-fash- 
 ioned ball fringe. These curtains are usually 
 held back by white cords during the day, 
 but they should be released from the cords, at 
 night. 
 
 Windows that go all the way to the floor 
 of course should have glass curtains that 
 barely cover the glass and side curtains that 
 just escape the floor. French windows are 
 treated differently; here two small brass rods 
 must be used on each panel, confining the top 
 
 194 
 
THE RIGHT USE OF CURTAINS 
 
 and bottom hems of the thin curtains. 
 Casement windows are often treated in the 
 same way. Small casements may have short 
 sash curtains, loose at the bottom. If the 
 casements open out, the white curtains are 
 often eliminated and inside curtains of silk or 
 linen or cretonne are fixed to the inside win- 
 dow trim. These curtains are made with 
 plaited valances. 
 
 When side curtains of chintz or such a 
 fabric are used at the double-hung windows 
 there may be a fitted valance, or a plaited 
 ruffle at the top of the window. This 
 valance should have its own rod, so that the 
 chintz curtains beneath it may be drawn to- 
 
 gether at night. Many people string the 
 valance and side curtains on the same pole, 
 and while this is n't exactly as it should be, 
 the framing of the gay chintz is very nice to 
 look upon. If several rooms open together, 
 and the wall treatments are the same, the 
 side curtains should also be the same. 
 
 When glass doors lead to an outdoor din- 
 ing-room, or a little conservatory, or an en- 
 closed piazza, the effect is very pleasant in- 
 deed, because you can enjoy the sunshine and 
 flowers and the feeling of outdoors while you 
 toast your feet by a real fire within. Usu- 
 ally these glass doors are made French 
 fashion, of two long narrow sashes, each two 
 
 Designed by H. T. Lindeberg. Albro & Lindeberg, Architects. 
 Tlie windows of this house are so designed that they are full of interest. Note the way the curtains are ar- 
 ranged for the French windows. The house as a whole is full of suggestions, and its well-studied detail may be 
 easily applied to small house design. It is located at White Plains, New York. 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 panes wide, and many panes deep. The 
 best method of curtaining the sash is to shir 
 a soft white or cream stuff — muslin or net — 
 on small brass rods, the top rod being 
 placed at the second bar from the top, and 
 the lower rod being placed at the very bot- 
 tom of the glass panes. This ■ leaves ■ an 
 open square of four panes at the top of the 
 sash. 
 
 Plan your windows for sunshine and air, 
 and then refuse to have a wall-paper or a 
 rug that will not stand the test of the sun- 
 shine. This is a pretty good rule for the 
 furnishings of your house. And if you are 
 willing to spend your money for quality, — 
 even if you have to deny yourself ■ certain 
 things you like, — your house will reflect the 
 wisdom of your action. 
 
 A studio near Hartford, Connecticut. 
 
 196 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 BEFORE YOU BUY YOUR FURNITURE 
 
 HOW many women really decide 
 what the furniture of their houses 
 will be? 
 
 There is a nice theory that when a woman 
 has a house to be furnished she has a neat 
 little list of all the things she will require 
 in that house, and all she needs is a few 
 days' time and a certain amount of money 
 and an obliging salesman, and her house will 
 be furnished. There may be women who 
 have actually bought the furniture originally 
 planned for their houses, but I have n't 
 known them. 
 
 Certainly most of the women I know have 
 had this grave matter decided for them by 
 some particularly good piece of furniture 
 that has come to them, and this piece of 
 furniture gradually influences the equipment 
 of the rest of the house. It may be a grand- 
 father's clock of mahogany, or an old rose- 
 wood table, or a walnut sofa, or a quaint old 
 oak chest, or even a Chinese vase or a French 
 etching. But its influence is inevitable. 
 
 Houses cannot be furnished in a few 
 weeks, or a few months, save by experienced 
 
 decorators. If you plunge in desperately 
 and do all your shopping in a few days, as 
 so many bewildered young brides do, you 
 will want to begin eliminating your mistakes 
 before the year is out. Hasty shopping is 
 always a series of compromises, no matter 
 how carefully you have planned it before- 
 hand. 
 
 Why are we so afraid of our houses seem- 
 ing bare and empty"? Why aren't we hon- 
 est enough to buy things as we actually re- 
 quire them"? Why do we apologize for the 
 kitchen table in the dining-room, when the 
 fine old chairs explain the situation'? An)'^ 
 one with an ounce of imagination will know 
 we are waiting until we can afford the proper 
 table for those chairs, and why should we 
 concern ourselves with people who have no 
 imagination "? 
 
 There are so many of us who really want 
 simple things, and yet we compromise by 
 buying things that do not measure up to our 
 standards. Because the greatest number of 
 women are content with things of hideous de- 
 sign, wicked color and abominably cheap ex- 
 
 197 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 ecution, the rest of us, who really want sim- 
 ple and durable things, sigh and compromise 
 because, we argue, "Here is my house ready 
 and waiting. It must have this and that at 
 once, because other women's. houses have this 
 and that. I 'd like to look further, but I 
 am so tired, and, after all, this is the best 
 thing I have seen I" Have n't you made 
 this compromise, over and over'? And 
 have n't you finally thrown away half your 
 hastily purchased furniture in sheer disgust? 
 I have ! 
 
 If you start out with the determination to 
 have mahogany furniture only, or oak, or 
 walnut, or whatever you may like, your 
 house will be absolutely unobjectionable, but 
 you won't have very much fun with it. If, 
 however, you have a few pieces of furniture 
 that you love too much to give up, and you 
 have to search and search for every new 
 thing you buy so that it will be friendly 
 with the old things, your house will be a 
 much pleasanter place to live in. 
 
 The furniture that most of us buy may be 
 divided into four groups : 
 
 First, wooden furniture that is oiled or 
 waxed so that the grain and color of the 
 wood is its own decoration, such as oak, ma- 
 hogany, walnut, and so forth. 
 
 Second, wooden furniture that is covered 
 with paint and lacquer or gilt, such as the 
 quaint Colonial furniture with flat ground 
 colors and decorations of posies and gar- 
 lands, and the lacquered Chinese furniture in 
 which conventional decorations of gold are 
 applied to a ground of green, red, or black 
 lacquer, and the simple models painted or 
 enameled in one tone. 
 
 Third, the furniture that is covered wholly 
 or in part with tapestries, leathers, chintzes 
 and the many less expensive fabrics. 
 
 Fourth, the light-weight furniture that is 
 constructed of reeds, rattan, and so forth, 
 that comes to us from_China, the Philippines, 
 the weavers of Europe and our own willow- 
 craft workmen. 
 
 Of late another sort of furniture has been 
 put on the market that will some day be 
 useful to many of us. This is the cement 
 or terra-cotta furniture made from old 
 Italian models, and most suitable for gar- 
 dens and hallways of stucco houses, but we 
 need not concern ourselves with this furni- 
 ture in this chapter. - 
 
 You can associate furniture of each of the 
 first four classes pleasantly in one room, if 
 the design and color are in harmony. For 
 instance, you can use a mahogany table and 
 chintz-covered couch and willow chairs and 
 a chest of drawers of painted wood in one 
 room, or you can use oak furniture, tapestry- 
 covered chairs, a black lacquer chest and 
 Chinese reed chairs together. The Oriental 
 lacquer furniture and the Occidental 
 painted furniture are not friendly, just as 
 oak and mahogany are usually unfriendly, 
 but any one of the decorated woods may be 
 combined with any one of the stained and 
 waxed woods if the selection is made care- 
 fully. 
 
 If you had a piece of black-and-gold lac- 
 quer furniture, for instance, you would be 
 careful to select a covering for your uphol- 
 stered chairs that would be of plain color, 
 or of a design in keeping with the design 
 employed on the lacquer. It would be silly 
 to associate chairs decorated with primrose 
 garlands and lacquered furniture covered 
 with fantastic temples, ships and Chinamen, 
 in the same room. And yet either of these 
 chairs, if used in connection with oak or ma- 
 hogany furniture, would be very pleasant. 
 98 
 
BEFORE YOU BUY YOUR FURNITURE 
 
 Wilson Eyre, Architect. 
 This view, taken in Mrs. Goodrtow's house at Forest Hills, Long Island, shows a portion of the living and din- 
 ing rooms. Note the use of hangings to give color to the walls. 
 
 Fortunately, we are no longer forced to 
 buy sets of things. We buy a chair because 
 it is comfortable and because it is beautiful, 
 but we do not wish to repeat the chair. We 
 would rather have a second chair of a dif- 
 ferent kind. The only room that really in- 
 vites a "set" of chairs is the dining-room, 
 and there is a great opportunity for gaiety 
 and charm in this erstwhile formal room if 
 you go about its furnishing in the right spirit. 
 
 Ever so many new houses are built with- 
 out any real "dining-room." If the family 
 
 is small and their life is simple, a huge liv- 
 ing-room with a corner for dining is sensi- 
 ble. In my own house the dining- and 
 living-rooms are practically one, so I avoided 
 all the ugly "dining-roomy" things, and I 
 keep the glass and china in the kitchen. 
 
 We have to be careful about mixing woods 
 that depend on their grain and polish for 
 their beauty, but there are so many lovely 
 things in willow and rattan, in chintz and 
 tapestry coverings, that we may associate 
 with our fine polished woods and get remark- 
 
 199 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 able effects. There is something so very- 
 dreary about a proper room, with a set of 
 furniture carefully matched, and sets of pic- 
 tures and vases and books — not an accidental 
 anywhere ! 
 
 The secret of the association of furniture 
 is: Harmony of color and line and design. 
 Oak and mahogany are both beautiful woods 
 in themselves, and if darkened by age and 
 usage they may be used together, but if the 
 oak is very brown and the mahogany very 
 red, each cheapens the other. The oak 
 seems coarse and colorless, and the mahog- 
 any seems impossibly red and shiny. 
 
 If your living-room is paneled or wains- 
 coted in oak, and you have a particularly 
 good Stuart chair with turned legs and cane 
 inset to build on, you need not wait until 
 you can buy other furniture of the same pe- 
 riod as the chair. I know a very successful' 
 living-room furnished with objects of widely 
 different types. There is an oak Windsor 
 chair of the old kitchen type, a reproduction 
 of a Cromwellian chair with oak frame and 
 leather seat and back, a perfectly new up- 
 right piano of absolutely simple lines, a 
 small table of unpretentious design, and a 
 graceful Stuart chair, all in perfect accord 
 with the spirit of the oak paneling. One 
 beauty of such simplicity is that a fine tap- 
 estry-covered chair might be introduced into 
 this room, and the piano and kitchen chair 
 would still be at home. 
 
 This room might have been spoiled in a 
 dozen different ways. If the piano had 
 been "ornamented" a bit with geometric de- 
 vices, if a squashy leather chair of the tufted 
 variety had been used instead of the simple 
 oak-and-leather one, if a heavy "Mission" 
 rocker had been used instead of the Wind- 
 sor chair, if one of those elaborately carved 
 
 chairs miscalled "Early English" by the deal- 
 ers had been used instead of the Stuart chair, 
 the whole room would have been thrown out 
 of key. 
 
 You must consider not only the harmony 
 of line and color and design, but also har- 
 mony of mass, of proportion, when you mix 
 furniture of different types. 
 
 It is not possible to tell you just the sort 
 of furniture to buy: that is something every 
 woman must decide for herself. 
 
 I am not one of those painstakingly care- 
 ful people who would have you throw away 
 good furniture just to keep each room "in 
 period." I think very few of us need con- 
 cern ourselves with the trying task of work- 
 ing out period rooms. Most rooms grow of 
 themselves, if you give them half a chance. 
 Even if they were begun in the wrong spirit, 
 they may be made beautiful if you will weed 
 out the ugly, mistaken things and give the 
 good things a chance to assert their worth. 
 
 A woman I know started out, thinking she 
 wanted to furnish a house with "Mission" 
 furniture. Fortunately, she started in a very 
 small way — in a three-room apartment — so 
 her purchases were restricted. She bought 
 a library table, a bookcase and several heavy 
 oak chairs for the combined living-room and 
 dining-room. In less than six months after 
 this ambitious little home had begun, an old 
 lady died and left my friend her beloved 
 secretary, one of those dignified old desks 
 with book shelves above, with doors of 
 leaded diamond panes. The old secretary 
 was so big it did not really belong, after it 
 arrived at the flat, and it had to be done 
 over, but it was so very much nicer than 
 everything else that the rest of the furniture 
 was pulled around to make room for it. 
 
 It wasn't long before the clumsy chairs 
 
 200 
 
BEFORE YOU BUY YOUR FURNITURE 
 
 were sold to a second-hand dealer, and a 
 willow chair and a rush-bottom one and a 
 chintz covered one were substituted, because 
 they seemed more at home with the old sec- 
 retary. .The heavy round table soon gave 
 place to a graceful old mahogany table with 
 drop leaves. The bookcase was abolished, 
 and plain white shelves were built in. This 
 home grew' of itself from the moment the 
 secretary entered it. 
 
 I am not condemning Mission furniture! 
 Certainly the plain oak models that have 
 come to us along with the craze for the 
 bungalow are very much better than the fur- 
 niture we 've suffered for so many years — 
 the Victorian walnut, the awful golden oak, 
 
 the imitation mahogany that is still flooding 
 the cheaper shops. Mission furniture is 
 very good in its place, but its place is neces- 
 sarily an uncrowded, spacious room. Cer- 
 tainly massive oak chairs and tables, no mat- 
 ter how well made, have no place in small 
 city rooms. 
 
 Nor is .this chapter a brief for old furni- 
 ture. We speak in the terms of old furni- 
 ture because the best furniture offered us is 
 made from the old models. There are new 
 men who are making beautiful things, both 
 in America and abroad, but the prices are 
 prohibitive. So we will be wise to study the 
 various styles and schools of furniture that 
 are being reproduced by intelligent manu- 
 
 Wilson Eyre, Architect. 
 A strongly figured wall paper is possible if its colors be harmonious. But it is more limited in its possibilities 
 than a simple flat tone paper, because the furniture and hangings must be chosen especially to match its character. 
 This room is in Mrs. Goodnow's house at Forest Hills, Long Island. 
 
 201 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 facturers, and plan our rooms according to 
 what we most like, what we most need, and 
 what we can actually afford. In the bibliog- 
 raphy at the end of this book you will find 
 a list of books on furniture, books that will 
 give you the arguments pro and con, the 
 earmarks, the secrets of those passionate ad- 
 venturers who spend their lives in collect- 
 ing old furniture. Certainly it seems to me 
 little short of foolhardiness for a woman to 
 plunge into a furniture shop until she has 
 read much, and thought more of her require- 
 
 ments. I haven't laid stress on it, — ^but 
 mistakes are costly. 
 
 I should like to give a neat lot of rules, 
 a list that might be followed as casually as 
 your grocery list, but it can't be done. I 
 can only beg you to accept my theory, that 
 nothing is worth buying which does not of- 
 fer you both pleasure and service. Pleasure 
 should mean Comfort and Beauty, and Serv- 
 ice means Economy and Utility. Put these 
 principles in your pocket and go a-shopping, 
 but go slowly — ^go slowly! 
 
 Charles Barton Keen, Architect. 
 Note the unusual arrangement of beams in this pergola porch. 
 
 202 
 
ff^^^^^r-wf-(^^ ta^yJ^a^gff=aagg«giw^/lsml=7/^ 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 A LIST OF USEFUL BOOKS 
 
 AND so we come to the end. A sur- 
 vey of the subject of home build- 
 ing such as is made in the fore- 
 going chapters would be incomplete, 
 however, if it did not include some sugges- 
 tions for the further study of the subject. 
 
 The literature given over to the study and 
 representation of architecture is extremely 
 varied and in many respects satisfactory. 
 Architectural histories and treatises are 
 abundant. If you wish to study Greek or 
 Roman or Italian architecture, there are 
 many competent books which will give you 
 plenty of information and inspiration. For 
 the greater part this literature is occupied 
 with monumental architecture: — the archi- 
 tecture of temples, palaces and public build- 
 ings generally. Domestic architecture of 
 the formal and pretentious type is well repre- 
 sented, but, excepting the books devoted to 
 English work, there is a very slight literature 
 dealing with the more modest types of dwell- 
 ing. 
 
 Of books treating of the American small 
 house especially there are very few worthy of 
 commendation. Of course one must remem- 
 ber that from the period of the later Georgian 
 architecture until comparatively recent times. 
 
 there has been very little commendable archi- 
 tecture in this country to write about. The 
 older Colonial or Georgian buildings have re- 
 ceived much deserved attention, though the^ 
 number of books at moderate prices is sur- 
 prisingly small. 
 
 Our modern small-house architecture at its- 
 best is excellent; at its worst it is unbeliev- 
 ably bad, — and there is to-day much more 
 bad architecture than good. Naturally 
 enough, as a reflection of this fact, there is a . 
 paucity of books which present only the best 
 examples of modern small-house design. 
 
 While books dealing adequately with the. 
 better aspects of domestic architecture are 
 wanting, there is, unfortunately, no lack of 
 books which advertise its worst aspects. Es- 
 pecially is this true of that type of commer- 
 cial catalogue of house plans issued by 
 certain "architectural firms" usually under 
 such alluring titles as "One Hundred House 
 Plans for One Dollar." They are filled for 
 the most part with utterly reprehensible de-- 
 signs. The untrained person naturally 
 enough cannot tell the difference between a. 
 bit of glass and a diamond, and while most 
 of us know that there is a difference, v/e 
 might be hard put to it to distinguish be- 
 
 203 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 tween them under all conditions. The case 
 is, in its essence, not different in the matter 
 ■of judging good and bad architecture. Real- 
 izing this, certain publishing concerns, by 
 issuing books of house designs devoid of any 
 artistic merit, have, by claiming for these 
 designs all the architectural virtues, system- 
 atically debauched the taste of the public. 
 
 The attempt here made is to suggest only 
 
 such books as are regarded as meritorious by 
 
 ■competent architects and so far as possible to 
 
 name books the prices of which are moderate. 
 
 "^The Georgian Period, edited by Professor Wm. 
 R. Ware, Twelve parts, $60.00. (Ameri- 
 can Architect, N. Y.). 
 This is an extremely exhaustive survey of 
 the whole Colonial period and it presents a 
 large collection of photographs and measured 
 drawings together with an explanatory text. 
 There is also an abridged edition consisting 
 of 100 representative plates called "the stu- 
 dents edition" which sells for $15.00. 
 ^'-Colonial Architecture for Those About to 
 Build. By H. C. Wise and H. F. Beidle- 
 man, $5.00. (Lippincott, 1913). 
 This book devotes itself more particularly to 
 Colonial architecture in and about Philadel- 
 phia. The illustrations, of excellent quality, 
 are very numerous and show the best work 
 of the period. The text is at once informing 
 and agreeable to read. 
 ^The Dutch Colonial House, by Aymar Em- 
 bury, $2.00. (McBride, Nast & Co.). 
 Devoted almost entirely to the gambrel roof 
 type of house, this book shows in an enter- 
 taining manner the possibilities of the Dutch 
 Colonial house. The illustrations, which in- 
 clude floor plans, are numerous, and good. 
 Several modern adaptations of this type of 
 house are shown. 
 "^Small Country Houses of To-day, edited by 
 Lawrence Weaver, $5.00. (Scribner's, 
 
 1913)- 
 "The Country Life Book of Cottages, by Law- 
 
 rence Weaver, $2.50. (Scribner's, 1913). 
 These two books, very fully illustrated by 
 photographs and floor plans, present the best 
 modern work of the English architects in the 
 field of small house architecture. The photo- 
 graphs are admirably chosen and the designs 
 in general are worthy inspiration for Ameri- 
 can home builders. Naturally some allow- 
 ance must be made for the English point of 
 view, particularly on matters of planning. 
 ^The Half Timber House, by Allan W. Jackson, 
 
 $2.00. (McBride, Nast & Co.). 
 Devoted entirely to the consideration of half 
 timber houses, this book sets forth the advan- 
 tages of this type of construction. The illus- 
 trations are well chosen. 
 Bungalows, by H. H. Saylor, $2.00, (McBride, 
 
 Nast & Co.). 
 One of the few commendable books on bunga- 
 lows. The illustrations are excellent and a 
 great variety of bungalow designs are given. 
 Successful Houses and How to Build Them, 
 
 by C. E. White, Jr., $2.00. (MacmiUan). 
 The Country House, by C. H. Hooper, $1.50. 
 
 (Doubleday, Page & Co.). 
 Both the above books deal very fully and com- 
 petently with the usual practical consideration 
 of house construction including drainage, 
 plumbing, heating, lighting and equipment. 
 Of them, Mr. White's book is the better since 
 its choice of examples is far more discriminat- 
 ing than that shown in Mr. Hooper's book. 
 The latter book should be consulted therefore 
 for practical suggestions ; the artistic merit of 
 the houses illustrated is frequently question- 
 able. 
 The American Vignola, edited by Professor Wm. 
 
 R. Ware, 2 parts, $2.50 for each part. 
 
 $5.00. (International Textbook Co. Scran- 
 ton, 1910). 
 For those who wish to understand the signifi- 
 cance of classic architecture, — of columns and 
 arches and all the motifs used in classic archi- 
 tecture, there is no book which will repay study 
 so well as Vignola. There are many editions 
 of Vignola, but Professor Ware's is for gen- 
 eral purposes perhaps the best. 
 
 204 
 
A LIST OF USEFUL BOOKS 
 
 ^ Details of Old New England Houses, by Lois 
 
 L. Howe and Constance Fuller, $10.00. 
 
 (Architectural Book Publishing Co.). 
 An excellent book consisting of fifty plates giv- 
 ing measured drawings and details of Colonial 
 work, including porches, door ways, mantels, 
 and so forth. If one wishes to know just why 
 Colonial houses are charming he must study 
 their detail. 
 S Building Details, by Frank M. Snyder, 11 parts, 
 
 $3.00 for each part. (Published by the 
 
 author. New York). 
 This collection although it includes details of 
 many buildings other than dwelling houses, 
 contains a good number of drawings showing 
 the details of the very Best modern house de- 
 sign. The details are drawn with great fidel- 
 ity. The parts may be purchased separately. 
 Colonial Homes and their Furnishings, by 
 
 Mary H. Northend, $5.00. (Little, Brown 
 
 & Co.). 
 This book gives many illustrations, especially 
 -of New England Colonial Homes, and lays 
 special emphasis on the treatment of the inte- 
 riors. 
 The House in Good Taste, by Elsie de Wolfe, 
 
 $2.50. (The Century Co.). 
 Unique in its way, this book deals with in- 
 terior designs which have been all executed by 
 the author. Its field lies somewhat beyond the 
 reach of the modest small house but it will 
 be- found full of useful suggestions. The 
 book is interestingly written and the illustra- 
 tions are admirable. 
 
 Adventures in Home-Making, by Robert and 
 Elizabeth Shackleton, $1.75. (John Lane 
 Co.). 
 The stimulation which the reader derives from 
 this book is largely due to the very personal 
 quality infused in the text. Its authors show 
 how they met various problems which arose in 
 the process of altering old American homes 
 into modern and more livable houses. 
 Gardens for Small Country Houses, by Ger- 
 trude Jekyll and Lawrence Weaver, $5.00. 
 (Scribner's). 
 Although this is a hock devoted to English 
 Gardens from an English point of view, its 
 suggestions are for the most part applicable 
 to our own garden problems. Its readable 
 text is supplemented by a quantity of photo- 
 graphs and plans. It deals with garden de- 
 sign as a whole, including garden architecture 
 and planting. 
 The Practical Book of Garden Architecture, 
 by Phoebe Westcott Humphreys, $5.00. 
 (Lippincott). 
 This book deals in its way with American gar- 
 dens as the foregoing book does with English. 
 It is devoted largely to the architectural treat- 
 ment of gardens, — their pergolas, arbors, gate- 
 ways and garden houses. The text is excel- 
 lent. The illustrations, though good, are un- 
 fortunately unequal to the text. 
 The Lure of the Garden, by Hildegarde Haw- 
 thorne, $4.00. (The Century Co.). 
 A most interesting book on the romantic as- 
 pects of gardening. 
 
 No reputable architect barters his designs 
 in the open market. In designing a house 
 he tries to express in it some original character 
 and special interest. His ideal, unlike that 
 of the publishers of "Commercial" books, is not 
 to sell the same design to a thousand clients. 
 
 Of course the foregoing list is only sugges- 
 tive; there are many other valuable books 
 which deal with the various aspects of home 
 building. The books in this list, neverthe- 
 
 less, are fairly representative of the best, and 
 no list, however long, could be exhaustive. 
 
 After all, the value of books lies more in 
 their power to stimulate our interest and en- 
 thusiasm than to instruct us. When one 
 comes to examine it, every problem is differ- 
 ent from the next. If your experience is in 
 the least like mine, you may search through 
 books for the solution of a particular problem, 
 — and yet you rarely find just the answer that 
 
 205 
 
THE HONEST HOUSE 
 
 you are looking for. In the field of artistic 
 endeavor, it is next to impossible to copy 
 anything outright without sacrificing some 
 important consideration imposed by your 
 problem. Nearly always the practical con- 
 ditions of your problem differ from those of 
 the examples shown in the books. Conse- 
 quently you are driven back upon your own 
 resources and initiative. This fact brings 
 large compensations. 
 
 What we should all try to do is to adapt, — 
 not to copy. That which the enlightened 
 person seeks is inspiration, not simply in- 
 
 formation. The matter of designing, build- 
 ing, and furnishing a home comes in the end 
 to a question of self-expression; and the op- 
 portunities for this expression are infinitely 
 varied. If we are servile in our attitude, if 
 we are easily satisfied, if our critical sense 
 is wanting, and our enthusiasm impoverished, 
 the houses we design and furnish will be 
 weak and without character. We build our- 
 selves into our houses. Remember that the 
 world we live in is a world of ideas. Though 
 we see it dimly, a worthy ideal is always be- 
 fore us in all our undertakings. 
 
 THE END 
 
 pj„,.;fW-«i„%,^ 
 
 206