si * st Xs A i fy Ure) aria § ass, nS i ort ay SateN ATTERSON P i TA OWE AUGUS ee cet eran Y pert were AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK - BOSTON + CHICAGO - DALLAS ATLANTA + SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CoO., LimitepD LONDON - BOMBAY - CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lt. TORONTO CCGL UL JUSUIUAIAON) YOUaIT VY WoAZ AOUOFT JO UOLBaT ay} padtooet ‘adog [Jessny UYyoF “oayYour sy} YoY LOZ sasnoy ey} Suowe jay AGNV'ISI SNOT ‘OHOINAL LV AUVO XVAYNIVA AND ‘SUW AO WONUCISAY qyayypry ‘tdOd TINSSAU NHOL 44 616T O AR 2 COTE ic Wy pa i Sd Se AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY THEIR ARCHITECTURAL STYLE - THEIR ENVIRONMENT - THEIR CHARACTERISTICS BY AUGUSTA OWEN PATTERSON weer DITOR OF TOWN & COUNTRY WITH HALFTONE PELCUSTRATIONS THE MACMILLAN COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK MCMXXIV COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. SET UP AND PRINTED. PUBLISHED, NOVEMBER, 1924. , * K a us ug. = . 7 7 ‘ = 3° Pas ? ia = ¥ ; i] : a: vs : 4 RP at Aes PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY J. J. LITTLE & IVES % ’ i ® CONIVGI EIDEMQVE AMICO QVI ME DE STVDIO OPERAQVE MEA DISSERENTEM ET BENIGNA PATIENTIA AVDIVIT ET CVM OMNI LEPORE AC SCIENTIA ADIVVIT HVNC PRIMVM LIBRVM AVGVSTA PREFACE Tuas is a book rather on esthetics than on architecture. There are innumerable books on architecture qua architecture. The trouble with most of them, from the layman’s point of view, is their abandonment to technicality; their authors fail to see the forest because of their special interest in some particular tree. This book is an attempt to orientate the forest as a whole, to explain why it has assumed certain external forms, color, and atmosphere —and also what those forms are. | As recently as Shakspere, the fork was, to Englishmen, an effeminate Italian luxury. To-day it is unthinkable that any gently-bred person put his knife in his mouth; Shakspere probably, Henry VIII certainly, used no other tool. The reason for the present inhibition is entirely esthetic. The first years of this century have seen significant changes in architectural style in American homes, changes almost as significant, mentally, as the abandonment of the knife as a food conveyor. So far as I am aware, there has, before this, been published no book in the English language definitely striving to codify those changes and to explain what is the mental background back of our best contemporaneous architectural practice. Also to explain, as far as things esthetic are ever explainable, why this changed background has been so generally accepted by owners. For the reasons are, essentially, esthetic. To those owners, architects, and photographers whose unending courtesy and unwearying patience have made this book possible I give thanks. To my husband, the most amusing conversationalist I know, I acknowledge indebtedness for encouragement and the use of his sense of historical perspective as a whetstone upon which to accentuate my own ideas. I owe a special expression of gratitude to the following architects, without Paix PREFACE whose sympathy, encouragement and codperation this book would have been im- possible: Messrs. Walker & Gillette, Delano & Aldrich, John Russell Pope, Thomas Hastings, Wilson Eyre, and Cross & Cross. Also to Mrs. Mattie Edwards Hewitt and Mr. John Wallace Gillies for the loan of their photographs. Also to Mr. H. J. Whigham, Editor, and Mr. Franklin Coe, Publisher, for the use of certain plates from Town & Country Magazine, of which I have the privilege of being Art Editor. Also to Mr. Nelson G. McCrea, Anthon Professor of Latin at Columbia University, who has been kind enough to contribute the Latinity of the dedication. Architectural and photographic credit has been given under each illustration, as is the modern practice in reproduction of architectural work. For this reason a detailed, name by name, acknowledgment is not made here. AucusTta OwEN PATTERSON New York November, 1924. (exe CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE ae Tue HisroricaL BACKGROUND eu ee ee ee i It eee 1 CHAPTER Two rtm es eeicC PROBLEM... 5 -« ee Pages 378, 379 FRANK EATON NEWMAN, ARCHITECT, NEW YORK Country residence of Mr. Robert Appleton, East Hampton, L.I. . . Page 232 JAMES W. O’CONNOR, ARCHITECT, NEW YORK Country residence of Mr. L. H. Sherman, Lakeville, L. I. . . . . Page 51 PEABODY, WILSON & BROWN, ARCHITECTS, NEW YORK Country residence of Mr. Courtlandt D. Barnes, Manhasset, L.I.. . Page 233 Country residence of Mr. Lathrop Brown, St. James, L. I. Pages 117, 125, 1267127 Eeesel Pee ee US RAC LOINS Country residence of Mr. Devereux Milburn, Westbury, L.I.. . . Page 47 Country residence of Mr. Reeve Schley, Far Hills, N.J. . Pages 62, 80, 81, 82 CHARLES A. PLATT, ARCHITECT, NEW YORK Swimming pool on estate of Mr. Ralph Pulitzer, Manhasset, L.I. . . Page 332 JOHN RUSSELL POPE, ARCHITECT, NEW YORK Country residence of Mr. Robert L. Bacon, Westbury, L. I. . Pages 246, 247 Gardens on estate of Mrs. M.S. Burrill, Jericho, L.I.. . . . Page 302 Country residence of Mrs. Guy Fairfax Cary, Jericho, L. I. Frontispiece, Pages 100, 101, 102, 103, 289, 299 Country residence of Mrs. Robert J. Collier, Wickatunk, N. J. Pages 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71 Country residence of Mr. Stuart Duncan, Newport, R. I. Pages 200, 219, 220, 221 Country residence of Mr. Marshall Field, Lloyd’s Harbor, L. I. Pages 111, 136, 137 Country residence of Mr. James Swan Frick, Baltimore Pages 28, 94, 95, 119 Country residence of Mr. Charles A. Gould, Greenlawn, L.I. . . . Page 181 Country residence of Mr. Allan S. Lehman, Tarrytown, N. Y. Pages 54, 198, 215, 216, 217 City residence of Mr. John R. McLean, Washington, D.C.. . . . Page 385 Country residence of Mr. Ogden L. Mills, Westbury, L.I.. . . Pages 92,93 Country residence of Mr. George Hewitt Myers, Watch Hill, R.I.. . Page 117 Country residence of Mr. Andrew Varick Stout, Red Bank, N. J. Pages 114, 128 Country residence of Mr. Moses Taylor, Newport, R. I. . . . . Page173 RICHARDSON, BAROTT & RICHARDSON, ARCHITECTS, BOSTON | Country residence of Mr. Frederic L. W. Richardson, Charles River, Mass. Pages 210, 211 J. ARMSTRONG STENHOUSE, ARCHITECT, NEW YORK City residence of Mr. Otto H. Kahn, New York . Pages 362, 363, 364, 365 FREDERICK STERNER, ARCHITECT, NEW YORK City residence of Mr. Charles Mather MacNeill, New York . . . Page 133 HORACE TRAUMBAUER, ARCHITECT, PHILADELPHIA Country residence of Mrs. A. Hamilton Rice, Newport, R. I. . Pages 45, 340 TREANOR & FATIO, ARCHITECTS, NEW YORK City residence of Mr. I. Townsend Burden, New York . . Pages 184,185 Pani Sa OFLA SERA EON TROWBRIDGE & ACKERMAN, ARCHITECTS, NEW YORK Country residence of Mr. Truman H. Newberry, Detroit, Mich. Pages 113, 134, 314 Country residence of Mr. George D. Pratt, Glen Cove,L.I.. . Pages 46, 321 TROWBRIDGE & LIVINGSTON, ARCHITECTS, NEW YORK City residence of Mrs. Henry Phipps, New York . . . Pages 135, 177, 368 City residence of Mr. John S. Rogers, New York . . . . Pages 182, 183 VISSCHER & BURLEY, ARCHITECTS, NEW YORK Country residence of Mr. F. W. Sewell, Pasadena, Cal. . Pages 276, 277, 278 WARREN & CLARK, ARCHITECTS, NEW YORK Cottage at Jericho, L. TJ. . ~ . . . =. | 5 Sees WALKER & GILLETTE, ARCHITECTS, NEW YORK Country residence of Mr. Sherwood Aldrich, Glen Cove, L.I.. . . Page 65 Boudoir in the French manner. . . eG Pavell ee Country residence of Mr. William R. Coe, Oyster Bay, L. I. Pages 206, 207, 208, 209, 305, 399 Country residence of Mrs. H. P. Davison, Glen Cove, L. I. Pages 29, 129, 130, 131, 132 City residence of Mrs. L. C. Hanna, Cleveland. . . Pages 52, 187, 394, 396 City residence of Mr. Harvey Dow Gibson, New York. . . . . Page376 Country residence of Mr. James Norman Hill, Glen Head, L. I. Pages 115, 124 Country residence of Mr. Francis L. Hine, Glen Cove, L.I. . . . Page 50 City residence of Mr. Thomas Lamont, New York Pages 121, 222, 223, 224, 225, 380, 381 City residence of Mr. Charles E. Mitchell, New York . . . . . Page 354 Country residence of Mr. H. H. Rogers, Southampton, L. I. Pages 30, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153 City residence of Mr. Newell W. Tilton, New York . . . . . Page 384 City residence of Mr. A. Stewart Walker, New York . . . Pages 355,375 JOHN T. WINDRIM, ARCHITECT, PHILADELPHIA | Country residence of Mr. Nicholas F. Brady, Roslyn, L.I. . Pages 195, 297 ARCHITECTS NOT GIVEN Country residence of Mrs. Anne Archbold, Bar Harbor, Me. . Pages 154, 155 Country residence of Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, Sands Point, L.I. . . Page 15 Country residence of Mr. George P. Brett, Fairfield, Conn. Pages 10, 61, 298, 300 Country residence of Mr. George Edward Kent, Jericho, L.I.. . . Page 14 [ xvi ] Gos heat US RACE TONS Garden on estate of Dr. James Henry Lancashire, Manchester-by-the-Sea, IV o3s eer men eee er ROR. eon ee ogee oS, Page 292, Country residence of Mr. Clarence H. Mackay, Roslyn, L. I. . . . Page 16 Country residence of Mrs. Edith Rockefeller McCormick, Lake Forest, III. Page 19 Maisonette of Mr. J. Kearsley Mitchell, New York . . . . . Page 352 Cottage on estate of Mrs. John J. Mitchell, Jr., Montecito Valley, Cal. Page 259 Country residence of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, Glen Cove, L. I. . . Page 13 Country residence of Mr. J. 5S. Phipps, Westbury, L.I. . . . . Page 12 Tennis Court of Mr. Harold Irving Pratt, Glen Cove, L.I.. . Pages 290, 291 Country residence of Mrs. Whitelaw Reid, Purchase, N. Y. . . . Page 11 City residence of Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, New York. . . . Page 377 ARTISTS AND DECORATORS WHOSE WORK IS ILLUSTRATED IN THIS BOOK ROBERT W. CHANLER ee re ech Bk. at ys Seay “4 Page-308 reer ee fe Ge ee he hw US Pages 398, 399 HENRI CRENIER iin mercurese ews ea sf a ers jaeid tere Page S25 HOWARD CUSHING Rigo a Se see Ol nt re Bee eee Page 397 HUNT DIEDERICH er ee Ws ep et Gee aot et gw eens Page 199 are eee a eee ae Ih Pages 308,309 JOHN GREGORY Bre eT ome ke ee nits - eee eee iets eae LO GARDNER HALE Pe see ee es ea a re Ne eee ee ee 392 FREDERICK MacMONNIES mle bacchante = 9) 28: Cae ee eee Lave oLo fexixe! lab Sc lee OP ii Uo ie Rev sie LLOUNes PAUL MANSHIP PE LDGREL UNECE any gaaek Mee cr) oie yada. aren) & eee me rn a ene ~“Hercules’-—oun Dial’. 4. ..-, ©. « «+. « % “) Pagesaliajen Fountain 3s re = 8a, | ge lca ict amt er WZ oh Ace ne ee EDWARD McCARTAN “The Spirit of the Woods*". =. 4 ia a Re MRS. M. S$. MUCHMORE, DECORATOR Country residence of Mr. Wellington Morse, Pasadena, Cal. . Pages 262, 279 ARTHUR S. VERNAY Interior decorations... .. |. §.) 4. .° ..°. 0 4 Pages es ae CLAGGETT WILSON Murals® S.-Y ee ee ee GERTRUDE VANDERBILT WHITNEY Garden Figures. . . . +s 6 fe ss) rr SAMUEL YELLIN Ornamental ironwork . . . . . . . «. #£4«4\PagesSIZS303 gee [ xx ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY CHAPTER ONE PILE HiStORITGAL BACKGROUND To understand a change, one has to know its historic antecedents; where- fore let us start this book by a consideration of the architectural history of the United States in the nineteenth century, the historic background of the con- temporary architectural scene. For fear that it may slip the attention, let me point out that we were a British colony until 1776. That is a fact in our cultural life that is sometimes forgotten; it is only since, say, the Chicago Fire, that we have been subjected to methods of thought that were not North European crystallizing along British molds. The wave of Danube and Mediterranean immigration began, roughly, about that time. Architecture is perhaps the finest of the fine arts; it takes some time for architectural consciousness to develop. It was nearly a thousand years after the so-called fall of Rome before our own Nordic ancestors perfected the style we now call Gothic. So it is no matter for wonder that the American Colonial per- sisted as the dominant style in American domestic architecture until well along into the nineteenth century, say, about during the first third; and that we accepted its forms without attempts to change. American Colonial is this country’s one real contribution to the present gallery of architectural styles. As will be pointed out later, in due place, it is a logical development of the contemporaneous British manner, translated into local materials and adapted to local social habit. It left behind some splendid examples, both in city and country, and had sufficient vitality to persist, though not in favour, and manifesting itself in debased forms, all through Fake AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY the architectural Dark Ages that followed. It has become one of the accepted norms of to-day; and many modern renderings in that method are illustrated in the succeeding pages. The Jacksonian era approximately marks the loss of the Colonial impulse in architecture and our first efforts towards the development of styles of our own. We succeeded in ceasing to be Colonial; though provincial is perhaps the kindest adjective one may use for the stylistic swamp into which we plunged only to emerge at the close of the century. Incidentally these era-limits are not to be taken with too much chronological rigidity. Owing to the analogy of geography, the historian has to assign definite transition moments, although to do so’ is to be about as accurate as to chart a thunder cloud. Anybody, however, who wants all the qualifying phrases and clauses, all the interlockings, the earliest symptoms and the latest survivals, of a movement, can find them annotated in any and every treatise on architecture. At about the period, then, of the consulship of General Jackson, we began to feel our mental oats; to be “fresh,” in the old, New England, slang sense of the word. It was a normal, healthy thing to be, in practically everything but archi- tecture. Initially we followed the course of architectural thought as it was pro- ceeding in the British Isles, though our line of march, from being at first fairly parallel, became later a constantly diverging tangent. In Great Britain, Queen Victoria entered upon her reign with two main architectural streams influencing building, both “revivals,” one of the Greco-Roman classic, one of alleged Gothic. Victorian Gothic is best seen in Barry’s Houses of Parliament in London. If that is the sort of thing you like, why, that is the sort of thing you like; I may revisit London some day and, for fear of being torn to pieces by an infuriated populace, shall refrain from comment. The classic movement started in the Greek revival and ended by returning to the usual Renaissance sort of thing to be seen in British Government office buildings with which we are familiar. About the end of the century they reached the conclusion in Great Britain that Gothic for ecclesiastic, Renaissance for official, public, and semi-public buildings—and neither for domes- tic architecture was about correct. We passed through somewhat the same mental process, though the details are sadly interesting. [2] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY We may say that the conscious architecture of the first half of the last two- thirds of the nineteenth century consisted in an effort to compress all architectural forms into either classic or Gothic formule. The Gothic urge gave us some moderately good churches, and some very distressing houses, executed both in stone and wood, which still rear their peaked roofs all through the Atlantic littoral and adjacent northern states. The classic movement in its Greek phase is to be seen, in domestic architecture, in those hugely pillared houses which look like a country carpenter's honest effort to house a family in a clapboarded Parthenon. In all this we were, mentally, a province of British architectural thought. The Georgian and Colonial tradition survived, in both town and country, and gave us some very ugly but essentially comfortable houses, thousands of which, with their brown stone fronts in the cities and their carpenter’s porches in the country, are still with us. Anybody who feels inclined to deride the formal architectural orders can see their justification by noting what the local carpenter substituted for them in the porches of the houses we have just mentioned. Our general attitude of mind was that we either had to change or improve. The Civil War roughly put a period to this cycle. After the Civil War came a vast era of expansion, with its consequent archi- tectural growing pains. This second half of the last two-thirds of the nineteenth century (to keep our formal division) may be said to start with a tripartite channel of effort—the Cast Iron Renaissance, the Queen Anne, the Richardsonian; it ended in the decades of the copyists, that transition period of experimentation with accepted Continental forms, which prepared the minds of owners for the present age. The Cast Iron school is a peculiarly American development. It was here we first began to strike out boldly on our own. It was an effort, now entirely abandoned, to produce the frontings of Renaissance type building in cast iron. The best examples are now to be found in the older business sections of our larger cities. It was in full efflorescence in Chicago just before the Fire. Broadway, in New York, between City Hall Park and Fourteenth Street, contains some outstand- ing specimens. ‘There is a very complete example in the mid-town section of New York in a hotel named after an avenue on which it is not located. In domestic architecture it is chiefly seen, in the cities, in pillars before the entrance door, in balustrading, bay windows, and railings to the high stoop of the usual “brown [3] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY stone front,” painted or sand-dusted to resemble the brown stone with which they are associated. To cast iron as cast iron we have no particular objection. Our irritation is directed at cast iron poorly disguised as brown stone. Cast iron and brown stone really came to their full blooming simultaneously. It might be juster, although more cumbersome, to call this movement the cast iron and brown stone Renaissance. Perhaps the same mode of thought is responsible for what we now, on the lucus a non lucendo principle, call, “Queen Anne.” I can best explain Queen Anne by an analogy from nature. It is as if two streams, that of the diminishing Renaissance and of the dying Gothic, converged in swampy land, clotted with individualistic efforts to absorb, and divert, and coalesce both flows. It took these a generation to force their way through and emerge once more in a united stream. Just as a swamp is hydraulic anarchy, so is the Queen Anne style architecturally. It was not so regarded by its contemporaries; in its day it had some wonderful panegyrists. After being alluded to as “‘free classic,” it was naively defended; it “deserves to be popular for it allows an architect to express himself freely and also in an attractive manner that ordinary (sic) people like . . . (it) expresses with virile charm our English liking for compromise and picturesque shapes.” The above from a Britisher; an American contemporary has described it with more of the modern feeling: “A comprehensive name made to cover a multitude of incon- eruities.”” Phrasing it with a layman’s freedom of expression, the normal Queen Anne “cottage” consists of about twenty rooms, eight towers, an overwhelming porte cochére, big enough for a hotel, arches ad lib., and a half dozen porches. It combines every moribund classic detail with fanciful Gothic gables, peaks, and spires. If really satisfactory and not pruned down by a later generation, it also includes little touches of the Byzantine, some ornamental cast iron fretwork along the ridges, and a full complement of lightning-rods. Any bare spaces are tortured with ornament or with medallion inserts. The sort of thing that, as a wedding cake, would be a pastry cook’s triumph, but as a dwelling is an architectural nightmare. The city examples are a thought more restrained, the price of land forbidding such free rambling; but the mental idea back of them is the same. If you ever look at a place, in city or country, and say to yourself, Rend AMEE AR ICEAON@S EL OM ES 0 F Oe DAY. “Now what the deuce style is that?’’, the answer is probably Queen Anne. Si monumentum requiris, circumspice; for they persist in their tens of thousands all over the United States. Looked at in one way, Queen Anne may be considered an outward visible sign of inward architectural incompetence. I do not think that is quite fair. It is more just to regard it as a testing of youthful strength, the eternal sophomore in our architectural development, a necessary evil on the road to completer under- standing. There was a lot of nonsense and buncombe in the prevailing academic ideas, especially about Renaissance, into which the Greco-Roman revival of the earlier period had naturally changed. At least we had the courage to experiment, the feeling that it was worth while to attempt to do something better. Had we never made the effort and never suffered our Queen Anne, as a growing child has the mumps and measles, we might still be doing imitations of imitations of Renaissance, of Georgian, and of Victorian Gothic. We were perfectly willing, however ashamed we may now be of the results, to attempt the hitching of our architectural wagon to a star. Then along came Henry Hobson Richardson. Probably only students of architecture know his name, but the entire United States has seen his works, in original or in imitation. Our two chief colleges, Harvard and Yale, have, or had during the nineteenth century, their outstanding buildings in the Richardsonian manner. ‘Trinity Church in Boston is his best-known work. As impartial a witness as Baedeker, 1909 edition, speaks of it as ““deservedly regarded as one of the finest buildings in America.”” Had Richardson confined himself to church building, it would not have mattered; churches are more or less privileged. But he turned his enormous physical energy to domestic architecture and created a school which weighed down nascent American taste like a granite feather bed. Although Richardson did design city houses on the usual rectangular city plot, his battle-axe manner more seized the imagination of his contemporaries when it had ground to play about in. It was better suited to the full block plots of the substantial citizens of our smaller cities, or to suburban developments; and there the most characteristic extant specimens are to be seen. The sine qua non of a Richardsonian structure, church, department store, bank, college hall, or suburban [5] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY or city home, is a gigantically heavy Romanesque arch, one of those round, half barrel effects in huge, chunky stones, resting on grotesquely obese and stumpy pillars. In Trinity Church the effect is suitable enough, because the structure has bulk; in a twenty-room house the effect is somewhat that of a Hercules straining mightily to hold up a crépe paper lamp shade. The smaller the house the more absurd does the ponderosity of the arch become. For the rest, there is, in any Richardsonian building, the sense of stone in mass, as a raw material. Imposing was the favorite adjective of the Richardsonian school; imposing is correct enough if one measures imposition by tonnage. The objection to the Richardsonian style for American domestic uses is its complete exoticism. While a student in Paris, Richardson became enamoured of the Romanesque as evolved in the Auvergne district in Central France. This is a very local thing, due to special social and geologic conditions, and is completely medieval in mental background, adapted to the uses of a fighting time, building only fortress castles and fortress churches. For such purposes, the Romanesque of Auvergne and of Richardson are eloquent. They speak of the medizval knight; one can almost hear the clang of armor and steel in every Richardsonian arch. For the dwelling of a peacefully disposed, commuting, business executive they are as inappropriate as anything may well be. Seen against its usual American background, there is a bombastic pretentiousness about the Richardsonian manner that is harsh and irritating. Furthermore, nothing taken quite so deliberately out of a book of views as Trinity Church (the general effect from Auvergne, the spire from Salamanca) can ever be satisfying. There is an aroma of the paste-pot about it that marks it alien. Richardson tried to adapt to the generation which elected Rutherford B. Hayes president, an architectural style produced, at the break-up of the Dark Ages, at the precise spot in the mountains of central France where Nordic and Latin temperaments met in ebb tide. It was only his own robustious temperament that imposed it upon his contemporaries; with his death the school collapsed into rapidly diminishing waves of futile imitation. Yet there are some good things to be said for Richardson. He was chief figure in the perhaps unconscious campaign of educating the American public to a realization of the existence of pre-Victorian architectural styles in Europe, worth Ge AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY any American’s attention. The discussion his buildings created, and they certainly do strike the eye, did more than any other one factor in getting the whole historic European architectural scene into American consciousness. Another contempo- rary, Richard Morris Hunt, emerges from the period as the author of numerous signed pieces of domestic architecture, in the ornamented phase of the early French Renaissance. Furthermore, Richardson had as pupil, and associate on Trinity Church, the late Stanford White, who made the exuberant Italian school as familiar to Americans as Hunt had the French chateaux. Nothing is mentally more difhcult than to be altogether just to the high enthusiasms of one’s parents. But at its best, the work of the last decade or decades of the nineteenth century, apart from the debased Renaissance, the Queen Anne, and Richardsonianism, was the work of copyists, who did little more than furnish, for us to ponder and digest, more or less uninspired copies of European archi- tectural notabilities. Any summer place fashionable a generation ago, Bar Harbor, Tuxedo, Newport, offers numerous examples of what I mean—lumpy, tasteless and unnecessarily ostentatious structures which would never have been built if con- sidered de novo either by the owner or the architect. But no successful man is ever too far in advance of his time; the architects of the closing years of the last century broke the ground, we are now reaping the harvest. Perhaps our greatest architectural achievement of the first decade of the new century was the sudden hopeful realization that, as a nation, we were devoid of creative architectural genius. Not that that is necessarily a sackcloth-and-ashes event. We have companions in our hesitancy. One thing a trip abroad will teach anybody is that the United States does not need to be ashamed of its art or its architecture. They are giving knighthoods in Great Britain right now for archi- tecture as bad as anything Richardson ever did at his worst, and then writing long, condescending books explaining to the rest of the world how good it is. We, at least, cast our Victorianism overboard. The only really new note in architecture, since the Brothers Adam, came out of Munich and Vienna in the “‘new art” houses they were beginning to develop in the Teutonic countries. The war ended the possibility of our seriously considering them. Probably they were too idiomatic of their creators to thrive very far from the Danube and the Elbe. Biren AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY Before we return to domestic architecture, let me (to prevent the possibility of the thought that it has been overlooked) turn to the question of our big rail- road terminals and skyscrapers. There lay our one superb chance to be original. Were we? We were not. Our two best railroad terminals, in New York, are both Greco-Roman temples, one seen in the stern austerity of granite, the other in the “mild vulgarity” (Julian Street’s happy phrase) of the Beaux Arts manner. Our best skyscraper is a terra cotta cathedral. Stand in New York’s City Hall Park some day and look around you. Every one of the skyscraper successes is an enlargement of some very easily recognizable model, Greco-Roman, Renaissance, Gothic; not a really new note in one of them. Not, mark you, that I have any idea myself as to what new thing would be desirable; although it does seem that the Munich-Vienna method might have produced results. The point is that we have not yet evolved anything new, of our own creation. As this is being written the new zoning law in New York skyscraper districts may, by forcing us to think along non-traditional lines, give us something individual. Some very effective designs have, at least, seen the light at Architectural League Exhibitions. Our turning to the three accepted models for monumental architecture in the construction of our skyscrapers, is precisely what we have done, more frankly perhaps, in domestic architecture. We have recognized our limitations. We are no longer trying to be inventive. We have accepted certain things as standardized, and are now striving correctly to interpret the standards. Not as benumbed copyists, rustling over pages to get “‘examples,” but as disciples and colleagues, striving, exempli gratia, to build an Adam house as Robert Adam would have done did he motor into his work from Westbury. In this frame of mind do the modern architects whose work is illustrated in this book attack their problems. The illustrations appended to this chapter have been, it must be confessed, included more because of their availability than because they specifically illustrate the ideals upon which this book is based. They do, by fortunate circumstance, give a fairly comprehensive idea of some of the chief styles in existence, though they deviate from the intention of showing only houses erected since 1900, as will be the rule in illustrations in succeeding chapters. Aeroplane photographs are given more to amuse and interest than to make a particular point. Gs * HITS Kemeny pereereretrrrey srerserremsenre eerrierrssrrret pec cy oreo ee 2 DELANO & ALDRICH, Architects. MRS. HARRY PAYNE WHITNEY’S STUDIO AT ROSLYN, L. I. Mrs. Whitney, the well known New York sculptor of the Titanic Memorial, the Aztec fountain in the Pan American building in Washington, and the statue of “Buffalo Bill” in Yellowstone Park, has this practical and delightful studio well screened from the house by thick woods. 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ASTHETIC PROBLEM W ay the historic facts took place as outlined in the previous chapter is a question rather of the esthetics of architecture than of architecture. In writing about the esthetic side of architecture I know I rush in where not only angels might fear to tread but where there has been the most acrimonious discussion since the days of Pericles and Phidias—and I mention them only because they are the earliest owner and supervising architect whose names come to mind. We have Kipling’s word for it that a discussion of the esthetic principles involved was what caused the discontinuation of the Tower of Babel. All disputants agree, however, upon one thing; there is a definite, ascertainable standard. The tumult and the shouting about esthetics started with Plato, as nearly as I remember. The one clear sentence which has emerged from the mist of over twenty centuries of discussion is to the effect that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. If we modify that to read that those things are considered in good taste which satisfy the urge to beauty of the educated, traveled, gently nourished of one’s generation and locality, we probably come as near to a definition of the esthetic standard as may be. It is both local and temporal; a matter of majority opinion within a restricted class. If “they” tell you that eating with your knife— or wearing a red necktie with a dinner coat—or a ten-room suburban villa in the manner of Richardson, are alike anathema, there is no appeal from the sentence. Torquemada was never more absolute. The difficulty is to be satisfied as to what “they” do think. Architecture has never been codified quite as rigidly as table manners or evening dress. The rest of this book is devoted to supplying such a codification for the past [ 20 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY twenty-odd years of home building in America, to showing, photographically, what is now considered the best by contemporaneous owners and architects. The rest of this chapter is devoted to an analysis of the forces codperating to this reversal, revision, and improvement of architectural form since the beginning of this century. Our beholder’s eye has changed; let us consider why. In the last two-thirds of the nineteenth century we were a young and strug- gling nation; we had not found ourselves; we were suffering from an inferiority complex. As one of the surest symptoms of that complex, we were self-assertive, self-conscious, very unwilling to admit that we could not do everything better than everybody else. The redeeming thing is that we translated disquiet into action; we did set out to try to better the rest of the world. We made tentative advances into every field of endeavor; whatever success we may have had else- where, in architecture we failed to do anything creative. Then, about 1900, something went click in our architectural mentality. We stood up and, so to speak, wiped the perspiration of vain effort from our brow, gazed around upon the classic and accepted standards of domestic architecture, and decided that they were good. It occurred to us that perhaps, after all, the Almighty had not put us into the world to improve them. With new poise, we realized that fact and were not ashamed; we came of mental age, as it were. We recognized that the century had shown that our racial genius was practical—that problems of manufacture, of transportation, of the administration and develop- ment of the constantly increasing uses of steam and electricity, were absorbing our best creative effort. Against the iron-front architectural scarecrows of lower Broadway in New York we placed our railroad and telephone systems (as one who has recently sampled the British and Continental, I say we should thank God fasting for them both); against the restless memory of Henry Hobson Richardson we weighed our plumbing, our automobiles, our typewriters, yes, even our phono- graphs (to mention only a few of the mechanical things we indisputably do best), and felt that even if we had not revolutionized architecture we had contributed our quota to the health, comfort, and amelioration of life, a contribution the ex- tent of which is the value sign of any civilization. Thus we entered the twentieth century with a new-found willingness-to-dis- [ 21] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY cuss, with a critical eye towards the surviving monuments we had cherished in a previous century, with receptive docility before the models which the rest of the world had agreed were acceptable. I alluded earlier in this chapter to table man- ners. Shakspere probably never used a fork, his fingers and his knife were his table tools; if he saw a fork it was as an ingenious jeweler’s novelty brought back from Italy by some touring noble. Yet James I used one habitually. Why? James probably, in a way, went under the same influences to which we yielded twenty-or-so years ago; he stood his own table manners up against those of the outside world, and something within him approved the fork. Once willing to look the field over, once questioning the completeness of our own architectural self- sufficiency, we turned to the best examples of various styles in the outer world, and studied them with an adult, and unprejudiced, eye. We found that each nation, after centuries of experimentation, had perfected an esthetically satisfy- ing form of house, a type peculiarly suited to certain physical backgrounds and mental habits. If you have had anything to do with architecture at all, you have unques- tionably heard of the architectural “Orders.” They afford so emphatically the simplest means of showing how esthetic standards develop that I will explain them here. After some five hundred years of building, the ancient Greeks, prob- ably by the trial-and-failure method, discovered that a Doric column looked best to the average eye of the average beholder if it were constructed along certain very definite proportions. Let us take the Doric columns of the Parthenon (generally conceded to be one of the architectural xsthetic triumphs of the world) as an example. The unit of measurement is the diameter of the base of the shaft. The shaft is five times as high as the diameter, the capital a half a diameter. The entablature (the wall immediately supported by the columns) is one and eight-tenths diameters. The column diminishes one twenty-fifth of its height, has twenty flutings, and a slight convex swelling two-fifths of the way up called the entasis. And so on, and so on, and so on. The Parthenon has been measured and proportioned down to the thousandth part of a foot. All this relationship and inter-relationship of the shaft, capital, entablature, and their subdivisions, to each other, constitutes an ‘‘Order.” [ 22 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY The Order indicated above is the Doric Order, as exemplified in the Parthe- non. ‘There are five Orders in all. No architectural deity ever called a Moses from among the builders and gave him these proportional figures. They are not sacrosanct. Some genius may arise to-morrow and discover another set. But, centuries of building have taught unmistakably that certain ordered proportions —which are what architectural Orders are—stand the pragmatic test. If one builds a Greek, a Roman, or a Renaissance building according to some of the rec- ognized Orders, he stands a much better chance of producing good results than if he tries to deviate—barring always the chance that he may be the long-sought genius. The Greeks varied a great deal—the flutings on a Doric column run from twelve to twenty-four; but the centuries have decided that twenty are just right. No especial disgrace attaches to Americans for being unable to invent any- thing architectural in the one hundred and forty-nine years of our national exis- tence, when we consider that in the two thousand five hundred years since the building of the Parthenon there have been only four outstanding codifications of the Orders. The first was by Augustus Cesar’s inspector general of artillery, Vitruvius, written in the last years before Christ. There are two medieval adap- tations, modeled on Vitruvius, in the sixteenth century, both by Italians, Palladio and Vignola, and an eighteenth century English further adaptation by Sir William Chambers. The Greco-Roman classic structures, and their descendants, the columnar Renaissance buildings, have endured the most complete codification of any; but similarly accepted forms have, to a greater or less degree, been reached in all the domestic architectural types, American Colonial, Adam, Georgian, French and Italian, the Picturesque and the various Mediterranean forms familiar in our South and West. Their standards have tentatively been set; after a century of attempts to improve we have decided to accept. At first, in the flush of our new feelings, we were too rigid in our enthusi- asms; no zeal like that of a proselyte. We went through the “period” fever, in which no house was good unless it was traceable to some definite prototype; no piece of decoration fitting unless it could be given a page number in some classic [ 23 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY work on the subject. We were as imitative as the nineteenth century. But this was transitory; we went through another Renaissance, mentally not far removed from the mood in which the architects of the medieval Renaissance confronted their problems. With all possible respect for our models; we brought to their recreation, and adaptation to present conditions, a full realization of wherein they were lacking, not in architectural perfection, but in standards of living comfort to which we are accustomed. I called it, above, a Renaissance; it is in effect all of that. Palladio and Vignola, with the utmost reverence for the Greco-Roman column, entablature and arch, yet did not build Greco-Roman structures. They built Sixteenth Cen- tury Italian. Our buildings are essentially of their year of creation. As Palladio and Vignola developed and carried on, so we develop and carry on. i I might compare our architectural progress during the last hundred odd years to the process of education. Up to the Jacksonian epoch we were, architecturally, children, accepting what we found in situ without comment. There followed the high school, or preparatory school, age; with the crass optimism of adolescence we rejected standards and set out to improve. This is the attitude of mind which discovers continents, only in this case all it led to was Brown Stone cum Cast Iron and Queen Anne. We were not really discoverers, any more than the children who play Robinson Crusoe in a suburban back yard. In Queen Anne we thought we were doing something fine and big—while we were only making architectural mud pies. With Richardson and Hunt, we may be said to have entered the college stage. For the first time we were brought sharply face to face with the existence of standards other than paternal or local. We had exhausted the English architectural impulse which we had inherited. We welcomed the Continent. Naturally the styles we liked best then were the robustious, over-ornamented complex styles which always please the vigorous, untrained eye and mind of youth. College life is a very simple, ordered thing, brain and eye are yet untired by con- tact with life; both, in matters esthetic, like the intricate, the involved, the verbose; the showy. They got it in Richardson and the other copyists. At least these served as excellent chopping blocks upon which to develop taste. Shortly after [ 24 J AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY the opening of the present century, we graduated and became adult and sophisti- cated at breakneck speed. Back of all esthetic preference is the mental congruity involved, the apper- ceptive mass controlling the “eye of the beholder.””. Somewhere around 1900, in Kipling’s insulting but prophetic phrase, we had done with childish things. We lost our mental as well as our geographic isolation. Life became crowded and complex. [Eyes and brain acquired the adult poise and calm bred of having experienced and endured much; if you like, both became tired. We have to-day visualized too many things in life to linger lovingly over the details of a hurried, crowded, shouting architecture which pleased the eye and ear of youth. Oscar Wilde, an excellent critic upon modern taste, has laid down the principle that simplicity is the last refuge of the complex. So in architecture we have gone back to the artificially simple or artificially organized styles, products in their degree, of a civilization mentally akin to our own. Of all the architects who practised before 1900, Stanford White alone struck a note which persisted. With older and more carefully trained intelligence we also became dissatis- fied with the frank imitation which was the outstanding feature of the nineteenth century in its neo-classic, Gothic, and Richardsonian aspects. We refused to be so stereotyped. We now come to the consideration of an architectural style as disciples and colleagues—adapting and carrying on, in respect and enthusiasm, the basic principles of design which we have bothered to make serious effort to comprehend—not as draftsmen arduously tracing detail. On the other hand we have lost the factitious desire to change as an alleged improvement. We recog- nize the sanctity of style and have learned the predominant importance of con- sistency. The devastating crimes our grandparents committed in the name of ecclecticism are no longer ours. Even the exponents of Queen Anne talked of the “artistic unity of the resulting work.”’ So do we to-day; to-day, however, it is a unity judged by standards other than those of purely our own creation. The es- thetic opinions of the ages overshadow, shape, and crystallize our own. “The artistic unity of the resulting work’—some architectural atrocities have seen daylight under the cloak of that phrase. We think we have ceased so doing. I said earlier that esthetic standards are local and temporary. They are. [ 25 J AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY Life is eternally swinging through the spiral cycle of change. Our grandchildren may be Richardsonian again. The illustrations in this chapter have been selected because each may be said to satisfy the esthetic urge in the various standard types of modern domestic architecture mentioned above. 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SOTHO soxpreM uyor Aq *oj,04g PE Git [jes popeore oy} durMoys JUOIJ ddULI]US 9Y} JO MOTA B SI STU, ‘Nevazeyo Teyeyed wv Fo vaprt ay} UO paseq you st pue odd} YULYOdUIT VIOUI oY} JO owMM IO ssnOYULIeFZ Youdssy yeoid oy} JO sT[eM a1vq oy} pue Joo peyved ysIy oy} WoIZ UOTerTdsuT sy Saxe} YOIYM SUIP[Ing YoUeIyY e JO UOIsSI9A UIopoUl B FO a{duiexe ouy AraA YW UOdUVH ONINdSAIOO UVAN AWOH S.NHVM ‘H OLLO ‘UW—-HTIALS HONHYA FHL ‘HOINUGTV ¥ ONVTUC WMO “A “W 4q ‘oJOUg Tae z eure co oestrone To spoo} yoy . : : 3 ; * oneal OGIVF{ 19}s9onNop JO I10Yys U1I}sva VY} UO aSpal JO adov uatieq v UO ymMq st yy ‘aPS ay} JO Jayowsvy ojUvUIOL oY} [INF OY} OF yordxa 0} payeysey JOU sey OYA 4SIJIv UOYsog B JO SUIOY epIsves OU} St «<2IY BU0}S,, ‘afAqs ayy Jo Ayypenb ysnqor no uve ‘orenbs oy} YPA ‘soUuTT Yo}OS UO YIN ‘yooq sty} UL anbsainporqd uLvyyqe2i[y] Pevisoy sp yeyM JO add} suospuey A19A VW HNOH UALSHONOTD STIVH “9 MOldAddHda YUN—ANSOSAUNLOId NVHLYAVZITH CAL spoyyory ‘HOTU TV 8 SMOTIORD CROSS & CROSS, Architects Photo. by John Wallace Gillies THE MODERN PICTURESQUE—THE CHARLES H. SABIN HOME AT SOUTHAMPTON the in t is based on English architectural characteristics, though 1 Golf Links i 1ona Peconic Bay, next door to the Nat 60 is = B qd" 6 Ow F n S ABE S > Eke Rez x} fen Eg? Om wn mac's Eds Os . ° 4 oO . D> Onin sain Amy 6) os & era oe Oo n aed ov H§°o oat ee SZog zp o _ The house is One of the most successful houses of the modern Shinnecock Hills, Long Island. CHAPTER THREE ATG EAT EY Eee) hee TENG TEOsINes : THE fairest and the most dangerous thing to do in a book of this sort is to define your terms. Pointing out where other authors’ definitions fall short of perfection is tremendously easier than erecting your own. Curiously enough, even in Tudor and Elizabethan times, there seems to have been bitter contro- versy as to what properly constituted a Tudor or Elizabethan building; and it is a great shock when a student of architecture discovers that some of the things she, in her ignorance, had supposed to be essential characteristics of the Eliza- bethan, were bitterly denounced by contemporaries as damnable Italian innova- tions. For reasons already made obvious, however, no set of architectural defi- nitions would apply in this book. Elastic as is the tendency of period definition in American architectural practice (pasting a period label on a house has distinctly gone out), no set of terms compounded with architectural needs in mind would give the proper connotation, at once sufficiently correct architecturally and yet implying the intelligent owner’s point of view, which is needed in this book. After considerable mental questioning, the following seven, to each of which a subsequent chapter of detailed comment will be given, have been selected and will be used for purposes of this book: The Colonial, the English, the Italian and the French derivative, the Elizabethan Picturesque, the Modern Picturesque, and the Mediterranean. Into one or another of these seven pigeonholes every notable example of American architecture of the last generation falls with a sufficiently distinct em- phasis to give the definitions that inclusive and exclusive quality which the logi- [ 34 ] AMERITGAN, HOMES OF TO-DAY cians tell us is a definition’s essential. An analysis of the above will show that the three types which we mentioned in the previous chapter, the neo-classic, the Gothic, and the Richardsonian or Romanesque, are not included. Add to these two more styles, the Gothico-Renaissance and the Renaissance, and you have the complete catalogue of architectural styles which, from the point of view of this book, are not being done in domestic architecture. The nature of the first three has been sufficiently explained. By Gothico-Renaissance, or, as the French call it, from certain outstanding specimens on Fifth Avenue in the Fifties, Vanderbilt architecture, is meant the type produced in the French chateau country where the fantastically individual exuberance of the artisan architect, still impregnated with Gothic thought, collided with the then newly discovered formalism of classic times in the effort to erect a furtively military pleasure house for a highly privileged aristocracy. The whole Gothic urge is an absorbingly interesting thing. As expressed in architecture it has unquestionably given us some of the most visually delightful structures in Europe. It has established a standard for the church and for the residence fortress which has never been surpassed. As a form of domestic archi- tecture, however, it is as impossible of modern wear as plate armor. To attempt to do so is affectation, partially successful in rare instances. Gothic architecture was produced by our own Nordic ancestors in their sophomore age when they were just beginning to feel their mental oats. A piece of Gothic architecture is a bit of individual dexterity rather than a problem in architecture. It was the particu- lar craftsman who put it up showing the world, his own walled city and perhaps a few fellow craftsmen, what he could do on an architectural slack wire. And like Bird Millman, if he could pirouette over an abyss, he was that much happier. The technical problems that the Gothic architects solved, that they delighted to solve, still arouse ungrudging admiration. But the whole thing was designed basically as a bid for applause, an expression in the most untrammeled form the world has ever seen, with the single exception, perhaps, of the pyramids, of the erection of buildings pour épater la bourgeoisie. Now the basis of all effectiveness in architecture is underlying sincerity, a belief on the producer’s part that that which he is creating is about the most per- [ 35 J AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY fect thing God permits man to construct. They felt that way about Gothic in me- dizeval times; and their cathedrals will remain harmonious joys as long as the civilized eye functions as it does now. But the whole attitude of mind to-day is as alien as possible to the mood which produced the house of Jacques Coeur at Bourges, the Cluny Museum in Paris, or the Chateau of Pierrefonds. What hap- pens when a decade or so is hypnotized into thinking it likes Gothic can be seen in the remnants of so-called Victorian Gothic still encumbering English-speaking countries. In a mild way, with many differentiating clauses, there were the same mental conditions which produced the original Gothic. There was, in the reign of the good Queen Victoria, a large, newly enriched class of manufacturers who, naturally individualists, and also laboring with the usual inferiority complex, turned to that most individual of all styles, to assert their new found dignity. The whole movement was so fictitious that it wore out in a generation; but it serves, if no other purpose, the point of warning. Compare the eager, compli- cated, yet assured enthusiasms of Notre Dame and the Sainte Chapelle with the tortured, meaningless twistings, the gewgaw adornments, the Doré towers of the London Law Courts and you read the epitaph of Gothic architecture. The gen- eration which produced the automobile cannot think in terms of the individual artisan. Milan Cathedral had fifty architects; such a thing is unthinkable to-day. The Renaissance style is worn out, too, though for a different reason. Frankly we have grown tired of it. It was our first step back from the nineteenth century into the fold of recognizable architectural style. So much of it was put up about the time we were engaged in the unpleasant business of fighting Spain along the then newly discovered Riverside Drive in New York that brilliant young men of to-day refer to it as Mid-McKinley Renaissance, or Riverside Drive Em- pire, both terms denoting the floridly over-decorated Baroque sort of thing with a front covered with ornament in very high relief, pillars, cornices, swags, vollutes, bunches of flowers and grapes, tumbling cupids, fat urns, and all the dewdabs and dinghickeys from an architect’s scrapbook. Fifth Avenue is not guiltless of an outstanding example of this type at its worst. It is a very famous mansion past which, so the legend runs, the drivers of sight-seeing automobiles are compelled to get down and lead the bus. It should be perfectly understood, of course, that the [ 36 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY Renaissance style, which is usually from the French, rather than the Italian, is in perfectly good standing and is in constant use to-day in very pleasing guise. But it requires very big scale, such a thing for instance as the New York Customs House overlooking Bowling Green, or, at the least, a big apartment house, to get the solid imposingness which is its birthright. The French Renaissance came to its perfect bloom in the age of Louis XIV, a gentleman who needed a space like the main entrance hall of the Metropolitan Museum to hold an afternoon tea in, and something the size of Union Square when he really gave a party. ‘Trying to cram all the connotations of the Grand Monarch into a twenty-five-foot front, even on a choice Riverside Drive plot, is sadly out of the picture. The effect, when it is tried, is of a fussy showiness, of a newly richness, which is highly irritating. The Colonial is America’s one great outstanding contribution to the gallery of architectural styles. By the term is meant in this book a type of structure founded on farm houses and country houses created on this side during the period at which the United States was a colony of Great Britain, through the succeeding generation or so down, say, to the Presidency of General Jackson. The over- whelmingly predominating culture at that time was British and, in general, the type of house produced in America adapted British originals to local conditions. The specific type varied with latitude, from the clapboarded structures of New England, the gable ends of New York, the natural stone of Philadelphia, to the large porticos of the Carolinas; but they are all easily recognizable variations of motives which were then the prevailing architectural note in England. Gener- ally speaking, they were on a more intimate scale, both in actual physical size and in domestic connotation, than the originals. Also they were essentially the pro- ductions of carpenters rather than masons. The clapboard was America’s most distinctive contribution to the style. The second was the porch, to be used neither for ornament nor as a porte-cochére, but for the rest and recreation of the family and as an outdoor living room and meeting place for local society. Sharing with the Colonial in present popularity are houses erected in the English manner. While a numerical check has not been attempted it is highly probable that were one made it would show more houses of distinctly English [ 37 J AMERICAN® HOMES OF TO-DAY model now being built in America than of any other type. So numerous, indeed, are the examples that the subsequent chapter devoted to them has been divided in two, for the separate consideration of the Georgian and the Adam influence. In general one thinks of an English Georgian house as a square sort of structure, usually, though not always, in red brick, with a flattish roof and with wings, if any, symmetrically placed. The decoration plainly derives from Italian and is inclined to voluptuous richness, in both exterior and interior. Generally speaking, it has a mental suggestion of hospitality, even friendliness, distinctly tempered, however, by formality, dignity, and reserve. One always remembers before a real Georgian house that it was erected in a time when manners were very important. The Adam house is an older, calmer, more sophisticated, and more world-weary cousin of the Georgian. It is a much more artful product. A true Adam house is as clean cut, as polished, as straight, as scintillating as a duelling rapier. Struc- turally it is built of the same materials, symmetrically made of red brick, with white stone trimmings, but every detail is restrained, delicate, suave. A Georgian house was conceived for hearty feeding and stately manners. The Brothers Adam put their structures up for quick wit and a gourmet’s appreciation of the finer pleasures of life. They suggest fine bindings, really good rugs, vintage wines, first impression engravings, delicate pencil drawings, a Flaxman, an Angelica Kauffmann, an Aubrey Beardsley original. They are the most, the only, French things Great Britain has ever produced. The Italian derivative takes us into another world. In the Georgian and the Adam you have been looking at Italian models seen through British eyes and adapted to British conditions. The first thing that impresses one about the real Italian architecture is its sheer brute vigor, expressing itself, usually, in symmet- rical mass. It looms larger against the skyline, has more of actual weight of stone behind it. It still smells of the medieval; there is still a feeling about every Italian house that the builder had in mind the necessity of defence against the sudden night attack. Built usually in stucco, though perhaps not more so than in stone or brick, it is, in the types which are now popular, comparatively bare of ornament and sombre. It is much more reserved even than the Adam style and, while it may, in the country, be made very brilliant in coloring, with flowers and [ 38 J AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY awnings, it seldom has a hospitable sense. There is more blank wall and less window space, a still traceable feeling of the fortress model. In a way, though at first it may seem surprising to say so, it is symbolic of an attitude of mind not altogether unlike that which produces the Adam style, sterner but with the same mental reserves. The French style as it is being put up to-day is decidedly picturesque in gen- eral feeling and takes its inspiration from the high peaked, plain-walled, French manor house, and not from the much be-written and be-illustrated, highly elabo- rated French chateau, which, as has been explained earlier in the chapter, has been dropped into an at least temporary architectural discard. All this is in keep- ing with the general conscious movement of to-day architecturally towards sim- plicity. There are probably fewer houses going up to-day on the French model than on any other, a fact which is largely so because a previous generation went in for its French chateaux, both Renaissance and neo-classic, too generously, and many owners of the present era must have told their architects that they will live in anything but a French villa chateau, Newport model, vintage of the 1890's. This is a somewhat overlong swing of the pendulum against a perfectly workable style of which, occasionally, a very good example is erected, such as the Hamil- ton Rice house at Newport, a photograph of which is shown in this chapter. How much better and more simply the architects of to-day face such a problem when called upon to do so than they did some forty years ago can be seen from that photograph. The definition called Elizabethan Picturesque has been a greater source of trouble to its creator than any other. By it, generally speaking, is meant the type of building which makes one think of Hampton Court, of Shakspere’s place at Stratford, and of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in general, whether in Scotland, England or France. The type is not necessarily Elizabethan and so far as I know has never before been called picturesque. But those two adjectives are what most inevitably come to mind when an example of the sort is seen across the meadow. In spite of the urge towards simplicity which has been dwelt upon in the previous definitions, there is an asymmetrical streak in human nature which will have its irregularities, both of design and of detail. The Elizabethan workman [ 39 J AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY was still an individualist, like his Gothic great-grandfather, but his individual- ism was much more confined to detail. To such things, say, as wood carving. We have, fortunately, to-day a number of architects able to lavish sufficient archi- tectural affection and resource upon a house of this type to make it a work of art. The Elizabethan is not for all tastes, however; it requires the touch of genius, with true feeling for the epoch, to make it a success. External characteristics of the manner are peaked roofs, gables, a rambling, low-lying structure, and careful avoidance of symmetry. The models derived from the English period are usually in brick, with white stone trimming, and sections of half timber work. Those derived from the Scotch are usually in cut stone and are severer in outline. The Modern Picturesque is, roughly, the Elizabethan Picturesque without any traceable signs of sixteenth or early seventeenth century origin about it. Struc- turally it is the same type of low-lying, rambling structure, very carefully asym- metrical. While no precise style has yet been developed, the emphasis has been to make the roof the heroine of the story, to emphasize its importance. Inspired by the thatched and slate roofs of European peasants’ cottages, very careful effort is usually made to give a cottage effect, that is, of a building already sunk to the shape of the land, with slight modifications from the true. The ridge of the roof - is a straight line drawn flexibly by hand, rather than machine-cut by ruler. A picturesque building is something about which there is no half way ground. It is either a delight or a social error. That there are so many commendable exam- ples illustrated in the special chapter given to the subject is one of the highest tributes that can be paid to contemporaneous architectural ability. The Sabin house at Southampton is an achievement. The Mediterranean Model shares with the Modern Picturesque the distinc- tion of being the newest type of domestic structure to be developed in this country. When, after the Civil War, the Far West and the Far South, beyond and below the existing Colonial types of architecture, began to feel the need of architectural design in their buildings, there developed gradually the consciousness that styles derived from England, France, and Northern Italy, while perfectly appropriate to the Atlantic littoral and the Middle West, fitted into neither the California land- scape nor the sands of Miami and Palm Beach. Nations and culture emigrate [ 40 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY along lines of latitude. The Forty-Niners and the early health seekers in Florida found there remnants of Spanish architecture implanted by the first settlers and structurally fitting the geography and climate of the country. As soon as architec- tural sense began to develop, it was comprehended that these models were the ones to copy and adapt rather than to attempt the translation of New England, New York, Pennsylvania or Virginia forms. There has, consequently, been a constantly increasing development of the generally Mediterranean type of build- ing, the low-lying structure, built around one or more courtyards, wholly or partly included within the walls, with flat tiled roofs, with thick stucco walls, few win- dows, and deep set loggias. This is the type of building used all along the Mediterranean from Greece to Spain. In those countries they added the one deco- rative touch most characteristic of the whole general style, the very elaborate decoration, one might almost say embroidery, of a doorway or window group in an otherwise bare expanse of wall, known as Plateresque. If Milan Cathedral is like a bit of rather heavy lace, thrown up into the air and frozen into stone, so a Plateresque doorway is like work done by a stonecutter with the manual dexterity of Grinling Gibbons and the mental facility of Benvenuto Cellini. Its overwhelm- ing exuberance is toned down by the vast expanse of mural blankness around and above. To the latitude of Boston, New York, or Chicago the Mediterranean type is a pure exotic. In Pasadena or Miami it has, apparently, permanently impressed itself. Before looking at the illustrations following it might not be inadvisable to turn back to those appended to the preceding chapter, which were selected for their especial appropriateness as representatives of the styles just defined. The succeeding photographs, taken together with these, give a fairly complete gallery of the essential, outstanding characteristics, external and interior, of the seven standard styles. [41 ] ‘aovepd Aryunod yoInb sueweT}UIs YsT[suy ue JO IATJsasSns st j[ ‘“SSUTUTUIII] DUOSOUIIT YPM yoriq Arysode} ummyd Jo st ssnoy sy], ‘UOTJIISIP YIM pasn uUsEq VARY SULIOJ BAT]LIONIP ULIG1IOd OIYSlIo}pOVIeYO dy} PUR V[VOS UT sUY AIYZVI st ssnoYy ay} JO [reyep [eanpoyyoie oyy, “AvuUvU YsI[suy oY} Jo [eotddé} st YOIYM YAOMYIIAq JO osn suLOSIaquind you yA ‘payrustp ‘atdurs oy} Jo sjduiexes uy GNV'ISI DNOT ‘AVE UALSAO LV ANOH SNVUUND AUSNUAND "UW—UANNVW HSITONYD FHL pawpIy “ITHMOT AND SOIT) soxTTeM uyor Aq 0,04 thre whe Beasfals HH i ikgiinsi iin ae inh ale Dafedabas Bia lalalx DELANO & ALDRICH, Architects THE ENGLISH MANNER—MR. WILLIAM B. OSGOOD FIELD’S LENOX RESIDENCE B} yet precisely in the Georgian This detail, while entirely modern in conception and execution, is spirit, reflecting the exuberant feeling for decoration that belongs to the style This is a particularly interesting illustration of the Field residence, “High Lawn House,” at Lenox, Massachusetts, because it shows so dis- tinctly the details over door and windows. 1O]OD 10} pausisap useq sey ‘siouueq ys Av pue saxoq JaMOYy poyl} Ss} YM ‘asnoy ey} no pue spIsuyT ‘IOOH yStY 9Y} JO SMOPUTM 94} JO SaAvI}IYOIe 94} UL pue SMOopUIM AI0}S PUODES 9} punoie pueq v se s[leyep YoNs UT pesn 410}}e] aq} ‘e}}00 vite} aUIOAYDATOU pu YoIIq ur adA} VIIA ULTTeI] [etaued vy} Suoye padojsasp esnoy AijzuNoD V ANV'ISI DNO'T ‘NOLONIHSVM LUOd LV AONACISHU V—HAILVAIYAC NVIIVLII AHL dnd NVA ‘H WALID youusy Aq ‘ojoyg Pe ps1y “AIDINOOVAN NA ae as oa siaydeyo JayjO UL pezeAysNy[T sasnoy sopAvy, Sasof ey} puv UBoUNC] WeN}g oY} SB saoUepIser Yous UT Ajpeuotseov0 ATUO WIJ P2}elAsp ST pue UuOI}V.19UIs JoI[1ea ue Aq poyst[qe}sa sea Yorum JrodMaN Jo punolsyxoeq neoyyyO Yourxty Jersuad oy} 0} oyet1doidde Ayjetoedsa st ,AvUeITA,, “LoWUvUL o{Sseyo A[A19A08 v UL poyver} PUY STRUTZIAO UvITe] Wor padtiap ‘Avp-0} JO sINJoopTYoLe yz UT a[Aqs area Apoatzereduioo B ‘ETA YUL a4} JO Bulzapuat yoosiod Alaa VW LYOdMUN LV HOLM NOLIIAVH ‘V ‘SUN GNV ‘Ud AO ANOH—HATALS HONAYA AHL porypoiy “YANVANNYL AOVAOH WMH “A WW 4q *010Ud z ae ee are aircreoman aoa —ager ag ee SN cc RO eC CHS SS! 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P. HANSON HOUSE NEAR PASADENA A detail of the garden front of Mr. Hanson’s California home showing both stair towers. 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Ayyeduids UL sf YoryM woor B ‘odA} YsT[suUY s104}sne soul 4so[dunts ay} Jo e[durexa poos Ajrepnoysed e ‘woo Suyurp sty} ul pesserdxe Ajayuyep ore o[Ays yst[Fuy oy} Jo suoTyepess ayzq, HAOO NID LV ANOH S.ANIH “I SIONVUA "UW—WOOU ONINICG HSITONY NV speypoly “ALLATIID ¥ UAWIVA SOTTTHD aorTIVeM uyor Aq *o10Ng JapeIeYyo Ul [[e V1e 4YaloymMIoD puv soeds J0J Sulpooy Tetouss oy} “Bulareo suoqqry Surpuwy joer ysy ur pewureiy Suuted ayy “Surled poyesoqeye ATaye1apowl ayy, *seF109y ano [ oy} Jo USlor oy} Surmnp puelsuq ul po}oors suUIOY Tensn 94} JO OT}ST -lapeIeyo Suypeey ysnqoa AT[e19Uue3 9Y} YPM ooUapIsed B 10J pousisap Apoyenbope AIoA pue JoUUeUT UeISI005) oy} Ul podojaasp Wool v ST STI, GNV'ISI DNOT “A TIIAGHVTI LV ANOH SNVWUAHS “H “I ‘UW—WOOU ONIAIT HSITONA NV 21h 219 oe fis: poywpIy “WONNOD.O "M SANVE ; fhuunog x» umoy, fo BO aouvssreusy oy} Jo Aynvaq 9Y} SJopol YOIYM JoUapIsel v 0} poyIns sfeos ouUY ayy ‘suoMsodoad a[qou ayy osTe sey yy ‘atoayoAyod UI SulIa9 poom wv sapnypout yorym ‘ATVI Ul VoURSSTeUDY 94} JO dIYsTA9pVIeYD UOIZV1ODap Snon}duIMs 9Yy} Sey WOOL SUTUIP SIYT, *10[OI pue yUIeM JO MOTs B oq prnoys ‘pooyssspun Aj1odoid JI ‘opisul YJ, “AOl19}xX9 oY} UT [[e ST osNoY ULI[e}] UB JO SseuatquIOS UL], OIHO ‘GNVTUAWTIO NI NOH S.WNNVH ‘0 "I ‘SUW—WOOU ONINICG NVIIVII NV spopytpoly ‘ALLATIIO F UAWIVM Fe y ; i? ie WOOL YIUII,T INA} B OF [BT}UISSa VoVAS pue APTEULIOZ VY} SaUTqUIOD yT ‘doURIY UT Ose saevak AJUDADS JOYYeF suyny “IJ 10J opeur sjodied uossnqny a1e séni oY} pue STBUISIIO YOUsI P[O 91 SoIN}XY II1poo]9 oY} pu S1OLITU poAreo sayy, *ATTUIeZ oY} YSno1y} UMOP 9UIOD SvYy yey} IINJUIMJ Youd ouy sy} IOJ SoTYe104sSTIv pue o[duIIs 9DUO ye ‘puNOASyORG pouTerjso1 ‘oyeorfap vB soprlAoid soy [Ieyop IOLLIUT IJ, UMVAW NAUA LV HNOH S.NHOM NVAWLUVH *O “YUN—WOOU ONIMVUC HON V UOl}ON.A}sUOD IoquIT} J[ey po Jo Surjaez azodoad oy} Sutats ‘193se~d ayy YIM YsnNP yes Yeo pjo Jo St UI} ay, “YOM sojsejd Zursnure oy} pue sisyqnys saTyayo ATouoIdns sz YPM ‘T[LIY} TeAwIpoul [vet oy} SaALs o19yY poyeAISN]I Wool Zuruip oy, “MOOI JY} OUT Jnd sey YoTYOIe 94} Joos Nod Uorl}eUIseUT JO YZ[eOM Oy} UO spuedap ssnoy enbseanjzord zo odd} Aue Jo oanpIeZ Io ssavons sy JF HWOH LYUOdMUN SNVWHAT NVIV ‘UW—WOOU ONINIG ANSSAUNLOId NVHLAGVZITA NV peHpIy “AdOd TIGSSNU NHOL SOT eovTTeM Uyor Aq ‘oJoUd - . rn a gs . eit % is Li ‘ Snes DOD'S — ee ai Photo. by M. . Hewitt ; PAUL CHALFIN and F. BURRALL HOFFMAN, JR., Architects A MEDITERRANEAN DETAIL—MR. JAMES DEERING’S HOME AT MIAMI, FLORIDA This glimpse of the patio of Mr. Deering’s residence gives a perfect keynote to the Mediterranean style, as will be observed in the chapter on that architectural expression in America. The photograph shows a seventeenth century Bacchus which guards a beautifully sculptured old Roman bath standing in a pool edged with black and gold marble ” CEA Pal thee tO) 0b, TELE GOTO NTA S HE is a brave woman who attempts to add, however deprecatingly, anything to the acrimonious discussion on Colonial architecture. The only other question in literary history which has excited equally determined and equally bitter con- troversy is that as to why Hamlet did not kill the King until the end of the fifth act. Arguments as to what is and is not Colonial, its position in the history of architecture, rumble back and forth. There are as many claimants to the honor of being the only true type of Colonial as there are existing genuine Colonial struc- tures above ground. There are also Americans who take the tone that certain out- standing specimens of American Colonial building take rank in world architec- ture with Pierrefonds and Vaux Le Vicomte, with Blenheim and Chatsworth, with the Palazzo Barberini, or the Villa Medici. All that sort of thing was all right when we were a much younger and a much cruder nation and our inferiority ‘complex had to come out even in architectural boasting; but any one who likes to think that the Colonial period really produced magnificent country estates, mag- nificent in the Continental or British sense, had better carefully avoid looking at the data. What the Colonial period did produce, what has given it a permanent place in architectural esteem, and in common affection to-day, is a certain quality of un- deniable charm, of adaptation to native living conditions, which no other style so intensely possesses. And yet the style which we to-day mean by Colonial would be impossible to find in any one original Colonial building. It is a combination, a coalescing, a development of various types which were erected in this country dur- [ 56 J AMERUVGAN HOMES: OF TO:DAY ing the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, together with an exaggeration and emphasis of certain of their features. - During those two centuries there were, generally, three types of buildings produced. ‘These were, in their chronological order, what might roughly be called the farm house, the town house, and the city house. When the farm houses first went up, in the early seventeenth century, they were of a picturesque type along Elizabethan models, with high peaked roofs of the type familiar through the House of the Seven Gables at Salem. By the time towns had developed and the substantial houses of the prosperous citizens began to be erected, the Hanoverian dynasty had ascended the English throne and the long period known as Georgian had commenced. The first of the town buildings were, generally, carpenter- artisan adaptations of Georgian originals. It is from these two types that the modern Colonial is derived. The third type, the brick buildings later erected in fairly large numbers in the cities, were copies of Georgian rather than adaptations. Most of the houses of any size at all erected in this country during the later eighteenth century, architecturally speaking, belong to this type. They are not what we have in mind to-day when we speak of Colonial. At about that time, say the last half of the eighteenth century, there began, in a hesitant way, the erection of country estates, also along easily recognizable Georgian lines. When to-day, however, we wish to erect Georgian structures here we return to the originals in Great Britain and, save as museums and as subjects for an architectural controversial holiday, American Georgian buildings have no longer any vital force. When the American colonist developed his farm house along more and more solid and substantial lines, as the Atlantic coast became more settled and its in- habitants richer, he found himself forced to adapt the British originals to local building conditions. Chief among these was the fact that here houses were built by carpenters rather than by masons. Subject to all the necessary modifications for the brickwork of New York and the native stonework of Philadelphia, this is one of the outstanding architectural features of buildings of the two types men- tioned. As a concomitant of these conditions there developed among the local builders an artisan’s pride of workmanship, together with the power of adapting [ 57 J AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY the originals to their own possibilities. During the eighteenth century there was a very surprising and generally unrealized importation of British architectural publications into this country. That was the golden age of British cabinet- making. The great trinity of British chair-makers, Chippendale, Hepplewhite, and Sheraton, produced their monumental works on cabinet-making at that time. These were imported into America in much greater quantity than is appreciated to-day, and seem to have had a very real circulation among the carpenters and local builders. When such a person was faced with the problem of enriching a local house he used for its external adornment patterns which, in the British origi- nals, were planned for interior use only. At that time, as now, British exteriors were in stone or brick. Copies of these exteriors, with their necessarily more massive character, suitable for working in stone, were also familiar to the Ameri- can workman and were accepted by him as a correct pattern. The contribution he made to architecture is that, being forced to substitute wood for stone in the exteriors of buildings, he adapted, in its substitution, so gracefully and success- fully the technic of carving in wood. This is the real contribution of the Colonial period to architecture. Had the native workman had less natural taste he might very well, as a carpenter’s bit of bravura, have imitated stonework in wood, precisely as a later age tried to imitate stonework in cast iron. Instead of so doing, however, he had the essen- tially good sense and good judgment to treat his material honestly. When he erected pillars to porches he treated them frankly as tree trunks and made them of slender proportions impossible to the stone worker. His sense of columnar proportion might have made Vitruvius weep, but he added something new to archi- tecture. When he wished to decorate under the eaves of a New Hampshire farm house he cut there dentillation so suave, so delicately, so sensitively in scale, that even yet architectural students go scouting through country roads of New England to view the chisel work of nameless carpenters who, although they have personally vanished, have yet left behind them a permanent esthetic mon- ument. Another American contribution, an integral part to-day of what we think of as the Colonial style, is the two story porch. It is, of course, an adaptation of the [ 58 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY classic portico translated into terms of practical usefulness. It was a more promi- nent feature of Southern building during the Colonial period than of other dis- tricts, but it is only in the modern Colonial that it finally received its true ac- ceptance as a distinguishing feature of the style. There is a third element about the Colonial, the sentimental, which gives it a very sure hold upon the affections. Associated as it is, mentally, both with the formative period of our own history and with a time when living conditions, be- cause of lower per capita wealth and racial homogeneity, were, at least so we like to think, on a simpler and more friendly basis, there is about a properly erected Colonial house an atmosphere of welcome, a lack of ostentation, which cannot be claimed for any other style. It was said above that the precise style which to-day we mean by Colonial could not be found in any one original structure erected in the Colonial period. This is true partially because of the sentimentalizing process through which it has been subjected in our mind. Back of everything in the modern architects’ and builders’ mind, aside from question of detail and the essential two story porch, is a picture of a graceful, sweeping, well proportioned white clapboarded farm house in some picturesque relation to the surrounding landscape, on a hillock top, in an apple. orchard, surrounded by pines, or with a brook running through the front yard. A Colonial house to be successful must be a picture as well as a build- ing. So strong is this tendency that even when the house is not of white clap- board its brick structure is usually whitewashed. The native stone of Philadel- phia is the only material which has had vitality enough to withstand the whitening. The modern Colonial is not a copy of original models. It is an entirely sophisti- cated, an entirely glorified, twentieth century adaptation of a mental idea, under certain easily recognizable physical outlines, the artfully selected location, the general whiteness, the two story porch, and the enrichment with wood carving detail. Generally speaking, detail in Colonial houses is along Georgian models though it must always be remembered that there were Swedes, Germans, French, and Dutch who came to this country quite as early as the English and who, in small but unmistakable ways, have given their contribution to the gallery of [ 59 | AMERTCAN) HOMES OF TO-DAY Colonial detail. Indeed, one of the most charming recently erected Colonial houses, the Egerton L. Winthrop place at Syosset, Long Island, of which an illus- tration is shown in the second chapter, is decidedly French in general feeling and its interiors have so emphatically a French character that they are illustrated in a chapter devoted to the French style rather than herewith. Precisely, however, as an individual style was evolved in the Colonies from British exterior models, so a distinctly American school of interior decorating took form during the same time. Such things, for instance, as the rag carpet. Also the development in fruit woods, apple and pear, and the ever present maple, of furniture models which British cabinet makers were producing in walnut, mahogany and the rarer East Indian woods; also, again, the American rocking chair, that pet abomination of all other cultures but our own. If your liking is honestly and genuinely for the simpler types of furiture and interior decoration codified in England during the eighteenth century, with a special emphasis on the American adaptations thereof as just itemized, if your mental and racial and sentimental ancestry makes you think fondly of an idealized farm house existence, if you want to build in the real country, there is no type which suggests itself more instantly than the Colonial. The dangerous side about the Colonial is that if not properly handled, both by architect, interior decorator, and owner, it may become a very bleak and empty performance. JDaintiness of detail and delicacy of scale may descend into papery attenuation. The universal whiteness calls for a certain amount of richness in the interior which is rather dificult to supply from the properly concomitant furniture and decoration, espe- cially if one has become overweary of the chintz motive. On the other hand the recent glorification of the early American hook rug, the revived interest in colored glass, the willingness to polish pewter, and the republication of eighteenth century wall papers, are doing much to supply warmth and glow. ‘The real point is that a Colonial exterior, if properly carried out, with a right observance of the architectural and decorative amenities in the interior, calls for enormous self-discipline. Exotic things do not go, except in a conspicuous minority. Chinese and Italian importations, which slide easily enough into the more ornate Georgian, strike a howlingly discordant note against a Colonial background. Eng- L 60 J DoViGE eee ONDE S: OR cOe DAY lish and French furniture of the simplest types are as far afield, decoratively, as it is safe to roam. The main difficulty before the modern architect and owner is to provide a building preserving at the same time the intimate aspect of a glorified farmhouse and providing space enough for week-ending on the modern scale. A particularly happy solving of this problem is seen in the estate of the late Robert J. Collier, at Wickatunk, New Jersey, now owned by Mrs. Robert J. Collier, illustrated in this chapter. It is one of the most perfect and the most extensive Colonial develop- ments in the country. The house was planned for fifty guest rooms and a casino or playhouse for bad weather has additional accommodation for bachelor quar- ters. The residence and the outdoor interests are in the most perfect unison. The two story rear porch shown in one of the photographs was planned, as the rear ae MR. GEORGE P. BRETT’S HOME AT FAIRFIELD, CONNECTICUT While not an entirely new creation, being a composite formed by the moving of two old Connecticut farmhouses onto a common axis and joining them with a new central building of harmonious type, it is included in this chapter because it shows so well the character of the outline, the satisfying simplicity, which is so intangible but so real a basis for the charm of the Colonial house [ 61 J AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY Photo. by M. E. Hewitt PEABODY, WILSON & BROWN, Architects MR. REEVE SCHLEY’S PORCH This is the informal, one story porch at the garden end of the house, furnished as an outdoor sitting room. It is on a level with the grass, as is the two story porch illustrated elsewhere in this chapter porch at Mount Vernon was planned, not only for good looks but for prac- ticality, the floor put on a level with the lawn for the greater convenience of hunting parties and riders generally. There is everything to make living pleasant; a golf course, a baseball field, a steeplechase course, a polo and aviation field, hangars with two planes ready to follow the drag hunts, a stable with one hundred and ten box stalls for polo ponies and hunters, a kennel house for two packs of hounds, a garage with a complete machine shop and chauf- feurs’ quarters, indoor and outdoor squash courts, two artificial lakes, the larger, which is fifteen hundred feet long by two hundred and fifty feet wide, for the use of launches and motor boats, a some- what smaller one, planted with lies and used as a setting for various deco- rative aquatic fowl. There are indoor and outdoor swimming pools, the former measuring eighty by thirty feet, located in the playhouse which contains a gymna- sium, indoor tennis courts, and a lounging room. This building is encircled with a covered track for indoor riding and driving. These practical details of the Collier estate are related here because they are, [ 62 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY actually, a definite part of the esthetics of the place, which has all been attuned to the sort of country living which was the delight of the owner, for the great, gay house parties accom- modated in those fifty and more guest rooms. It is all consistent, the comfortable, rambling structure occupying the highest point of land in the surrounding country and commanding a view embracing the whole es- tate of two hundred acres, the various build- ings on the estate, and the spirit upon which the estate has its basis. Since the war there has been so little building on an extensive scale Photo. by John Wallace Gillies WILLIAM HARMON BEERS, Architect MR. GEORGE DE FOREST LORD’S PORCH A detail of the full page reproduction of the two story porch which is shown in this chapter. In general character this corresponds to the one story porch in Mr. Schley’s residence on the opposite page that an estate planned with this generosity is rare indeed. The residence of Mr. Harry Waln Harrison at Devon, Pennsylvania, is an excellent example of what has been referred to in this chapter as the Philadelphia Colonial. In its sturdy frankness, its simplicity, its avoidance of pretence, its comfortable, homelike qualities, the graceful trellising of the white-washed walls of the Southern front, Mr. Harrison’s home recalls its affiliation with the old Wyck house at Germantown. In its use of local materials it emphasizes the ideal of the [ 63 J AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY DUHRING, OKIE & ZIEGLER, Architects RESIDENCE OF MR. HARRY WALN HARRISON, AT DEVON, PENNSYLVANIA In its use of local materials Mr. Harrison’s home defines attractively what is referred to in the text as the Phila- delphia Colonial. The charm of its comfortable, homelike qualities, the legitimate relation of the whitewashed exterior to the simple lines and sturdy structure, needs no emphasis best of the Philadelphia architects, which is to reflect in the houses they design both the history of their country when it was in the making and the character of the land on which the houses are built. It is in harmony with the neighboring farm houses and with Old Saint David’s Church, nestled in the valley to the north of the house. Located on the extreme southeastern corner of Mr. Charles C. Harrison’s Happy Creek Farm, it overlooks the finest sections of Radnor and New- town townships, Delaware County. Mr. Jonathan Godfrey’s home at Bridgeport, Connecticut, is another example of the Colonial as expressed in native rock, taken from the property itself. Here trimmings of brick have been used around the openings, both because of the color contrast it gives in its juxtaposition to the stone and because the stone is rather rough and not adaptable to cutting to the sharp edges required for these purposes. In Mr. George de Forest Lord’s home at Woodmere the Colonial type is developed in whitewashed brick with the familiar enriched wooden portico and the Mount Vernon lawn porch noted in the Collier house. This residence cannot be labeled as typical of any style or location. In general mass it may be thought to resemble [ 64 ] AGMIESIVLGAAIN ELOMES OF TO-DAY & oe pili % 4 ine “ey Wes: ge 4) 4 , WALKER & GILLETTE, Architects RESIDENCE OF MR. SHERWOOD ALDRICH, AT GLEN COVE, LONG ISLAND A dignified, well ordered Colonial type which has rather more of an attitude of formality than many of the houses derived from this period. It is, however, formal without being severe and its setting in a landscape devel- oped naturalistically helps to preserve its American connotations the houses on the James River, though such a resemblance is a result more of acci- dent than intention. The residence of Mr. Charles Smithers at White Plains, more recently built than the others, is a clapboarded house founded on the Colonial and expanded to the proportions of a very large place. It is based on the desire of the owners for a wooden house of the Colonial motive which would disguise its size from the casual eye and retain the characteristics of a type founded on something half as big. In other words, the ideal for which the architect has striven is to preserve the image, character and charm of the smaller house and enlarge it so consistently that, while it is big in scale it is not big in scheme; it still remains a small compo- sition. Its effect from a distance is that of a more or less reasonable Colonial house. It was, of course, a matter of expanding things and keeping the true pro- portions. The Colonial house, being made up of comparatively few parts, with windows more or less the same size, and very few of them, the architect, in the Smithers’ residence, has used only the number of windows proper to the style, making them twice as large as the originals would have been, with panes four [ 65 J AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY times as big. The doors, although enormous in size, have the same number of panes as in the prototype. The ceilings are higher, so the cornices and mold- ings are deeper. The clapboards themselves are exposed ten inches to the weather, in place of the six inches customary in the small modern house, although, of course, in many of the old Colonial buildings the exposure was eight or ten inches at least. An amusing deviation from the Colonial in the interior of the residence is due to the fact that, while externally, for purposes of character, the house is of wood, inside it is divided into four completely fireproof sections, the main floor being of steel and all the floors of marble through the first floor. The consequent thick walls, impossible to the wooden built Colonial house, provide deep doorways and big reveals, giving a Georgian character to the inside of the house.- An interesting feature of the plan, which has nothing to do with Photos. by Gillies aan ww Serie Colonial characteristics, is the use which This view and that on the opposite page give 1 j glimpses of the two story Colonial porch on Mrs. Mr. Barber has made of a rolling site to Robert J. Collier’s place at Wickatunk, New Jersey, of which exterior and interior views are shown in this chapter put the two ends of the house in the base- ment, at one end of which he has built a huge ballroom, as separate from the residence, as undisturbing in times of large entertainments, as though it were in another building, being provided with its special entrances and exits, its own supper service, and dressing rooms. The resi- dence of Mr. Smithers is typical of the practicality, the excellent taste, the spa- ciousness of the modern American country home. The New Jersey home of Mr. Reeve Schley at Far Hills is of ordinary brick, whitewashed, with a wooden partition inside the brick to provide an air space which takes care of dampness and keeps the interior comfortable at all seasons. L 66 J AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY The drive from the main highway is through natural woods and up a winding hill to the driveway entrance. The house itself is set practically on the edge of the woods; the trees noted in the photographs of the residence have all been originally part of the wooded growth. The only transplanting done was in the instance of a few formal cedars at the front of the residence. Another illustration in this chapter, that of the George P. Brett place at Fairfield, Connecticut, departs from the intention of publishing only houses erected within the last two decades, as it is an original structure, or rather, a composite formed by the moving of two old Connecticut farmhouses onto a com- mon axis and joining with a new central building of harmonious type. It is in- cluded, specifically, because it shows so well, in originals, the charm of outline, the satisfying simplicity which is so in- tangible but so real a quality of the type. It is interesting to compare the outlines : aes 4 3 THE COLLIER HOME of this building with others in the chap- Here again are the slender wooden columns of simple a i fashioning and good proportions illustrated in the one ter, more especially the Smithers house. story porch of the Reeve Schley house and the two story porch of Mr. Lord’s residence The illustrations of interiors are worthy of detailed attention as they exemplify clearly the restrictions upon in- terior decoration imposed by a Colonial exterior. The hallway in the Collier house shows the color which may legitimately be injected into the Colonial pic- ture in an entirely fitting manner; the glint and gleam of metal and of gilding, in moderation, and the highly individualized wallpaper are skillfully inserted de- tails. A deliberately more austere, almost farm house sitting-room type of interior is seen by contrast in the Schley illustration farther along in the chapter. ore) Surprmq onsautop uwesjzsury ut [eteds axb Suryyewos Jo oArjequasoider ApYSnos0yy st yt ‘AyTeqdsoy jo are sy “Buryuerd peuozur sq ‘souoys AVMOATAP poyseMaTYM SP YBA\ ‘Buys snouaSipur sz YIM sJayereYyo UL APyooz10d os “osnoy ay} JO ainjonajs Surjquiei ‘Moy oy} 0} ‘UOTPeAYSNI[E IoyjJoue UT [IeJap UT UaATs ‘Yo10d posofoUe eq} Jo UOTE [aL BY} SaysT[qeyse JUOIF ABMOALIP OY} JO META [IOUT STU, AUSUAL MAN ‘INOLVMOIM LV AWOH SMAITIOO ‘£ LUXAOU ‘SUW poyto1y “AdOd TIdssau NHOL ; E SOIT) eryeM uyor Aq “004 Photo. by Sohn Wallace Gillies | JOHN RUSSELL POPE, Architect ANOTHER DETAIL OF MRS. COLLIER’S COUNTRY RESIDENCE Perhaps the porch is America’s most real contribution to architectural style, the porch of the amiable type, sug- gesting outdoor life and a release from ceremoniousness. 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CHARLES SMITHERS’ Above the ballroom is the sun porch, one story from the ground THE A is found in the size in the iving room ith a great li wil i ich connects small house le ins sing saspa divys 0} Sutyjnd 0} Jles}t ydepe jou saop au0ys Ysno1 VY} Vsnvoveq PUR }SBA}UOD IO[OD BAIS 0} pasn a18 Yog JO ssurumusy, *Jfesy Ajrodoad vy} wWiorZ Usye} seM JouvysUT JUVSe1d OY} UL Yoor sy, ‘sayoanyo aojyews Surueyo A19A pue sasnoy oJ YAO no -Ipouu0D ysno1y} AyTyuenbeay uses FY st os ‘eydppepfyd punore sasnoy sy} UL d.UL}LAIOYUT [eIUOCTOD 94} JO UOTsseidxa oY} UL pasn st 9UO}S JAT}eU 9} SY LANOILOANNOO “LUOdANdIUG LV AMUAGOD NVHLVNOL ‘UW AO AONACISAU speyypoy “ur ‘NVNIAOH TIVUNN “A Pue STIVONI NOLHDIGUO AUYUVH iil Hil mt Pnoto. by Wallace Photo. Co. DOORWAY TO MR. JONATHAN GODFREY’S HOME AT BRIDGEPORT The illustration gives a very striking example of the enriched doorway which is frequently used to make a deco- rative motive in attractive contrast to the general simplicity of the Colonial. This is the type of door on which the artist artisans of the early days labored with an affection and skill we do our best to emulate [eUOT]UI}UT UvYy} Joy}ed TeyUpIOoR ST VoULTQUIESII YONS YSnoy} “19ATY SWIVEL IY} UO sasnoy 944 a[quiasat 0} }YSnoy} 2q WYSIUL pL ssevul [e1oUaS UL ‘UOTZBI0] 10 B[A}s Aue Jo TeoTdA} sv doUapISet VY} [aqe] 0} 9TQISSod jou st HI aTTYAA ‘“YoIIq Ysno. ‘ptey A[UGAIUN JIAO YSVMIPYM JO Isn sy} YFnosyy Apesae] pozywado diay ‘a1nyxo} JO onpea oY} 0} SulUsyeVMeL Sjoopyoie usspour oy} Jo o[durexe ue st ssnoy IJ, GNV'ISI DNOT ‘AUAWGOOM LV GUOT LSAUOA AC AOUOUD ‘UW AO AONACISAU perpiy ‘SUaad NOWUVH WVITIIM SOILD exe uyor Aq ‘ojJ0Yg . ih Photo. by John Wallace Gillies Courtesy of Town & Country THE LAWN FRONT OF MR. LORD’S HOME AT WOODMERE The connotations of the Colonial type are given here with more verity than is usually possible to a photograph; the intimacy, the homeliness, the friendliness of the grass-level porch, the propriety of the relation of the house to the setting, the honesty of such details as the slender pillars, frankly treated as wood. It is delightfully done QoUSPISAL oY} 10J vdeds B Ivo[o 03 Aressod9U Suryeu ‘piIm pue 31q sem ozs Aasuae MAN SIy} ‘seor} JAZ JO YSprur oy} UL SWOY Ye YSOU SUIS asnoY [eIUO[OD oY} e10yM ‘puBIs] Suc] Jo spur] yey 24} 0} YsvIyUOD UT ‘yNo UVeq sey ABMOATIP 94} YOIYM YSno1Yy} spooM [enyeu oy} JO V8pa oy} uO ATfedTJovAd yos st osnoy s,AaTYDS “AWW AUSUAL MAN ‘SSTTIH UVA LV AWOH S.AUTHOS AATAU “UW speTyory ‘NMOU F NOSTIM ‘ACOVAd ‘OQ ‘OJOYA [BINJoo}HYOIY sqqay, Courtesy of Town & Country PEABODY, WILSON & BROWN, Architects ONE OF THE PORCHES OF MR. REEVE SCHLEY’S RESIDENCE A charming little one story porch at the garden end of the house is illustrated in a small photograph in this chapter. This two story porch runs the entire width of the plan between the wings. It is on the upper level of the double grass terrace which was based on the natural contour of the ground asnoy ay} JO Sutm vatjyus uv satdnooo yy ‘aulysuns pue yYysT] Jo wWNUTxeul ay} 10x uotstaoid s}t ut pue ozis ut Surpying vsnoy AajzuNod uvolIauty ULapour Jo TeoIdAy St WOOL BUTAT] SIU, ‘WOr}eaysNyTE ay} JO punossas0J dy} UL Uses ST yoryM Jo odd} [NJWYSap Asaa v SATeYO Buryoor ay} 0} ‘ATeATZeAOoap ‘atqissod st YoryM puNoAsyovq ATUO 9yz saptAoad UIOOL SIU, HONHCISHU SAWTHOS GWAHHU “UN NI WOOU ONIAIT FHL spe}tyoly ‘NMOU ¥ NOSTIM ‘AGOUVAd fiyunop xp unoy, fo fisazinop suorjonpordar urapoul Jo aiayMasya sydeasojyoyd ayy espnl oy yorum Aq syusuIzZY TeULsTIO auios apraoid 0} pozsssur Ayeoyfoods st pue ‘sBurystuiny Mou pue plo JO UOT}eUIGUIOD [NJsSadoNs B SI JT “AdSdae MAN ‘pfoysety, pue ‘s}jos -nyorssey “yoraMsdy Ur punoj s[ayUPT UaPOOM PTO [B1IAVS JO BUO ST AIN}vaF BATFeIODIP ULVUL S}T “UMB] BY} UO JNO SuULYOo] ‘wool Suyutou sy7, AWUSUHL MAN ‘STTIH YUVA LV AONUCISHU V WOU YOIUALINI NV spay ‘SSOUO ® SSOUO SATTIND eoxtem uyor Aq ‘OU | , 2 Pie Re CHAPTER FIVE THE ENGLISH MANNER—PART ONE By houses erected in the English manner are meant those models after originals produced in England during the reign of the four Georges which lasted historically from 1714 to 1830. Houses earlier than that time are treated in this book stylistically in a later chapter under the heading of Elizabethan Picturesque. The Hanoverian century in Great Britain produced two styles in domestic archi- tecture very much alike at a distance, essentially different in detail, one deriving from the composite genius of the whole age, the other directly traceable to the artistic consciousness of one man, a Scotchman, Robert Adam. In both types of houses, the Georgian and the Adam, two elements are consciously fused, the basic British idea of a substantial, practicable house, with large, comfortable rooms adapted for elaborate and stately entertaining, combined with an Italianate over- lay of adornment. Both houses tend to be square, almost chunky structures with- out noticeable roofs and laid out with conscious symmetry. While there are numerous exceptions, they are generally in red brick, with or without white stone trimming. The Georgian house is heavier in conception and detail. Both were generally erected in the midst of stately private parks, on moderately level ground, so that to-day, when we think of the one or the other, it is almost invariably against such a background. So popular is the style derived from one of these two Hano- verian concepts, so well adapted has it shown itself to living conditions of to-day, that two chapters are devoted to covering modern American examples of the Adam and the Georgian. Adam is considered first. In July of 1757 Robert Adam, a young Scotchman, then in his twenty-ninth year, visited Spalato, a small town on the Dalmatian side of the Adriatic chiefly [ 84 J AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY remarkable, then as now, for containing the ruins of the palace of the Roman Emperor, Diocletian. Built in the first decade of the Third Century of this era, to cover some ten acres (that is, about two and a half city blocks as laid out in New York), the palace of Diocletian, though not generally known, is one of the architectural curiosities of Europe. It is still distinctly traceable to-day, both in outline and in detail; though a large part of modern Spalato has been built right inside of it. When one sees peasants’ huts plastered on to the walls of the ancient palace, a modern and a very poor native tavern inside an ancient temple, one wonders vaguely what they will be doing with the Woolworth Tower in sixteen hundred years. As the Adam style is due to its originator’s visit to this palace it may be worth while quoting what those infallible indicators of the generally accepted point of view, the editors of the Baedeker guide books, have to say about it: “The antiquities of Spalato are apt to disappoint. They date chiefly from the period of decadence and often show traces of negligence, a fact accounted for by the haste with which the ailing and hypochondriac emperor sought to build himself a retreat from the world. . . . The style is a feeble imitation of the Greek, yet with all their defects it must be admitted that the buildings produced an impression of grandeur.” Upon his return to England, Robert Adam published his “Ruins of the Palace of Diocletian,” in the preface of which he enunciated two guiding beliefs upon the acceptance of which he molded his own style. He spoke of his time (he wrote in 1764:) as being “An era no less remarkable than that of Pericles, Augustus and the Medicis’; and he further stated that “Architecture in a partic- ular Manner depends upon the Patronage of the Great, as they alone are able to exe- cute what the Artist plans. . . . At a time when the admiration of the Grecian and Roman Architecture has risen to such a height in Britain, as to banish in a great measure all fantastic and frivolous tastes, and to make it necessary for every Architect to study and imitate the ancient manner.” The patronage of the great did not fail Robert Adam; so successful was he that he is the only Britisher in architectural history who has impressed his name upon a domestic architectural style. Two more quotations before we leave his personality. The first is from the Dictionary of National Biography; it speaks of his style as marked: “‘by a fine [ 85 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY sense of proportion and very elegant taste . . . rich but neat, refined but not effeminate, chaste but not severe.”” The second is from another infallible guide, The Encyclopedia Britannica: ““He was able so to mould and adapt the classic models as to create a new manner of the highest charm and distinction. Out of simple, curvilinear forms, of which he principally preferred the oval, he evolved combinations of extraordinary grace and variety. That most difficult feature, the column, he handled with enthusiasm and perfect mastery; he studied and wrote of it with minute pains, while his practise showed his grasp of the subject by all avoidance of bare imitation of the classic masters who first brought it to perfection.” The success of any architectural style depends always upon its congruity, first to its physical background, secondly, and much more importantly, to the psy- chological reactions of the persons for whom it is constructed. Though it is not often stated, there is something very much akin between the later Roman Empire, the Hanoverian dynasty in England, and New York in the decade of the latest world war. All three ages (though the early church writers would hardly let you think so) were those of great material prosperity, overlying, as always, a back- ground of menace. Such conditions always breed efhiciency and sophistication and an underlying mental tiredness. The young eye of the Grecian City States, of early Medizvalism, of Elizabethan England, of the modern Munich school of Art Nouveau, is able to see grace and merit in an involved, complicated, robustious, shouting architecture; its owner still has time for interest in complexities. By the time a nation or an individual (and of course every nation is a group of indi- viduals) has become saddled with problems of administration on a big scale, whether of armies and colonies or of vast industrial enterprises, domestic archi- tecture trends inevitably to be a solace and a refuge, not a playground of architec- tural gymnastics. The robustious German editors of the Austrian Baedeker (the quotation above is from the edition of 1905) had, apparently, precisely the Eliza- bethan view towards architecture. In their eyes the Rome of Diocletian, the Eng- land which sent Napoleon into exile, and the America which sent Pershing to France, are all alike periods of decadence. To the communal sense which is so strong a part of German city life to-day, anyone wishing to build a large, retired, [ 86 J PPV ier a eles Name DOME Pas as O) Fe al Ol DACY, thoroughly calm and coérdinated country estate as a retreat from the world would seem ailing and hypochondriac. However, they so well represent the attitude of mind in which the Adam style does not register that all people who dislike it will find its condemnation ably expressed in the Baedeker excerpt. In the opinion of the writer, bearing always in mind the point of view this book is intended to express, the Adam style as seen in such houses as the Mrs. Guy Fairfax Cary place, erected by John Russell Pope at Jericho, Long Island, or the James A. Burden house, erected by Delano & Aldrich at Syosset, is as nearly perfect for purposes which the modern American country house is planned to serve as anything may be. They affect one who appreciates their style like the writings of Aldous Huxley or a Botticelli painting, or Rachmaninoff at the piano, or Pavlowa in the dance of “The Dying Swan”—cool and sure and skilful. About them is artistic purity, the suavity of sophistication, the inexorable, sensitive symmetry betraying the utmost mastery of decorative esthetics. Successful symme- try is much more difficult than any individualistic program. If symmetry succeeds it is because the whole underlying basic thought is successful, not because of any individual bravura distracting attention from the lack of coherence of the whole. For a regiment to present arms with exact simultaneousness, three thousand bayo- nets flashing in the sun on the same fifth of a second, is something of a triumph; done raggedly it is nothing at all. There is the same sort of triumph about a per- fectly codrdinated Adam building. It expresses just as completely absolute mas- tery of detail, crisp, flashing, perfect. To the tired modern eye, the sophisticated, city eye, whether of Diocletian, of the owners of the British East India Company, or the Directors of the Amalgamated Products Corporation, its calculated precise- ness is pleasantly restful, restful in the certainty of inexorable good taste. The dangers inherent in the Adam style are similar to those of the Colonial. It is successful only so long as it stays sensitive. The signs of failure are evi- denced in a sense of wilting, of withering, of drying up. Of all things which may not be made successfully by the use of rubber stamps, of photostats from an ar- chitectural book, Adam is the most outstanding. It is entirely possible to make a good Gothic structure by a careful amalgamation of historic examples, a doorway from Chenonceaux, a tower from Azay-Le-Rideau, and various square feet of detail Baye dl AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY from Blois. As a matter of fact, any bus ride in New York will prove that it has been done several times. To make a successful modern Adam building by this method is unthinkable; because, as already said, Adam is successful, or a failure, in its basic design, not because of mass of noisy detail. The Government of the Republic of France so thoroughly share the opinions of the writer that they gave the civil decoration of the Legion of Honor to John Russell Pope, the architect, princi- pally for his creation of Mrs. Guy Fairfax Cary’s residence, one photograph of which is used as the frontispiece, the others of which immediately follow. The residence of Mrs. Guy Fairfax Cary at Jericho depends for its charm entirely on the proportion of its parts and on its rather piquant adaptations of the details of the Adam period. Remembering the general scheme, with its garden walls, its service buildings, its loggias and porticos, it comes as near to being an old English manor house as almost anything in this country. And it is a detail not to be overlooked in the sum of its perfections that it has been found possible to intro- duce considerable variation into the theme in spite of the nicety of the balance which is a basic part of the plan, founded on what may best be described as a rec- tangular U, with the main part of the house running east to west and the wings extending towards the south. A description of the garden treatment and its rela- tion to the house is reserved for a later chapter. As is consistent in this English type, the main entrance door is made the jewel of the exterior, a jewel in a good setting, with carefully studied detail. This is on the north side of the house and the illustration of this detail and the general view used in the frontispiece to the book reveal the long, frank windows which extend down to the grass line and are so genial and engaging a symbol of the attractiveness and comfort and good taste to be found within the residence. In spite of the old hunting print touch which has been given to the driveway view illustrated in the frontispiece, through the picturesque grouping of horses and hounds, the forecourt itself is thoroughly modern; its ample dimensions are determined by the smallest circle in which a large motor car can be turned. The picture is, however, thoroughly in spirit with the activities of the owner, who is one of the best horsewomen on Long Island. The feature of the interior of Mrs. Cary’s home is the stair hall. This is in the form of an ellipse with the stairs following the elliptical motif. They are exe- [ 88 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY cuted in very light detail in wrought iron touched with tarnished gilt. This, with the entrance hall and a small reception room and school room, occupies the north side of the plan. One of the most interesting problems of the interior was the necessity of making a harmonious union between the entrance hall and the ellip- tical stairway, a difficulty which was finally surmounted by the repetition of the curve in the ceiling line, as will be noted in the illustration of this detail. The entrance hall itself is by far the most architectural feature of the interior and is very Eng- lish, with its marble floor diagonally patterned in black and cream and its walls done in soft English gray in the character of the halls of the London houses of the early Eighteenth Century. Altogether the house is a very complete expression of the ideal expressed in the quotation from the Dictionary of National Biography given above. The summer home of Mr. and Mrs. James A. Burden at Syosset is an Adam version which has come to us more or less through Southern influences. Its near- est prototype may be found in the Whitehall house at Annapolis, although there have been many variations in the development of the details. To accommodate itself to a slight rise in the ground the house has been planned on two different levels, advantage having been taken of a characteristic of the site to introduce a corridor over a long arcaded basement somewhat in the manner of Robert Adam’s famous Adelphi terrace. This corridor connects two wings, one given over to the service quarters, the other to the two story wing occupied by younger members of the family, and is shown in one of the illustrations in this chapter. Other illustra- tions of the exterior reveal not only the unerring taste which has molded the de- tails but the relationship which the craftsmanship itself has to the ideal upon which the style is founded. This craftsmanship means not only the delicate iron- work, well turned moldings or graceful carvings but the very laying of the brick itself, which gives as much evidence of this type of skill as the most elaborate iron grille. The texture of the brickwork has been made one of the principal consider- ations, the bricks themselves having been brought from the South and the work as fastidiously executed as the daintiest detail of the decoration. Of decoration, in the accepted meaning of the word, there is very little. The house has great breadth and simplicity and the architects have relied everywhere on line and proportion for their result, achieving the refinement and aristocratic insinuation which recalls the [ 89 J AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY best performances of this type. This is the house which was used as residence by the Prince of Wales during his visit to Long Island in August and September of 1924. The main entrance to the Burden residence is into a circular hall, with Mr. Burden’s office at one side and a small reception room at the other. This circular hall opens into a stair hall, curved at both ends, from which a corridor runs through to the wide open lawn of the south side of the house. One end of this stair hall is shown in an illustration. This hallway is perfectly in character with the traditions observed through the residence. It is nicely balanced, handsomely proportioned, as formal as it should be for its uses. It breaks up its simple wall spaces with arched openings, depending on one of the stately doorways important to the style, and on a gracefully turned stairway, for its architectural enrichment. The tessellated marble floor and a few decorative old landscapes give the right amount of action and color. It was on the merit, particularly, of their work in the Burden house that the architects were awarded the Medal of Honor of 1920 at the Architectural League Exhibition of 1921 by request of the Committee on Archi- tecture. The photographs of the library and dining room from Mrs. Willard D. Straight’s town house at 1130 Fifth Avenue from the same firm reveal equal re- sourcefulness in the development of the simpler English style, which is the basic principle of the Burden residence and of the residence of Mr. James Swan Frick near Baltimore, illustrated here and in an earlier chapter. The interiors of the residence in Far Hills, New Jersey, are largely originals, rather than interpretations of the English style. The library is practically antique, having been adapted from genuine old panelings, architraves, floors and mantels from an Eighteenth Century room, probably designed by the Brothers Adam, or, at least, under their direction. It is built of wood, commonly called deal, which was usually painted in the old days. In this instance the paint has been removed, the deal waxed and left in its natural tone and color which, as the result of age, has become a soft, mellow, nut brown. How well it is in character with the inte- riors illustrated in this chapter proves the rightness of our modern feeling, our conscientiousness in sustaining these inheritances. In the dining room the old and the new are sensitively combined. The mantel is an original, formerly in the Links Club and removed to make way for the large portrait of Mr. C. B. [ 90 ] ApVareneCeAWNest O MES: Of bO=DA Y Macdonald by Gari Melchers. The paintings and other details are old. The sideboard, surmounted by a canvas by Abraham Cooper, belonged to Governor John Cotton Smith. The Lowestoft platters are parts of two services, one owned by the Earl of Strangford, when British Minister to Portugal, about 1800, the other by the Perrine family of Trenton, New Jersey. Good things have been put into this residence and excellent judgment has disposed them gracefully. These illustrations give additional proofs of the handsomeness of a style as much appreciated in our country in the present as in the early days of our development. The simple English styles, as has been insinuated, are not for all tempera- Photo. by M. E. Hewitt DELANO & ALDRICH, Architects HOME OF MR. AND MRS. JAMES A. BURDEN AT SYOSSET This detail of the long, arcaded basement running below a corridor connecting two wings is a keynote in itself to the virtues of the Adam style. There is a charm which exists in spite of the almost monastic restraint, a rhythm founded on the arches and the circular, port-hole like windows [ 91] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY JOHN RUSSELL POPE, Architect RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. OGDEN L. MILLS AT WESTBURY, LONG ISLAND A very successful expression of that style which is marked by a “fine sense of proportion and very elegant taste.” vt is Uvch ietting with a wisdom and diserimination ‘which leaves ta, spproprigtencis anges aaa ments. The old New Yorker, or the dweller in any of the larger cities, whose traditions are associated with the decorous interiors of the brown stone fronts of sixty years ago, ought to find them to his liking. I myself remember with much pleasure the cleanly austerity, the gentlemanly propriety, of the walls in my grand- father’s residence on East Twenty-third Street, skilfully executed in the painted- paneling style, the foundation gray and the panel outline in a rather distinguished green providing a most suitable background for the suite of three “parlors” de- voted solely to formal uses and at the height of their glory during the festivities. of New Year’s Day. Such a house was essentially Georgian and English in its con- notations. To a descendent of the family which this house adequately expressed, the Georgian style, which is to say, also, the Adam, may very well seem soothing, delightful, a refuge. Or, equally rightfully, such a descendent might go off at a tangent and adore the picturesque or the Mediterranean type of building. It is all a matter of temperament. The thing is to know what you like, and to live in it, when it is possible. The stupidest thing in the world is to spend the major part of your time in a house to which you are temperamentally opposed. It is a blessed thing that all of us do not think alike, else would we perish from very lack of con- flict, and from stagnation of ideas. [ 92 ] Soi ne, ss oe) ae JOHN RUSSELL POPE, Architect DOORWAY OF MR. OGDEN L. MILLS’ LONG ISLAND HOME A detail of the Adam manner which illustrates with special pertinency a quotation included in the text: “That most difficult feature, the column, he handled with enthusiasm and perfect mastery; he studied and wrote of it with minute pains, while his practise showed his grasp of the subject by all avoidance of bare imitation of the classic masters who first brought it to perfection” JOHN RUSSELL POPE, Architect DOORWAY OF MR. JAMES SWAN FRICK’S BALTIMORE HOME The pilasters and columns in this more formal entrance are fluted in distinction to the plain pilasters of the garden front. The treatment of the capitals, as is observed, is the same. The doorway with the broken pediment and urn, here as in the entrance to Mr. Mills’ residence, is a delightful inheritance of this Eighteenth Century English tradition JOHN RUSSELL POPE, Architect MR. JAMES SWAN FRICK’S HOME NEAR BALTIMORE It is interesting to compare the treatment of the pilasters here with the columns of the doorway of Mr. Ogden L. Mills’ residence. There is the same sensitive use of the Pom- peian motive in the capitals, a resemblance which is still more emphasized in the more imposing composition of the entrance on the driveway front of Mr. Mills’ home P66 JO Jaquiaydag Ut O[Og [eUuOeUIajUT ay} 1OJ PULIS] Suo'T 07 PSIA sty Sulanp oyIns sty pus sayeAA JO voutIg ay} Aq paid -NQ00 SBM BUAPISAL SIYT, ‘apoyo UO 9az}IUIUIOD 94} Jo ysanboa Aq *[ZEL JO WOTPIQIyXY onseoy] [BAnqooyYIy IY} 4 OZ6L JO AOU0Y JO [epeW ayy P2IPIVAMB I1IM SPI}TYOIV IY} YOIYM IOJ “Qouaptsat sty} Jo Aynvoq oy} ATTeNnJoR Ysoul ssaidxa 0} UVES YoIYA Saatpolpe oyz o1v Vsoy} f[NJ[[E{S pue vans ‘ood LAHSSOAS LV WONACISHY S.NHGUNd ‘V SHNWVE ‘SUW ANV “UN speyy4y ‘HOIUGTIV ® ONVIAC PIM “TW Aq *0}0Ud frets ait ETL : a al DELANO & ALDRICH, Architects SERPENTS ia calorie GALANT da Siietaxns: Sol Sea sae a ati ie 3S? 2 apt SAS ct: ee Panes bee) TR so Petes ot > Deane evoke ki BLE NM SNS DBO BIS NAN aS hae any Basicy < Mab ChanGRSRaTER etd AA an shea eaete Vesslgacteecdal tet Geicaeis eC hes Lah ie A re S 4 a ee % cH Pat = ~ i a i ; Ye Ee es a ag a rie ait oe ae ei ah ak A DETAIL OF THE DRIVEWAY FRONT OF THE BURDEN RESIDENCE y, but to the very It should be realized that the most careful , the well turned mouldings and the elaboration of the doorwa which were brought from the South for this residence gives an opportunity for an appreciation of the craftsmanship of the exterior. eration has been given not only to the delicate ironwork This closer view consid laying of the bricks themselves, saoeds ayy dn yeoiq 0} surjyuted pro pue sduruedo poyoie uo “yuaMIeUIO Ulu eU} 1oy AvMsoop peyptiua ue uo Zurpuadap ‘uorjsodoad pue our “soueyeq uo paseq SI 4J ‘aoUep|Ser oY} FO LOf19}x9 ay} SUIAAOS YoIyA yey} se suIeSs oy} ATOITU -yap st Ajnvaq S}[ ‘[[BY eoUuvAYUA Av[NOATO B YPM spauUod T[eY STG, “1oY}O oy} Fe Sf Ales pouiny [fom YT, “Tey Ateys 947 FO spua peAInd 94} JO 9UO LUSSOAS LV ANOH NUGUNd ‘V SHWVE AHL NI TIVH AVMUIVIS Tah spoyyoIy “HOIUGTV ¥ ONV WIMEH “A “W 44 “O}0Ud Saran: Ho ow rs i wii { 4 aTp { tt Tus erm ca krese weearrsssterea i) Photo. by M. E. Hewitt DELANO & ALDRICH, Architects A MANTEL DETAIL IN THE RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. BURDEN A union of the British and American insistence on comf rt and the Italian feeling for decoration is expressed in this composition of a fire ready for lighting and a man el and overmantel carved after the manner of the Ital- ian Renaissance. The handsome paneling provides an ileal background for the very fine carving uorjeaysny adartdstyUo1Z JY} JopuN pejou st se “yUaMIUIZAON) Yous. 94} Aq patouoYy sem ZT YTYM Jopun ‘oureu yey} Aq fueut £q poasaquiowed oq [IM esnoy 94} pue Uepang }oIg ANYZIY ‘say ApsouLIoy sem AreD ‘sayy ‘e8ed oz1soddo oy} uo AeMioop uyeuI oy} JO [IlepPp ay} of ydaoxo ‘1aydvyo sty} Ul SUOTYeI}SNITIT OY} YIIM WATS ST MoTA UML] BY} A[UO yey, OS sdaIdsT}UOAZ B Se pPasN SI BoUapISat SIy} JO MATA DoUvIJUS SY, CANV'ISI DNOT ‘OHOINAL LV AUVO XVAUIVA AND ‘'SUW AO WONACISATU poerpriy “AadOd TIASSAY NHOL ES 4 JOHN RUSSELL POPE, Architect DOORWAY OF MRS. GUY FAIRFAX CARY’S COUNTRY HOME This illustration of the north side of the house shows the personal and entertaining manner in which the details of the Adam period have been adapted. The door is the jewel of the house, engagingly set back of the wrought iron lantern and a frame of Dorothy Perkins roses which have had a chance to mature since the photograph was taken. It is a composition worth studying yderZoj0yd soordsryu01z 94} ut ‘Ay;eUIE}xXe ‘pajou ov PUB JUT] ssv1Z oY} 0} pUS}X9 YIM SMOPUIM YueIZ “BuO, sy} JO SSIUIATJOIYI IY} TRIAII suOTYAYSNITI YJ, ‘etoydsourjze Jo [[NJ pue MoT[oeur pue ios AVA ST YIOMPOOM JY} JO 9U0} BYT, ‘“SUTe}AND pue sAreyo ay} Jo JuIod -a[ pseu Plo oy} oJ puv ainzTudng Are pur UTeITT A, JO Sovatd o1ei Ule}I90 JOF Bul}Jas JUeT[eoxe ue sapraoid woo ysI[suy pjo ureyd B Jo UOT}e}depe SI], HNWOH OHOIYEL SAUVD ‘SUW NI WOOU ONIATTI ONOTI FHL pouypoiy ‘AdOd TIASSNU NHOL JOHN RUSSELL POPE, Architect THE STAIR HALL IN MRS. GUY FAIRFAX CARY’S RESIDENCE This hall is in the form of an ellipse, with the stairs following the elliptical motif and executed in very light detail in wrought iron touched with tarnished gilt. It is typically English, with its marble floor diagonally pat- terned in black and cream and its walls done in soft English gray in the character of the halls of the London houses of the early Eighteenth Century DELANO & ALDRICH, Architects LIBRARY IN THE RESIDENCE OF MRS. WILLARD D. STRAIGHT In the library the influence is definitely of the Palladian type which we know as Adam, As in much of the work done by the architects of this house there is an insinuation of the French grace which, in this instance, is har- monious in spirit to the restraint of the English style allied to it. 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THE ENGLISH MANNER—PART TWO In the preceding chapter was considered the work of the one Georgian architect who achieved individuality, in fact of the only British architect who has ever become popularly known as the creator of a domestic architectural style. This chapter considers the architecture produced during the reign of the four Georges which cannot be assigned to the Brothers Adam or their influence. As said in the opening of the previous chapter, Georgian domestic architecture is an expression of the attitude towards life of the average Englishman of the time. In their way the innumerable Georgian palaces and mansions which dot England are as definite a monument of a period as are the Roman wall or the Tower of London. The Eighteenth Century was the first time in which England was not only prosperous but fully sensed her own success. The Elizabethan age saw her emer- gence into the limelight as a world power and marked the approaching end of the long period of civil wars which had kept the energies of her young men too fully occupied with internecine warfare to think much about economic production. The Seventeenth Century, economically speaking, was a transition period, a steady economic growth, a period of discovery and colonization, of the foundation of eco- nomic outposts, mingling with the last of her civil wars and religious disturbances. The Eighteenth Century ended fighting on English soil, in spite of melodramatic Jacobite raids and all the other moving picture accessories of the late Stuart tra- dition. English attention was occupied almost exclusively with commercial growth in one form or another. Some of the great noble landed proprietors retaining from feudal times manorial rights, port rights and the ground ownership in cities, found themselves, in the surrounding accretion of commercial values, forced up into [108 J AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY the position of multi-millionaires. We like to think that huge fortunes, founded on real estate, or the possession of natural resources, such as coal mines, steel mines or petroleum wells, are a purely American discovery of the last three generations, but a glimpse at the stately private houses erected in England at the beginning of the Eighteenth Century, just before the period of which we are writing, such places as Chatsworth, Castle Howard, Wentworth Woodhouse and Prior Park, proves that they had done some discovering of their own at a time when Indians were still living in Yonkers. The really enormous palaces (for no other word adequately describes them) mentioned above are not under consideration in discussion of the Georgian style. But their existence has to be realized as the most perfect expression of the ideal of the age, the buildings which architects and owners had in the background of their consciousness when they erected their relatively smaller, but still quite elaborate houses. Anybody who is anxious to visualize this phase of the Georgian era should take the pains to do some reading about Blenheim Palace, the very exuberant building which a grateful nation presented to the First Duke of Marlborough for the series of victories which first showed the British ability to interfere decisively in questions of the Continental balance of power. As a state capitol building it would be adequate; as a private residence it is overwhelming—there is no other word to describe it. It has even passed into literature; and this book submits a claim to being the first published since its erection which mentions Blenheim without quoting Pope’s couplets descriptive thereof. These buildings, therefore, being founded on a success complex, were planned very consciously and elaborately for the outward visible manifestation of an inward realization of prosperity—that is for entertaining on a very grand scale indeed. Louis XIV had just been gathered to his fathers but he left behind him the tradition of the grand manner and England took that motto for her own during the Eighteenth Century. It really needed the Ameri- can Revolution to shake her out of it. The average Georgian house might not have the pillars, porticoes and columns of Blenheim, but it had the tradition of entertainment. That was the first thing owner and architect considered in planning both exterior and interior. [ 109 J AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY This brings us to one of the really important contributions of the Georgian age to domestic architecture, the rise of the interior, at least the public rooms thereof, to a place where as much care and affection were lavished upon them as upon the exterior. A medizval castle was a wall with some barracks and a gen- eral assembly room inside. So, to all general intents and purposes, were the first early Renaissance structures. It took architects a long, long time to realize that it was possible to consider the rooms inside a building as of equal importance, with the same rights to consideration, as the picturesque quality of the exterior. It would be absurd to claim that this was achieved in Georgian times; but a start was certainly made in that direction, and when one thinks of a Georgian house to-day one is very much inclined to think of its dining room almost before one thinks of its exterior. | The contribution the middle class brought to the Georgian style, as distin- guished from the structures of the higher nobility, which were redolent of a pre- sumably perfectly proper ostentation, was an ineradicable sense about them of solid comfort; in fact if one were compelled to devise a slogan covering Georgian archi- tecture in general those two words would as well fit the necessities as any that could be selected. Robert Louis Stevenson, that extremely capable characterizer of mood, has expressed this feeling very ably: “Somehow I feel glad when I get among the quiet, Eighteenth Century buildings, in cosy places with some elbow room about them, after the older architecture. This other is bedeviled and fur- tive; it seems to stoop. . . . I do not know if I have yet explained to you the sort of loyalty, or urbanity, that there is about the Eighteenth Century house to my mind; the spirit of a country orderly and prosperous, a flavour of the presence of magistrates and well-to-do merchants in big wigs, something certain and civic and domestic is all about these quiet, staid, shapely houses, with no character but their exceeding shapeliness, and the comely external utterance that they make of their internal comfort.” In addition to setting forth so decisively the aspect of comfort of the Georgian house, Stevenson has indicated another of its indispensable qualities, its dignity. The Elizabethan noble may have been a bit of a swashbuckler. He may have sailed, or have thought longingly of sailing, with Sir Francis Drake to the Spanish Main. 110 J AMERDLGAN HOMES OF T70=D AY His grandson in the succeeding century took shares in a commercial company founded for the same purpose and stayed at home to attend to administrative detail and clip the Eighteenth Century equivalent of coupons. He took for his motto those memorable lines of Andrew Marvell describing the beheading of Charles I: He nothing common did, or mean, Upon that memorable scene. As a codification of impeccable social conduct, under peculiarly trying circum- stances, those two lines have never been surpassed. They have a flavor most especially appropriate to Georgian architecture. One feels that a proper Georgian building would shudder all through its thousands of tons of brick and white stone were things common or mean, social errors, committed within its walls. The architect and the owner who had the three ideals of entertaining, of com- fort and of dignity in mind would almost automatically think along the lines of an established convention, a convention founded on very conscious symmetry. A Georgian house is almost invariably founded upon the quadrilateral, either a large single block or a symmetrical arrangement of smaller oblongs around a large cen- tral base. Decorative detail is Italian in origin, with the robustiousness of the Italian peninsular refined by transmission through France, and slightly congealed From a drawing by O. R. Eggers JOHN RUSSELL POPE, Architect LONG ISLAND RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. MARSHALL FIELD Mr. Field’s property consists of two thousand acres stretching straight across the neck from Lloyd’s Harbor to Long Island Sound. The house is of the reserved Georgian type seen in other residences by the same architect. This front has been cleared to make a handsome lawn, preserving some very fine specimens of trees C111] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY DELANO & ALDRICH, Architects RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. WILLIAM B. OSGOOD FIELD AT LENOX “High Lawn House” illustrates very perfectly the Stevenson quotation given in the text: “something certain and civic and domestic is all about these quiet, staid, shapely houses, with no character but their exceeding shapeli- ness and the comely external utterance that they make of their internal comfort.” Certainly it is a very true expression of the Georgian by transposition to the cooler British background. Just as one cannot think of Elizabethan architecture without remembering that the young Elizabethan noble delighted in making the grand tour and bringing back Italian workmen in his train, so in the Georgian period certain Italian signatures, even that of the Six- teenth Century Palladio, are written large across the facade. Nothing in the preceding paragraph, however, should tempt one to think that a Georgian building is an easy thing to produce architecturally. To be suc- cessful its architect needs enthusiasm, intelligence, and entire sympathy with the period. Otherwise its symmetry degenerates into neatness, its serenity becomes stodginess, its fastidiousness insipidity, its restraint baldness, its severity dullness, its splendor ostentation, its virility heaviness, and its charm calculated coquetry. For its birthright of sober dignity is substituted an air of laborious elegance. Properly conceived, with the appropriate amenities of design and careful propor- tioning, it makes an appeal to the modern cultivated taste of surprising numerical manifestation. A successful modern Georgian house must have an underlying strength, sturdiness, power, and, even though this may seem a strange adjective to use, a hint of vivacity. The very worst thing you can call a Georgian house is to describe it as inoffensive. It must always interest. C112 J AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY The characteristics of Georgian domestic architecture as expressed in the pre- ceding paragraphs are perfectly observed in the residence of Mr. William B. Osgood Field, ““High Lawn House,” at Lenox, Massachusetts. It has dignity, solidity and balance; it is classic but obviously British. It is handsome without being pompous. In plan it is a plain, well proportioned house, relying for its decoration on the quoins, the cornice, the important doorway feature, the disposition of the windows, the general feeling for formal beauty which young English architects brought back with so much enthusiasm from their art-inspired journeys to Italy. Mr. Truman H. Newberry’s residence, at Grosse Pointe Farms, near Detroit, is erected on one of the ribbon strip farms, with a narrow frontage of three hun- dred feet and a depth of something over a mile which is a legitimate heritage from the French settlers who, in the early part of the Eighteenth Century, made this thrifty division of the water front on Lake St. Clair. Incidentally it has given the architects of residences in this neighborhood an unusual problem, both in the lay- ing out of the grounds and in the planning of the house. The house, quite natu- TROWBRIDGE & ACKERMAN, Architects RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. TRUMAN H. NEWBERRY NEAR DETROIT This residence at Grosse Pointe Farms has been built for comfort, with generous facilities for entertaining. There is a breakfast room overlooking Lake St. Claire; there is a large music room with a fine organ which can be enjoyed by guests inside and outside of the house, in the music court, the loggias, on the terraces. It is one of those “cosy places with some elbow room about them” elise AMER DT GCAN FT TIO MEST O he Tr Drv JOHN RUSSELL POPE, Architect THE HOME OF MR. AND MRS. ANDREW VARICK STOUT AT RED BANK, NEW JERSEY The central portion of the building recalls in a very marked degree the street facade of an old house in Downing Street, Farnham, built in the midst of the real Georgian period. The wing to the right of the illustration consists of an open porch which is as much a part of the garden as the house. It is hospitable and charming rally, resolved itself into the handsome type of Georgian red brick and limestone most appropriate to this prescribed setting. It answers to the suggestion of com- fort and the hospitable insinuation referred to earlier in the chapter. Externally it bears a gracious promise of such agreeable and pleasant living as is possible through our modern American knowledge of what is convenient and charming in an inte- rior. The interior plan notes, for instance, such features as a breakfast room in one of the loggia wings, in response to a preference of long standing on the part of the owners for a view of the lake, while breakfasting. It also provides for the en- joyment of music through the medium of a large music room with a fine organ, behind a carved screen. This room opens into a pergola and music court and is accessible from the loggia so that many guests can profit by the concerts given there. The house and the grounds have been definitely planned for generous entertaining for which the style of the residence is so admirably adapted. The set- ting of the house has been developed to lay emphasis on broad open lawn spaces, on the tall trees and heavy shrubs used for framing the smooth turf, on the seclu- sion made possible to the lawn adjoining the house through the wide spreading elms, bordered with undergrowth planting, which shade the approach drive. The whole is serene, settled and stately, as befits the building itself. There is the most careful consideration of the relation of all of the garden landscape to the ideals on C114 J AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY which the architecture of the residence itself is based. Everything is designed for symmetry. Also it is all enormously practical. ‘Brick House,’ the home of Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Varick Stout at Red Bank, New Jersey, is another attractive example of a Georgian translation by an American architect who has proved his inventive faculty in other English themes illustrated in the preceding chapter, notably in the residence of Mrs. Guy Fairfax Cary. The central portion of the building recalls in a very marked degree the street facade of an old house in Downing Street, Farnham, built in the midst of the real Georgian period, at a time when the traditions of the Georgian style were being more or less unconsciously developed. The entrance doorway, which is shown in one of the illustrations, has the characteristics of its prototype and sug- gests a privacy for which most English entrances are noted. This privacy is pos- end WALKER & GILLETTE, Architects THE RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. JAMES NORMAN HILL AT GLEN HEAD “Big Tree Farm,” Mr. Hill’s Long Island summer home; the garden front. A very original and personal con- tribution to the Georgian houses in this country. It is thoroughly illustrative of that “spirit of a country orderly and prosperous, a flavour of the presence of magistrates and well-to-do merchants” C115 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY CHARLES BARTON KEEN DELANO & ALDRICH ILLUSTRATING TWO EXTREMES OF THE GECRGIAN STYLE At the left Mr. Charles I. Corby’s home at Garrett Park, Maryland, provides an example of the very elaborate doorway in contrast to the simple doorway of Mr. James A. Burden’s residence. These two photographs show what widely different expressions of temperament may be derived from the same thing. Due allowance should be made, of course, for the fact that one is the main, one the garden entrance sible because of the entrance through the typical square English forecourt, devel- oped before the days of automobiles. Other details remind us again of the progress which had been made in the Italianizing of the English taste of the period. It is not only on its entrance doorway or its graceful arches, or its digni- fied proportions that the architect relies for the appeal of Mr. Stout’s residence; much deliberation has been given to the materials, an important item, as observed in the home of Mr. and Mrs. James A. Burden in the preceding chapter, where the special brick, and the laying of it, has been a very serious matter. In the present instance considerable thought has likewise been given to the texture of the brick and slate and to the judicious use of iron and stone with a resulting interest which is not the least item in a successful architectural whole. It is this regard for the selection and working of materials which takes from this American improvisa- Fan kiss, ASTER RTCAIN, HOMES OF TO-DAY tion the dryness and lack of character found in some of the earlier and less imagi- native imitations of the period. The residence of Mr. and Mrs. Lathrop Brown, “Land of Clover,” at St. James, Long Island, is an example of the use of the curved arcade of which there are so many classic examples in British architecture, notably Prior Park, near Bath. The plan is seen in illustrations from Isaac Ware’s “Complete Body of PEABODY, WILSON & BROWN, Architects DETAIL OF THE LATHROP BROWN HOME An attractive small composition, with the little ship of learning, bearing knowledge to the pupils, giving a typically Georgian touch of decoration above the win- dow of the schoolroom Architecture”’ published in 1756. In those days the left hand block, at the end of one of the arcades, contained the kitchens, at a most inconvenient and unpractical distance from the house; the right hand block housed the stables, JOHN RUSSELL POPE, Architect MR. GEORGE HEWITT MYERS’ RESIDENCE Mr. Myers’ home at Watch Hill, Rhode Island, has an entrance which provides a very delightful illustra- tion of the Palladian motive which Adam made so essential a feature of the English style leone AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY Se ay" Sy ARTHUR S. VERNAY, Decorator MRS. WILLIAM HAYWARD’S LIBRARY The library in Mrs. Hayward’s town house at 1051 Fifth Avenue is an accurate copy from an old English house, the woodwork of specially selected oak. It is in the elaborate Georgian style which is in interesting contrast to the simpler Adam of Mr. Frick’s library which is shown on the opposite page in rather unpleasant proximity to the residence. In Mr. Brown’s resi- dence the kitchen subscribes to tradition by being in somewhat its former position except that it is lo- cated in the arcade itself, and there- fore in more comfortable relation to the dining-room, the building which forms the left hand block being given over to servants’ dining-room, sitting room and the children’s school room seen in one of the il- lustrations. The opposite corridor contains a sun room with the build- ing pendant to the school room oc- cupied by a very large library. To express it according to our Ameri- can traditions, it is very Southern, having been inspired by the owner’s frequent visits to the South. Here, too, a special point is found in the hand-made brick, made in Virginia. Mrs. Henry P. Davison’s home, ‘*Peacock Point,” at Locust Valley, Long Island, illustrated with four views in this chapter, is a rather richly conceived Georgian type, a house of substantial aspect and a good deal of style. The exterior details shown in two of the photographs give a key to the re- strained exuberance of the ornament of the doorway and the bigness of the decora- tive conception as indicated by the terrace, guarded by amorini representing the seasons. Mrs. Davison’s residence has little that is in sympathy with the asceti- cism of the Adam houses; it is absolute Georgian in the more resolutely British [118 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY understanding of the term. It is, obviously, not the heavy type of Georgian used in the larger houses in England; it has been tempered to American preferences. The din- ing-room, especially, is very grace- fully designed and executed, with just enough enrichment of the fire- place and overmantel composition, of the nornice and the cealing, to provide, with the paneled walls, an interior of considerable charm and a great deal of character. How far from the Grinling Gibbons develop- ment of the Georgian it is, is real- ized in comparison to the original English room incorporated into Mrs. Henry Phipps’ Fifth Avenue resi- dence, as shown in one of the illus- trations. The living room at “Pea- cock Point” is another one of those large, well lighted, comfortable rooms which has an open fire and inviting divans as its focal point in weather when the activities are not mainly concerned with outdoor amusements. JOHN RUSSELL POPE, Architect MR. JAMES SWAN FRICK’S LIBRARY The detail of the library in Mr, Frick’s home near Baltimore and the corner shown of Mrs. Hayward’s library on the oppo- site page have been selected because they are ideal back- grounds for fine books. The period which governs them was a reading period; every good Georgian house has a library. These are fine examples As this book is being written the estate of Mr. and Mrs. Marshall Field at Lloyd’s Neck is being developed by John Russell Pope into one of the most impor- tant country gentleman’s homes along Georgian lines in America. It is on a mag- nificent scale in point of size and completeness and is as self-contained as a huge English estate with its surrounding villages, or a great Southern plantation in the [119 J AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY prosperous days. The estate consists of two thousand acres extending straight across the neck, from Lloyd’s Harbor to Long Island Sound. The character of the beautiful rolling property was wild woodland interspersed with flat areas of farmland. This necessitated a good deal of clearing of woods and underbrush but provided great treasure in the way of fine trees and an opportunity for effective vistas. The main entrance to the estate was made off the shore road along the Harbor. The gate lodge to this drive, which is reserved for the cars of the owners and their guests, is an old Revolutionary cottage. On this drive is the winter cottage used by the family as a week-end residence when the big house is not open. Passing the win- ter cottage, the next building on the drive is the polo stable in which are kept DELANO & ALDRICH, Architects RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. JAMES A. BURDEN When you think of a Georgian house you remember particularly the dining-room because it is a style which es- pecially is suited to functions. The illustration above is not only a sensitive rendition of a style that, above all, suggests cultivated tastes and the intuition that makes for personality, but it is representative, with its ship’s model and old prints, of a time when Great Britain made her money mainly out of ships L 120 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY only polo ponies and riding horses. The drive continues to the main house, lo- cated on the highest point in the property, with the main rooms overlooking a long slope; a clearing through the woods with a fresh water pond at the end of the vista. A minor road off the main road leads down to Long Island Sound and the private bathing beach and outdoor tennis courts. A road is also developed at the West to connect with the channel through the marshland shown in one of the illustrations. Returning to the main highway, at Lloyd’s Harbor, it is interesting to follow WALKER & GILLETTE, Architects RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. THOMAS W. LAMONT The dining room in the Lamont town house at 107 East 70th Street is a very fine expression of an English style, somewhat earlier than the Georgian, which is probably more correctly assigned to Queen Anne. Its details are beautifully done. The crystal chandelier is in exactly the proper proportion to the size and character of the room; it is sufficiently important, yet does not overload it. ‘The restrained mantel is a definite art contribution al 21 AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY the service drive, guarded by the engineer’s cottage which acts as a gate lodge. The first group of buildings on this drive are three double cottages in which some of the help are housed. The next group is the very important and up to date farm group. As is frequently the custom in an estate of this size and character, the architecture of the buildings in these utilitarian groups is more informal than that of the main house and its immediate buildings. The owner’s residence and the adjacent garage, containing accommodations for the housing of resident and visiting chauffeurs, are of the reserved Georgian type observed in other work by ALLEN & COLLENS, Architects THE TOWN HOUSE OF MR. AND MRS. ARTHUR CURTISS JAMES This dining room in Mr. James’ residence at 39 East 69th Street, New York, is the first example given in the book of the elaborately carved woodwork and the highly ornamental ceiling symbolic of the time and atten- tion lavished on such rooms in the Georgian period. The walls are paneled in English limewood which is adapted to the bold carving and has a golden tone which makes it a rich background for Sir Joshua Reynolds ea AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY the same architect. The polo stables are also designed in this group. The mate- rials are brick with limestone trim. The farm buildings and other units in the utilitarian group take their inspiration from the Revolutionary cottage, with its wide shingles. All are shingled with big exposure to the weather with the excep- tion of the winter cottage, which is of stone. The shingled buildings are painted white and the general scheme is the informal, rambling Colonial farm type. In- corporated somewhere in the plan is a big formal vegetable and early flower garden, enclosed on four sides with a high brick wall. Immediately in back of that are the large greenhouses. A very important item in the planning of the Field estate has been to pro- vide, as far as possible, individual cottages for those connected with the estate. The engineer’s cottage has already been mentioned. The gardener’s cottage is in the neighborhood of the garden and greenhouses. The estate manager’s office is in one wing of the stables and the head groom has his quarters in another. The group of three cottages houses six families. In connection with the garage is another cottage for the head mechanic. Somewhere in the wooded land is the cottage for the gamekeeper and his family. It is all very charming and very human. It is not surprising to find that the estate has a water system more ex- tensive than that required by many a small town. In these days of overcrowding and difficult living there is pleasure even in the idea of a return to the country squire manner of living, with its pleasant relationships between the owners and their employees. Mr. Field’s chief interest is in his stables, which are being de- veloped into something quite special. It is a pleasure to be able to include three of Mr. Eggers’ drawings of the Field estate in this volume. It is a matter of regret that the estate had not progressed to the point of photographs at the date of publication. [ 123 ] TT f "22 at F a ESS! Siwene as Og meas Ye, * of WALKER & GILLETTE, Architects THE JAMES NORMAN HILL RESIDENCE AT GLEN HEAD, LONG ISLAND This photograph is inserted partly because it shows so well the very simple treatment of the terrace which is an essential part of the Georgian house. It will be interesting to compare it with the more elaborate terrace of the Henry P. Davison house shown a few pages later. The general front view is shown on an earlier page DOORWAY OF THE HOME OF MR. AND MRS. LATHROP BROWN This doorway should be compared with those in the previous chapter; it stands with reluctant feet where the Adam and the Georgian meet, The prototype of this very fine piece of work is found in the celebrated door of Westover on the James River. It is illustrated again in the view of the central building of the Lathrop Brown composition WIOOAPOOYPS $,WsIpTIyD pue sioyrtenb sotasas oy} surejzUoo 4Joq 94} 3 Zurpyinq ey, ‘esnoy ey} Jo 9p{s JayjO sy} UO SurIpying [eulu1e, Zurpuodseai09 eB UM opeore IepUus e ‘asinod Jo ‘st o19qJ, *}X9} 94} UL poezesoqeya AsjyourwAs ay} Jo o[durexa yuoT[Ioxe Ue SI }T “Ye Ivou ‘osnoFy YIeq 1ONg ‘sdeysad ‘st yoIyM JO UMOUY ysaq oy} “BINyoo}IYOIe YsIyag ut safdurexa oIssepo AuBUI OS o1v dI9Y} YOIYM JO epeoie paaino ay} Jo asn ay} Jo ajdwuexs uy CGNV'ISI DNOT ‘SAWVE “LS LV NMOUd dOUHLVI ‘SUW GNV ‘UW AO AONACISAY sqqay, 4q ‘004d spoypIy ‘NMOU ¥ NOSTIM ‘AGOdVAd OSlopovrvyo st ‘stousop Aq uayoiq Foor ay} ‘aorust0d Suroefoad ayy, ‘a}e1adoadde 4SOUL SI puey ‘Yoliq ay} yey} Os ‘YNOg oY} WoIZ ATTeIDVdsa oI0UI sn 0} SaTOD BoLIouly Ul 9[A}s ST YoHeuuoD sy, ‘aded Surpaoaad v uo [reyop UY pozeaysnqt st AeMIOOp ay, ‘sasnoy U1ay}NOog plo 94} JO oWULUT 94} UT eIUIZITA Ul opeu YL ‘epHsoddo ydeasojoyd ay} ur UMOYsS st sSopeUOTOo 9y} YITM ‘US[Sop [BINJoo}TYoIe VY} JO autaYos paropxo ay} UL SseUL [eA]UId 94} ST STILT, GNV'ISI DNOT ‘SAWNVE “LS LV NMOUd dOUHLV'I ‘SUN GNV ‘UW AO AONACISAY sooqTyoly ‘NMOUM ¥ NOSTIM ‘AGOdVad sqqat Aq oj0Ud ; eeyrcises “oR PEGE LORIE ote: ard JOHN RUSSELL POPE, Architect es Sonos aoa, LRP NRE. Photo. by John Wallace Gillies RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. ANDREW VARICK STOUT Here, as in other instances, it will be noted that the doorway is an index to the style, marking it as Adam or Georgian. It follows a progressive arrangement in the book, being a more elaborate version than those shown earlier. It has that naive heaviness of the English Georgian which is not recalled very extensively in our Co- lonial exterior details, The simple treatment of the iron railing at the sides is very good Georgian Photo. by John Wallace Gillies WALKER & GILLETTE, Architects RESIDENCE OF MRS. HENRY P. DAVISON AT LOCUST VALLEY The entrance doorway of Mrs. Davison’s Long Island home, “Peacock Point,” has the connotation of splendor held in check. It has great vigor and is a key to what might be called the masculinity of the architecture as ex- pressed in the illustration of the terrace. It has a majesty, a grandeur which is thoroughly consistent with the decorous welcome which is a distinguishing trait of the style WALKER & GILLETTE, Architects TERRACE OF MRS. HENRY P. DAVISON’S RESIDENCE Here is seen the characteristic touch of the Amorini, representing the seasons, borrowed from the Italian and linked up with the stately Georgian house in the background. There is a feeling of integrity in this detailed view which indicates the virtues of the entire house. It is ardent, earnest and spirited without losing that solid, structural force which is the real basis of the popularity of the style Photo. by John Wallace Gillies UOI}IAOSIP PUB 9388} }VIIT YALM Po}eT -SUBI}] JUIWIYS[AUa IOJ aiIsop uUeIF109x) Vy} YIM PeatsouOd AT[NJooess st yy ‘Ayyeuosiad ouInuas Jo Yeu ouUIVS ay} ‘sdUEpIsal JY} Jo IOl19}x9 BY} JO suOL}eAZSNTT sy} Aq patapuasuea AyorUaYyyNe Jo Buyyaef ouIvs oy} sey }{ ‘SeouadIesoid UvoTIaWTW 0} po1oduiey useq sey yt fpuvjsuq Ul sasnoy JaSie[ oy} UI pesn ULIS1095 Jo add} Aavay OY} YOU “ATSNOTAQO ‘st WOOL SuTUIpP sIy} ‘}Xe} 94} UI payIeWod st sy HONACISHY S.NOSIAVG ‘d AUNHH ‘SUW AO WOOU ONINIG AHL SpPHMpIV “ALLATIIO ¥ UAW IV AL euoy AIjUNOD UvdTIeUIY 94} PU ISNOY ULIS10ax) JY} YI pozeloosse oq 0} 9UIOD Sey 4JA0JWIOD pu sezJUTYD ‘ssouTWIOOI’ Jo yoodse [e1duUAs eB pue suvAIP Y}IM poyuep sovidory e YM “MI00I SuyyYs WS1ey AIOA oY J, ‘SaTA}S Alpe oY} JO AajpOVALYD ,PATPANJ pue Po2IAgpaq,, 94} 0} pIqseI} -U0d SB BSNOY URISI0IH) 9Y} JO WIY IofZ worjoe1}4e VY} JO UoTyeuLTdxa sty ut syVads UOsUeAD}g SINO'T WAIQOY YOIyA JNoqe uwOOL MOQTA 24} SI Ulese aI10}T HONACGISAU S.NOSIAVA ‘d AUNAH ‘SUW AO WOOU ONILLIS AHL spoyqory ‘ALLATII OD 8 HAWIVM ‘Sto as tment ncn ema PAPI PPCRCA Ss te ee, Photo. by John Wallace Gillies FREDERICK STERNER, Architect RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. CHARLES MATHER MacNEILL A detail of the New York Home of Mr. and Mrs. MacNeill at 15 East 91st Street which is a very good example of the interior work done in the Georgian houses which, when copied by our artist-artisans, was used as exterior designs on our most beautiful Colonial homes. These adaptations by our imaginative, well trained and skillful Colonial carpenters remain our truest and most vital art expression poceireaet sont St ig A RP a 2 OEE AE * TROWBRIDGE & ACKERMAN, Architects RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. TRUMAN H. NEWBERRY An example in a dining room at Grosse Pointe Farms, near Detroit, of the high relief carving and the heavily ornamented ceiling of this period. It is interesting to note that in the latter the monogram of the owner has been incorporated in the design in the true Georgian spirit. The opulence of the painting of Venice is well suited to the character of the decoration RESIDENCE OF MRS. HENRY PHIPPS IN NEW YORK Mrs. Phipps’ town residence is at 1063 Fifth Avenue. This is an original Grinling Gibbons room which was brought over from England and set inside the dining room first designed for the residence. It is interesting to contemplate our own reserve in comparison to the exuberance of the carvings of the woodwork and those of the plaster ceiling’ designed to harmonize with it Pepnyes [aM st yNq o}e}s9 94} UO yuTod ysaysty ay} UO pazLoo] ST VsnoY OYJ, ‘auayos odeospue] oY} 0} F[QuNTeA 91B YIM syvo 9}1YA Snopuasuter, oMI0s are 97190 24} uo Sead} JO sustfoods o[quyIvUIed oY} SuoMW ‘sqnIYys pUv sar} YIM UMOIZIOAO ArJUNOD popoom AAvoy JO ysptUA ay} UL puvpUIIeZ Jo sayozed Joao, pey Wo "[HFTynveq Ar9A puve pM seam Jlas} puvl [eULs{10 ey, “UoryeULIoZ Jo ssadoid oy} UT ST YoryA ‘aze}S9 Plt aq} UO UepreS oy} Jo Surmesp v st SIqL Naduv) dusod0ud HHL GNV ASNOH ATH TIVHSUVW AHL AO CNY LSHM AHL pomiy ‘AdOd TIASSOU NHOL s1es3q “WY ‘O Aq suIMeIp & WO1g PR eiieiid tr a Me ae Ih ha aa Bla tik aces FARR NE Te SOON agen a aot ok te yuoIg JIoqiey{ s,pAoyyT 243 uo st dnoi3 wuz oy, ‘axel eatjovsqzze ue oyUT padopeasp useq sey YoryM puod Ja}VM YsaIf ‘pazis pood v st Yoveq Suryyeq 94} WoIZ BF JON *AIPBIOT dy} UL IIYMoUIOS S}ANOD sTUUa} LOOp}NO YB ‘yoveq Suryyeq pue sasnoy yyVq oY} ee sty} puodsg ‘sSuIpuL, od 1OJ SiozEA yetnb sapraoid saysareur ay} Ysnory} Sup ouuvyo v pue ozeV}so Play [eysaeP VY} JO spls punog ey} UO AoqieYy vB SoYeUL asnOYIYST] FFT B UE SuUIVVUIULIO}] JoyBMyRaIg VY GNNOS GNV’ISI DONOT NO LNO ONINNODY GNVT HO MOUN WILLIT V s1033q “YW °O Aq SUIMeIP B WOOL a ae poep1y “AdOd CHAPTER SEVEN THE ITALIAN DERIVATIVE T HE latest importation into the gallery of American domestic architectural styles is the Italian, and that there are more reasons for making it welcome than because it is a stranger may be seen from an analysis first of Italy’s relation to the world of art expression since the Dark Ages and of our own present attitude towards the problems of living. When our own Nordic ancestors rambled south from the Teutoberg Forest and the great open spaces where men were men, or the equivalent in those days, and effectually ended the pax Romana, which may have been effete but at least had achieved the arts of peace, including architecture and sanitation, they substituted therefor a vast turbulence so wholly preoccupied with the problem of killing one’s neighbor before he killed you that we have called these eight hundred years or so the Dark Ages. Domestic architecture could hardly flourish in a time in which there were so few people who could read and write that they gathered themselves together in monasteries for mutual solace and protection. The first country in the Western world which came up for air above the waters of productive oblivion was Italy. Italy is the country that reintroduced all of the gentler arts to Western Europe, painting, sculpture, architecture, liter- ature, conversation, table manners, and the general code of civilized intercourse which to-day we call culture. . Italy’s political history, if we may trust John Addington Symonds, was so rapturously melodramatic during the period we are describing, the Renaissance, and has been so eagerly devoured by a naturally sen- sation-loving public, that the general fact that Italians antedated the other coun- tries of Europe by some two centuries in their attitude towards the amenities of life, [ 138 ] ne viteen CoA Nee OM eS! OF TO-DAY is not as generally known as it deserves to be. During that general rediscovery of coordination in government and the arts of living, which we call the Renaissance, it took a hundred years for the Italian attitude of mind to cross the Alps and an- other hundred to cross the Channel. Since the downfall of the Roman Empire of the West the Italian Peninsula has never been able to exert a predominant military influence in the battles of Europe. Indeed, until within our fathers’ generation, it has been as much the cockpit of Europe as the fields of Flanders. But, on the other hand, ever since the dawn of the Thirteenth Century, it has been the mental Great White Way of all Europe. As soon as the contiguous Northern neighbors of Italy could travel they came down to Italy for a mental joy ride. At first, that being the custom of those | sturdy, two-fisted, he-men days, they came down in armies bent on loot; but the chief things they took back with them were a mental impression of a more desirable civilization, and sculptures, paintings and manuscripts which distinctly startled Northern Europe. As generations passed, the North Europeans dropped down into Italy as tourists. Earlier mention has been made of the desire of the Eliza- bethan smart set to undertake a Grand Tour in Italy and of the resultant importa- tion of Italian ideals, ideas and artisans into England. This infiltration of Italianate standards northwards was most complete and most successful first in France. Indeed so successful was Louis XIV in adapting Italian ideals of manner with living conditions that, aided by the greater political unity which France achieved two cen- turies before Italy, there has been established in France a rival to the Italian claims for mental hegemony of the European world which still stands as an important competitor. | With the exception of the Vienna-Munich school of Art Nouveau and of North European Medieval Gothic there remains to-day an Italian finger in every architectural pie compiled north of the Alps. Of the four codifications of architec- tural orders mentioned in an earlier chapter, those of Vitruvius, Palladio, Vignola and Sir William Chambers, it is quite significant that two out of the four developed in eighteen hundred years are by Sixteenth Century Italians. It is also signifi- cant that the most recent adaptation of the Greek and Roman principles as codi- fied in the Italian Renaissance is by a Georgian Englishman. It was stated in the [ 139 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY previous chapters that there was a distinctly Italian tinge to most successful British buildings. This statement, if not taken too literally, is emphatically correct. British architecture, like everything originating in the United Kingdom, is unmis- takably British in essence, but its decorative detail, its esthetic inspiration, is equally unmistakably Italian in origin, traveling via France. In the process of acceptance, the British architects and builders stamped their own national charac- teristics upon the details they incorporated; seen in a British mansion they are Italianate rather than Italian. It has been. shown how Robert Adam derived his style from an outstanding country gentleman’s estate of the late Roman Empire, but perhaps sufficient emphasis was not laid upon the fact that he so successfully incorporated the Palladian motive into his buildings that to-day Americans, un- acquainted with the historic origins of architecture, frequently consider it Robert Adam’s most graceful contribution to architectural style. In accepting, as we have done so naturally and inevitably, the Colonial, Adam and Georgian styles of domestic architecture as our own, we have been accepting a large quantity of Italian leaven with our architectural bread. It is curious, when one stops to think about it, how much many a New England carpenter, who prob- ably never heard of Vicenza in his life, owes to Andrea Palladio’s “Four Books of Architecture.” Palladio died in 1580, but the basilica he remodeled in his native Vicenza is still one of the architectural sights of Italy and architectural detail inspired by him and chiseled by native artisans is still the pride of many a prim New Hampshire or Connecticut village. Just above it was stated that England derived her Italian motives through France. Generally that is true. Every once in awhile, though, some Englishman would go direct to Italy, as Adam did to Spalato, and come back full of real Italian, unmodified by passing through any other atmosphere. This is precisely the architectural stage in which America, for the first time, finds herself. | In the three preceding chapters it has been shown how the Colonial, the Adam, and the Georgian styles fit naturally into our racial and temperamental background. But, as was naturally not pointed out in those chapters, a lot of mental water has flowed under the bridges, in this country, since the period which produced them. Hilaire Belloc, a writer with an almost uncanny gift for clear L 140 ] AMERICAN HOMES. OF TO-DAY thinking, in a recent series of essays designed to make the Americans and British better known to each other, makes the very intelligent criticism that the Britisher will get along perfectly with the American provided he does not persist in thinking of him as a cousin but treats him, definitely, as a foreigner. At the time of the oficial separation from Great Britain, we were almost, but not quite exclusively, British. Even then there were other strains in this country exotic to the British ideal and the passage of a century and a half has enormously emphasized that difference temperamentally. The main difference, if one may make an effort to seize upon it, is our greater volatility, our quicker emotional response. In archi- tecture this fits us precisely to welcome unadulterated Italian models. Again going into definitions, one might say the chief outstanding difference between a restrained Baroque Italian palace and its contemporary Georgian mansion is the aroma of perfectly controlled but enormous driving, nervous force back of the Italian building. Italian architecture of the type we are now introducing into America, that is after originals erected in the Seventeenth and early Eighteenth Centuries, is dis- tinctly opulent, vigorous and full of animal spirits. Speaking in musical terms, it is orotund, full-throated, symphonic. It suggests pomp and magnificence within, concealed by a massive, rugged and imposing exterior. Corrado Ricci, sometime Director General of Fine Arts and Antiquities of Italy, has happily de- scribed the best architecture of the period we have in mind as follows: “It acquired a force which became boldness, it showed the happy audacities of the conqueror, the irrepressible eccentricities of the victor and the autocrat. . . . Magnificence was the prevailing note when society showed, above all things, a desire to be astonished.” There are very obvious dangers in the style to be sensed in the Ricci quotation. It needs talent, fire, resource to put up a good Italian house. Without these its magnificence becomes bathos, its pomp bombast, and its strength floridity. Designed in a calm and reasonable spirit, with all ornament carefully held down in equilibrium and harmony, sobriety and restraint, so that the telling force of the building is the underlying constructive principle, it is admirable. When the part is allowed to become greater than the whole, the decoration greater than the back- ground, when obese urns, dropsical amorini, animal, mineral and vegetable forms [ 141 ] AMERUGA No E-OWES > Ob el O= DaAay in full relief weep from every projection, it becomes a puerile, factitious and annoying production. The capacity of striking out boldly for effect, which has been given as a characteristic of this period in Italy, is just as difhcult to achieve as in the Adam style, and for much the same reason. The basic design must be intrinsically good. There is again the question of taste involved. Opulence is not necessarily bad taste. Being more noticeable than its quieter neighbor it is under stronger scrutiny and must just that much more necessarily be founded on correct princi- ples. Italian palaces were originally built, and should be erected to-day, only to house rather magnificent furnishings. Long vistas, tapestries, heavy furniture, rich hangings, are what one associates with an Italian exterior. To attempt to house the sweet, chaste severity of a Colonial or Adam style in a ponderous Italian build- ing is jangling sweet bells most decidedly out of tune. And that pet of the pro- fessional decorator, the beruffled Marie Antainette canopied bedroom is, if possible, a little worse. An Italian house is a bit of architectural bravura. To be successful there must be about it, unmistakably and inevitably, a sense of joyous fulness, vitality, verve, brilliance—all carefully held under control like a four-in-hand of spirited but adequately trained horses. Some horrible crimes have been committed in the name of Italian Baroque. There are some classic buildings in the Italian Peninsula reverently admired by writers on architecture which, frankly, either disgust or bewilder the honest North European. The sculptural mood of the Campo Santo in Genoa is a startling case in point. When, however, you get the Italian with all the qualities previously enumerated, with a touch of that cold, almost cruel austerity which is one of the surprising characteristics of the suc- cessful examples of the manner, you have a style which is not surpassed in any way for use to-day in America. In discussing the Adam and Georgian styles it was pointed out that mental conditions to-day were very similar to those existing in England when these styles were originally produced there. That remains true as far as it goes. There are, however, other elements in life to-day which would not feel satisfied with styles deriving from Britain; to some their mood might not seem altogether applicable to the atmosphere, at least, of the Atlantic sea coast and the Eastern States. It is this L 142 ] Pav tah GeagN SH OME Sy Od? el Or DAY frame of mind, to which undoubtedly the constantly increasing popularity of the Italian derivative, especially in city building, is due. An Italian palace was built in an age which most emphatically recognized class distinction. Odi profanum vulgus et arceo is as definitely inscribed on the front of a big Italian house as if it were carved there. An Adam and a Georgian house has an aroma of hospitality; an Italian is equally steeped in a you-be-damned atmosphere. Little as we may like to admit it, the last twenty years which have seen a development of our new architecture have also seen the first very definite steps taken toward the creation and acceptance of class distinction in this country. Not being a book on sociology it is needless to go into the causes of this change; it is enough to record it. There are two generally accepted and quite distinct Italian domestic archi- tectural styles now popular in America, those for country use based on the villa and those for city use based on prototypes in Italian cities. Asa city style the Italian is more popular than against a country background, the mental influences just noted being more definitely sensed in large centers of population. In a later chapter the city examples will be considered. Herewith are shown some of the most successful of the country places, together with some outstanding interiors which have been created in this manner. The residence of Mr. P. W. Roberts at Villa Nova, Pennsylvania, is an example of the rather more genial treatment of the Italian style, with effective decoration around the doorways and windows and with the loggia which so defi- nitely marks it in our minds as Italian. The residence of the late Isaac Guggenheim at Port Washington, which, under the illustrations is called simply a residence at Port Washington as it will probably be in other hands by our date of publication, is in positive contrast to the home of Mr. Roberts. This is a rather bold, very striking thing, reminding us that, though we usually visualize an Italian house in either stone or stucco, the use of brick is a perfectly good characteristic of the North- ern Italian manner. Two views of this residence are shown in the illustrations to this chapter. A detail of the terrace is given in a small illustration and a photo- graph of the interior court as a full page. This house particularly well illustrates the tendency of the Italian residence for sternness in outline, made human by the use of color through flowers and other mediums. The exterior here is brick and [ 143 7 einer SR ae WILSON EYRE & McILVAINE, Architects HOME OF MR. AND MRS. P. W. ROBERTS AT VILLA NOVA, PENNSYLVANIA Washington residence on the opposite page. This detail has a decided feeling for the Ghani ia ait the decoration around the doors and windows and tor the attractiveness of the loggia polychrome terra cotta, used in such details as a band around the second story windows and in the architraves of the windows of the first floor. The roof colors range from purple to buff, through all the degrees of red and yellow. The varie- gated white marble columns of the handsome second story colonnade and the loggias have been stained to produce rich old tones. There are tiled flower boxes, in gorgeous colors, and gay silk banners to further the general gala appearance. The vestibule glows with colored faience and in connection with it is a long gallery with mural decorations by Edith M. Magonigle and a ceiling of blue powdered with stars. Around each second story window is a polychrome band and the architraves of the first floor windows are polychrome terra cotta. The terrace, instead of being one big expanse of brick and stone, has grass plots to introduce the interest of another texture and color. The nymph and satyr fountain group shown in the court is by Robert Aitken. This was designed deliberately, [ 144 ] 3 AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY from start to finish, as a polychrome work. It was burned in two pieces at the Rookwood Pottery. It is one of the first attempts to do polychrome sculpture in the country. It is exhilarating to imagine all this brilliancy against this stern and un- welcoming exterior, the tiled window boxes in orange, yellow, green, vermillion, the specially designed panels of silk in strong colors. As has been said, it illus- trates absolutely what has been stated in preceding paragraphs about the char- acteristics of the true Italian and the correctness, in spirit, of its translation to our modern building. The residence of Mr. and Mrs. Henry H. Rogers at Southampton is perhaps the most successful and complete Ital- ian villa development in the United States. It was one of the houses exhibited by the architects, Messrs. Walker & Gillette, at the Architec- tural League in 1922, when they were awarded the Gold Medal for Domestic work. Other residences shown by them on this occasion were the homes of Mrs. L. C. Hanna in Cleveland, Mr. Charles E. Mitchell and Mr. Thomas W. Lamont in New York and that of Mr. William R. Coe at Oyster Bay, Long Island. The Rogers home is built on those sand dunes which the late William Chase and his pupils have immortalized in paint. The rugged contour of the land, the glimpses of blue water and sky make an authentic setting for a style of architec- H. VAN BUREN MAGONIGLE, Architect A VERSION OF THE ITALIAN MANNER AT PORT WASHINGTON, LONG ISLAND In spite of the fact that the visualization of the Italian house is usually in either stone or stucco the use of brick is very true to North Italian usage. The photo- graph above illustrates a very bold and striking work, illustrating the tendency of the Italians to mitigate the sternness of their exterior building by the generous use of color outside and inside the house [ 145 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY ture based on sunlight and the open air. The entire property is enclosed in a wall, a plan which serves two purposes, that of giving the owner an enviable privacy and of providing the pleasant gardens and other planting with a thoroughly re- liable wind break. It is not too far from the truth to say that the house has been made by hand. All the exterior and in- terior angles both inside and out have been softened in this way and the iron work is hand wrought in the old Italian method by imported workmen. The plan of the Rogers’ Southampton home is as direct as it is effective. It is DELANO & ALDRICH, Architects MRS. WHITNEY’S STUDIO The doorway of Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney’s studio at Roslyn, Long Island, illustrates the difference be- tween the solid style of Palladio and the lighter and entered on one end and, after going up- stairs, the view is through the main axis of the living room, a large apartment in the center of the house which overlooks more delicate Adam-English derivation the garden on one side and views the ocean on the other. Directly opposite the recessed door which leads from the hall- way into the living room are doors opening into the dining room and loggia; the former is shown in one of our illustrations, as is also an interior of the breakfast loggia. The color, which, as has been emphasized, is a definite part of the scheme of an Italian house, is found primarily in the stucco, a soft warm gray with an in- sinuation of pink in its make-up. Here, as in any modern buildings of the finer sort, there is thought for the texture, which, while smooth, as it should be to main- tain the sense of formal elegance demanded of the design, is slightly undulated, making for variety in the ensemble. The tile roof, so important to the style, main- tains primarily a deep, rich bronze but includes occasionally a few light reds and purples for the sunlight to play upon. In the interior of Mr. Rogers’ home the walls are of a fairly rough finished [ 146 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY plaster. The floors are in tile and brick, which promotes a feeling of coolness very acceptable in what is definitely a sum- mer home. The ceilings are of wood, painted in the Italian manner. The breakfast loggia was decorated directly on the plaster in the old Italian fashion by Mr. Robert S. Chase of Boston, the loggia on the sea side being done in a similar manner. Their value to the suc- cess of the whole scheme cannot be over- estimated. In the interiors, in the large rooms and hallways, there is a sugges- tion of the heavy, almost monastic treat- ment, with an indication of the fortress idea which persisted longer in Italy than anywhere on the Continent. As a whole it is a very complete comprehension and realization of that which is most fine and most true in Italian architecture. There tf iteatecececed | DELANO & ALDRICH, Architects THE VICTOR MORAWITZ HOUSE At Woodbury, Long Island. Here is a doorway, Co- lonial in feeling, which owes its simplicity and solidity to Italian models. It is interesting in comparison to the illustration opposite is that almost medieval solidity which had always its hint of a possibility of ecclesias- tical usage, the heaviness in contrast to the delicacy of the ironwork, the bare walls providing rare backgrounds for huge, handsome tapestries, for decorations in bril- liant colors, for the stately old Italian furniture used throughout the house. The gardens are representative of the house; with statuary placed appropriately, as it would be in the old gardens, with the same regard for proportions and for vistas that has been shown in the house. In color they are designed to form part of the scheme of the residence, with white, mauves, and yellow with blue to make the connection with the sea; all to reflect the color of the Old Sixteenth Century stained glass win- dows, of the awnings of coarse canvas dyed Italian blue and swung out in true Italian fashion. It is a celebration of a triple alliance of art, architecture and nature. [ 147 ] $ez091q pUv] pue vas Jo ISeUBAPE Bye} 0} pouUR{d ‘uvID0 oY} UO ZuTjUOIZ ‘soUNp 94} UO ZING ‘BUIIBUL BIA ONI} & SI} ‘YAOM OTJSOWMOP IOF [Bpe{ P[OD ey} peateoaa Ay} usyM onFea] [eanpoWyoIy 4} 3 SEL UL spoyyose oy} Aq pozqryxe dnoiZ & Jo U0 SVM DoUApISAI SIP, ‘S9}VIS pou oy} ul pedojeaap eIIIA uUeI[e}] 230[duI09 pue [NZssevons ysoul vy} Ajqeqoid st yey Jo Mara [eI9Ues VW NOLdNWVHINOS LV SHHDOU “H AUNHH ‘SUW GNV ‘UW AO WONACISHY AHL spoyply “TLLATIIO FY UAWIVA SETI) avyem uyor Aq *o,04g Eee £33 ate ONS het _AJ i.8=)7'e" 8 HM BG as ema e Ma. Photo. by John Wallace Gillies WALKER & GILLETTE, Architects ENTRANCE HALL IN MR. HENRY H. ROGERS’ RESIDENCE The windows of Sixteenth Century glass are very fine in color. They gleam like jewels in the walls of rough finished plaster, blending with the tones of the rich tapestries, painting the floors with gorgeous transitory patterns of their own. A glance at the illustration of the exterior of the entrance doorway which is seen in the second chapter shows the interesting liaison made here between the bareness of the exterior and the richness of the interiors IQUULUL UPI[Te}] PIO 94} UI ‘UOJsSOg JO asBYyD ‘*S WaqQoY “AW Aq saysed ay} uo ApaIIp suop o19M SUapIeS oy} SYOOTIIZAO YoY SeISZoOT ysvJyvoiq ay} JO saoodsatf Juvlsqnxs syy, ‘e[Nsutued ueT[e}][ ey} Jo sar[rueyz queyzodur ysou ayy Jo vos Aq portsed ysaq ay} UL payoeta saved oy} url syUoUAede ysouIospuLYy ey} 0} UOsTredwios Aq Jayns jou ssop YoY Wool VW HONHCISHU suqa90u ‘H AUNHH WHHL AO VIODO'T LSVANVAUA HHL spapIy ‘ALLETINO F WAMTVAL SOIT aovpyem uyor Aq ‘oxoyg aa. 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Sunuryd 1apioq pue posseul JoJ pue “Tea sy} JO oUTT 9Y} YvIIq 0} pousisep soeds avfMoatolWes ve UT seasueIpAY Jo sjyod ‘aje83 uo, sWIOSpueYy vB SsotoURZ [RIN YIe [NJYSIPap snolea 10J aouvyo B sald osfe yy ‘Aovatid soinsut pue ‘Aeg otuODIg Jo seuNp ay} UO doUap -Isol B 1oy Atessaoou AdaA ‘YRotq-puIa a[qetjet ATYSno10yy wv sv syoe [VM SIYT, ‘ainyeoy Teooeid AloA & JO apeUI sasn [NJ}YSTap a4} Jo afdurexa uy ALYHdOUd SUHDOYU “UW ONIGNNOUUNS TIVM AHL HO TIVLAG SOIT eovypeay uyor Aq ‘oj0yYg speyyuy “ALLATIO ¥ UAWIVM wea » prises Photo. by John Wallace Gillies WALKER & GILLETTE, Architects A WALL FOUNTAIN ON THE TERRACE OF MR. ROGERS’ RESIDENCE A detail which illustrates, as do all the exterior views of the Henry H. Rogers’ Southampton home, the typical Italian idea of brightening up bare spaces with the gaiety of flowers. The richness of the bay trees against the stucco, the cheeriness of the blossoms bobbing through the grillework, the vines training over the pilgrim- shell, are all delightful comments on the kinship of this modern home to the Italian villa of the earlier type SYUVT JIOD AayeA Oqayz sy} aaoqe ysnl [IY v JO VpIS oY} UO SI DUAPIsed DYT, ‘ainywos uvIpey, AIOA & ST 19M0} YSIY oyT, ‘ooonys UT ssnoy siadoy "FY Aquayy “ap pue Yoraq ul souopisar uouryse A JOG OY} JO WOTUSPUT [eAnyoozTYOue AaIVAVS VY} 0} UOTUNSTP Ur ‘sTTeM JayNO 24} aye1ovep 0} AQUspUd} B pajoU oq [ITM Loy} YOGA UL VIIA UeTTe}T Jo Oddy GATyeLOVep o10U ‘197431, oY} Jo o[dwexe ue smoys ydeaSoyoyd smyJ, dOduVH UVA LV FONACISHU S.GIOPHOUV ANNV ‘SUN S}VoIJOI IOMIUINS IOJ pousisop svI[IA oinsvoid ueI[Te}] JO [ooyS V9Saey, oy} Jo word} st yy ‘food [eayusd 9y} UT Ssouep }EY} SoIqeq 9zu0Iq I9y JO 9UO SI YW puL VISSOT sy} Jo yUoUIdO[sAop pue SuTUSIsOp oy} UL yAed yULyAoduT Ue peY S10zd[Nds ay} S1appnog youve ‘ased aytsoddo oy} UO UOT}YeA}SNI[I VY} UL IOT19}xX9 OY} Wolf U9IS VISTO], VY} JO DpISUL JY} WAZ UMLT IY} 19AO JNO Suryoo, MoIA YW SGOOM HHL OL SSOUOV VIODOT Sd IOGHOUV ‘SUN WOU ONIMOOT fiimunog x2» unoy fo fisazinop ~~ err" RMI ye sorcerer hs Sea UOI}e1ovIp pUB 31N}xa} seprlAo1d puno1Za10f ou0ys Sutaevd pjo syy, ‘Apaoysne jo yuTod 34} 0} o4svyo yo V[qeyojuIoD pue UJapou ‘a[A}s UITe}] 94} JO UOI}e}SoJIUBUI PoYyT{duIs pue dISse[D SOU B SI DIBFY ‘oWOY JOGQIe]_{ veg s,pjoquo1y ‘saJ JO sased Surpaoeid oy} uO SMITA OY} 0} }SB1}UOD JOOIIP UT ‘[IeJoOpP SITY} UI Uses se ‘SI YIOM ‘SIJ PUB “AT JO DWIOY puL[s] Zuo] sy} ,“]ouy YeO,, AVd YALSAO LV MWUOM ‘DO WVULYAE ‘SUW GNV “YW AO HONACISHY speyw1y “HOIUGIV ¥ ONVIEC HIMeoH “TW 4q “ojoud ait SR te z =| ALDRICH, Architects | Photo. iy. M. E. Hewitt ‘DELANO & A DETAIL OF THE FACADE OF THE WORK RESIDENCE ON LONG ISLAND In this special view of the doorway it is possible to appreciate the vigor of the ultra neo-classic treatment of the facade. There is adroitness here, too, in the accentuation of the bull’s-eye windows, with the cedars, like excla- mation points below them, in the amusing details of the cornice, in the strap ornament of the concave motif over the circular balustrade, in every detail that makes for style and verity 5% De a ere ee tone eh a oy) ecmiaes ies PER i ar ~~ pis it Photo. by Kenneth Clark H. VAN BUREN MAGONIGLE, Architect AN INTERIOR COURT OF A RESIDENCE AT PORT WASHINGTON, LONG ISLAND With the family in residence, this court was gala with gorgeous silk banners of various designs flying from the staffs, echoing the orange, yellow, green and vermilion of the tiled window boxes and the polychrome stucco decoration around the windows of the first floor. The nymph and satyr fountain group by Robert Aitken was designed deliberately as a polychrome work and was burned in two pieces at the Rookwood Pottery Photo. by Thomas B. Temple BENJAMIN W. MORRIS, Architect RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. JOSEPH CLARK BALDWIN The dining room in Mr. Baldwin’s “Shallow Brook Farm” at Mount Kisco is another very complete expression of its prototype. It has genuine palatial proportions, a richly decorated ceiling and a stone fireplace that is ex- actly right in scale. There is just the touch of florid magnificence natural to the Italian style, combined with the strict lines and feeling of structural mass Photo. by M. E. Hewitt DE SUAREZ & HATTON, Architects THE STAIR HALL IN MRS. ALICE McLEAN’S TOWN HOUSE A version of the small Italian house at 125 East 54th Street, New York. These are views which might have been included in the special chapter on city houses later but are inserted here because they so thoroughly express the Italian preferences in house interiors. Contrary to most of our recent building, it provides a legitimate place for the not too suppressed decorative painting Photo. by M. E. Hewitt DE SUAREZ & HATTON, Architects THE LIVING ROOM IN MRS. ALICE McLEAN’S TOWN HOUSE This room, while based on the dignity and formal arrangement which is the basis of the Italian interior, has not forgotten to be playful. The austerity is al] in the background and is enlivened by the decoration of the cor- bels, by the cunningly patterned ceiling, by the “young-Cesar” type of bust over the doorway, which has the broken pediment so beloved in English and Colonial doorways and highboys ssurured ay} punore soutery Odon}S UBTJQUIA PO oy} 9Ae Bay JaAoU ATAe[NOIZAeg ‘asnoy AyD oy} Jo doeds poz, sy} UT padres -a1d useq sey oroydsourye uverlpeyy 24} AT[NJ[E{S MOY Vou 0} SuljsatoyUT st jf suIoOI asayy UT ‘sasnoy Azo UO 19}deYo sy} UT UDATS o1e SMOIA IOLLI}xX9 YOY Jo pue sased Zurpaocaid ay} UO UMOYS 21v SMITA LOIIOJUT OM} YOIYM JO BoUIpISel YAOK MIN 9} UL WOOL SuIUIP V HSNOH NMOL SNVATPW HOIIV SUN NI WOOU ONINIG spepty ‘NOLLVH ¥ ZAUAVS Ad WMH “AW Aq ‘opoud ‘s8uruado payode oy} 10J ouIeAZ DATPOIYO UB Se pasn UVeq OSTR Sey YOIyM ‘afqieu vUOIaA YuId Jo st jeyuRUl ‘ased aytsoddo ay} Uo poayeaysn{[t Woy SUBaPOIL “SAAT UL WOOL SuIUIP oY} UY} SUT[IeJ UT PaAdeSet aLOUL YONUI ST YOryAr anbiyue oy, WOOL UvITe}] 24} JO uoNjeydepe usspou Surysotoyur Uv st “VALIG: BOYS xB] OTE JW ssnoy UMO} Seq “A UL Woor uoTdade1 SI], HONAGISHU OOVOIHDO S.YIWIE L GUVMdH “YA speyyouay “ALIHM ¥ GVAW ‘WIM CHAPTER EIGHT THE FRENCH STYLE ‘THERE are probably fewer homes being erected to-day in the French style than in any other recognizable manner. The reasons have been indicated in pre- vious chapters but may perhaps be advantageously reassembled here. When the Colonial, the Adam, and the Georgian manners fell into a slough of despond early in the Nineteenth Century, and American architectural despondence finally took definite shape in the Queen Anne style (for a discussion of which see the first chapter), there began to emerge architects who realized two things. First they admitted that we had failed definitely to create new domestic architectural manners of our own; second they decided to return to Europe for inspiration. The ever present philo-Gallic tendencies in this country naturally directed their thoughts towards France. It may not be generally appreciated, but French thought influ- enced even the Colonial style and it was a French Major of Engineers, Pierre Charles L’Enfant, who came to this country in the train of Lafayette, who was first commissioned by Washington to lay out the national capital on the Potomac. The Egerton L. Winthrop house in the Colonial manner, chosen to illustrate the second chapter, is unmistakably French in general feeling, so much so, in fact, that two interior views therefrom are appended to this chapter. It can hardly be more than accidental, but still it is rather curious that our attempt to import French styles into America has, even up to the moment, pro- ceeded along strictly chronological lines. It was begun in the last third of the Nineteenth Century by Richardson with his French Romanesque. ‘This was suc- ceeded in the closing years of the last century by Hunt and the other gentlemen who introduced first the Gothico-Renaissance and later the Palladian-Baroque [ 164 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY French styles. This last, which is generally known as Renaissance, swept over America like an architectural flood. Since the Georgian it was the first meeting of American owners and architects with a perfectly codrdinated, well thought out and thoroughly consistent style. It very apparently had just the correct hint of florid voluptuousness and conscious ostentation to hit the remote period now twenty years past. New York was in a building boom about that time and it would be interest- ing to figure out just how many millions of tons of brick, limestone, and structural steel stand complacently frozen in French Renaissance mold. One could, if one were so minded, drive a visitor from Mars all day around New York and by careful selection succeed in convincing him that New York was still in the cupid period of French architecture. It was overdone. The parents ate sour grapes and the children’s teeth were most emphatically set on edge. Just as even the most casual person cannot go to the opera over a season of years without unconsciously acquiring a perception of musical standards, so the first decade of the present century saw an almost over-night development of architectural taste which rejected French Renaissance for domestic architecture, practically before the style had solidified here. In less than forty years the whole gamut of four hundred years of French building styles had been worked through and rejected by Americans. Before it passed, however, it left its mark indelibly upon one center of elaborate building, Newport, which is studded to-day, and prob- ably will remain so for generations, with buildings which would probably never be constructed by the heirs of those who first put them up. To the influence of these house in situ is due, unquestionably, the Hamilton Rice place of which an exterior view is shown in the Third Chapter. A consideration of this house will show at once, however, the change which has taken place in architectural thought in a generation. This house is, while unmistakably in the general Newport chateau manner, restrained with the utmost severity and with an almost Spartan absence of the Baroque feeling and decoration which is characteristic of the earlier examples around it. It marks the compromise between local background and present con- sciousness. It is unfortunate that our acceptance of French architectural molds stopped when it did. We have examples of all the worst here and very few of the best. [ 165 ] AMERICAN HOMES’) OF TO-DAY In the preceding chapter, in which was discussed our return direct to Italian models for inspiration, it was mentioned that Italian influence shaped the architec- ture of all Northern Europe, generally via France. As a quotation in support of dogmatic statement is always satisfying, the following from the well known British authority on French Renaissance architecture, Mr. W. H. Ward, may be given. After making the point which the writer has made in the previous chapter, that it was the soldier who first interpreted Italy to France, and after speaking of the various French campaigns southward, from that of Charles VIII in 1495 to those of Napoleon, he goes on: ““Travel for pleasure and information is, as a general practice, a comparatively modern habit but from the time of the Italian wars onwards it became increasingly common for French gentlemen, scholars, and men of letters to visit Italy, to mention only such well known names as Rabelais and Montaigne. If the invasions were all on one side, Italy made a peaceful con- quest of France by giving her rulers who, with their suites, influenced French art by their Italian predilections and by keeping up artistic intercourse with their native land. Within a century two princesses of the Florentine house of Medici ascended the French throne and became regents. Both show Italian proclivities in their art patronage while another regent, Anne of Austria, by putting power into the hands of an Italian churchman, continued the same tradition. But the most important factor of all is what French artists learnt in Italy and Italian artists taught in France. From the early Sixteenth Century onwards it became the custom of French artists and architects to spend some time in Italy. The training of young archi- tects in Italy and especially at Rome—at that period the first school of architecture in Kurope—consisted not only in visiting, measuring and sketching ancient and modern buildings but also in studying and copying the designs of the great masters and in making compositions in which the results of their studies were embodied. The practice of Italian travel became a general one for young artists and has per- sisted to the present day. Under Louis XIV it was erected into a system under state patronage by the foundation of the French Academy in Rome.” France is the one country of Europe which, mentally, stands with one foot in the Mediterranean and the other in the Atlantic and in which, racially, the Nordic and the Latin temperaments have met and compromised. It was in France that the L 166 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY inevitable adjustments between Italian style in its native state and Italian styles suitable for other countries were fought out. Precisely as a British house is obvi- ously and emphatically British, so is a French house obviously and determinedly French, though both bear the same unmistakable debt to Italian thought. The French styles which we have just considered, those of the late Fifteenth and entire Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, are those in which the exuberant side of the French temperament, egged on, if one may so express it, by Italian example, had full swing. It was not until the Eighteenth Century that that other aspect of the French genius, its respect for formalism, its love of order, its almost British staid- ness and solemnity, its Academic quality, made itself felt in architecture. This century in France produced buildings and encouraged a style as solemn, as re- strained, as austere as the Italian which has been described in the preceding chap- ter; indeed it would be very difficult for a layman to distinguish between the two examples. Had we progressed in our attempt to digest French styles a half a century farther along we might have been using the French rather than the Italian to-day. As it is, there has been such a decided and unsurmountable reaction against French Renaissance architecture in our own constantly increasing fondness for sophisticated simplicity, that the only type of French building which may now be said to have the esthetic approval of the day for an American country house style is one which discards all we have previously known about France and goes straight back to the simplest type of the French manor house with an almost monastic avoidance of ornament, its chief charm lying in the astonishingly effective peaked roof, the captivating proportions of which are, at least in foreign eyes, one of France’s great, outstanding contributions to the architecture of the world. The whole question of roofs is something to which the attention of anyone about to build is respectfully directed. So far as we are aware, although the orders of columns have been carefully tabulated, no Moses has ever brought down a tablet of roofs, yet in any building departing in the least from the stand- ardized classical models they are the feature which makes or breaks. They are Gothic architecture’s one incorporation into modern domestic building. It is a further exemplification of France’s position as a compromise ground between Gothic and classic architectural standards that the French roof is one of the most EG! AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY suave and satisfying things yet built to please the eye of man. This is a statement which can be verified from the exterior views of the Otto H. Kahn and of the Gould house which are given in this chapter. | Before we turn to a consideration of these houses, a word as to the question of French “‘feeling” in architecture. One thinks of an English house as comfort- able, of an Italian as forceful, of a French as graceful. That is, of the French houses of the Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries with which, unfortunately, we are not better acquainted in this country. There developed in France for city use a style almost the exact equivalent of the Adam. The difference is one really of minute detail. Where the Adam tends to be austere the French is delicate; where the British style is stiff, in the French equivalent there is a flourish, a feeling of underlying floridity, held very determinedly in restraint, exhibiting itself in subtle little lines of ornament which captivate and please before the eye of the observer realizes they are there. The English sometimes has a somewhat conscious grace; the French has a quite natural charm. Finally, French architecture and French interior decoration are very definite things. One accepts them as a unit or not at all. One is always free, within reasonable limits of course, to put any pictures upon the wall of a Georgian room. The walls of a well done French room would repel such an invasion with an almost audible shudder. A French room is not a place to be informal in, nor is it a background for untidiness. That is precisely why it is so beloved of deco- rators. All details have been worked out in the country of origin to an absolutely self-consistent harmony and the creative French genius has left no blank spaces anywhere for an owner of 1924: to fill in with incongruous adornment. A French interior is a cool, suave, charming thing, essentially polite and ordered—take it or leave it, but don’t muss it up. ) The country home of Mr. and Mrs. Otto H. Kahn, near Coldspring Harbor, Long Island, is a large and thoughtfully beautiful house which is but one unit in a very seriously designed whole; which is true of any complete architectural scheme, especially those founded on the more formal styles. The ambition of the architects has been to erect not only a residence of taste and architectural quality but to build an estate of taste and architectural value. In the plan, the house and grounds L 168 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY follow the shape of a long plateau, the residence being on one of the highest pieces of ground in this part of Long Island. The top of the plateau is open, with an unrestricted view, but the hills leading up to it are planted thick with red cedars that grow all over the island. It will be observed that all this planting is indigenous to the soil and has nowhere a suggestion of being alien to Long Island, yet it is kept in perfectly logical relation to the French style of the estate. The long driveway at the East on the plan is through thousands of these cedars and terminates in a very amusing entrance court, paved with stones from old New York streets. This court is very large and the irregularity of the pavement, with the grass growing between the cobbles, provides a piquant note and a valid introduction to the house itself, which is rather in the character of a great French farmhouse of the more important type than a palatial chateau. This court is illustrated in a view of the residence shown in the second chapter. As has been insinuated, the house, while formal in its general conception, is not at all a great, monumental palace. Although it is a very big house it is not grandiose. For their chief interest the architects have relied on the massing and the spacing, on the value of the wall spaces and the texture of the stucco and the stone. ‘There is practically no carving and there are no orders, which is unique in a house of this importance. One of the most diverting features is the roof which, while it is absolutely smooth in reality, contains a suggestion of a wave derived from the difference in the size of the slates used and the way in which they are laid. The roof surfaces are very large and the idea has been to give play to it and to make it entertaining. There is no attempt, in any instance, to make it look old. On the South side of the plan (as illustrated by the airplane view in Chapter One) reaches out the long, sunken garden, between allées of trees. On the lowest garden motive a beguiling use has been made of the parterre, with this difference from the accepted models: These geometric forms, instead of following the French originals, where the parterres are of grass, are all of water, which brings a good deal more of water and sky reflections into the garden than is possible through any system of pools. This has never before been done in this country and in Italy only once or twice. Its effectiveness can be imagined from the illustration shown in this chapter. At the end of this garden is another where the intention is more [ 169 ] AMERICAN POM ES Oike el OF Disa picturesque. The planting altogether becomes more free in form as the way leads down the hill and further from the house. The second sunken garden includes the rose gardens, the little Dutch garden, a circular garden with a sundial and other various and engaging minutie. And enclosing, framing, the whole scheme of the plateau, is the thick planting of Long Island cedars. Perhaps the shortest cut to an expression of the enormous improvement which is obvious in our latter day country house design over that of a generation ago is to say that the architects have re-discovered charm, that they have, as remarked earlier in the book, become imbued with an ambition not to reproduce stiff copies of European types but rather to give a spirited and artistic impression of them, to set them legitimately in their sites and give them comfort without losing character. The Kahn residence is one of the great successes in this new architectural spirit. In the country home of Mr. and Mrs. Charles A. Gould at Greenlawn, Long Island, the architect has done a bold and a charming thing, to which he has been inspired by the slope of the hill on which the house is set and by memories of Louis XVI and the rendezvous de chasse to which the ladies and gentlemen of the court retired for rest and refreshment after a day’s shooting over the countryside of France. In other words, he has produced here in America, on an estate of some thousand acres, a shooting-box which might have graced the rolling country which has rung with the laughter and merriment of Marie Antoinette and her courtiers. As the country at this point, probably the highest in Long Island, is peculiar, he has made the house peculiar, using that word in the complimentary sense, to acknowledge daring and originality. Looking upon these hills he has recognized the value of following the line of them, has answered, in the deep slanting roof, in the engaged pilaster chimneys, to the challenge of this element of elevation. The result, artistically, is apparent from the illustration shown of the exterior. In plan the house is delightful, recognising the principles of symmetry and of rectilinear and rectangular treatment, characteristic of the French period it reflects, and pro- viding for one-story wings on the West front and loggias on the garden side which add quite as much in the way of comfort as to the balance and grace of the design. In these West front wings the one which stretches towards the South is as complete as a one-floor bungalow, containing three large bedrooms with their accompanying L705) AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY baths. Running out in the opposite direction, the North wing, shown in the illus- tration in this chapter, is introduced by a handsome office for Mr. Gould’s use and is finally devoted to the kitchen and service quarters. The high central portion of the house takes care of the formal entrance and stair halls and the long living room which looks out on the garden or East front of the house. The material used for the house is stucco, the color a very warm cream, the long-lined roof of hand made tiles giving an effect familiar to those who know this type of house in the country of its origin. One can but compliment the owner for his acceptance of a point of view which has secured to him a country seat which recognizes his repu- tation as a sportsman and is pleasantly reminiscent of a similar interest in the ladies and gentlemen of the Eighteenth Century. In the city house interiors shown in this chapter, Mr. and Mrs. I. Townsend Burden’s town residence is a very discreet and graceful version of the period of Marie Antoinette, the home of Mr. and Mrs. John S. Rogers, so far as the library illustrated is concerned, is French of the Regence period, with a modern painted dining room by Jansen of Paris. The Burden home, at 115 East Seventieth Street, illustrates a style founded on rectangles. Its success is determined largely by the perfection of its line and the exquisiteness of its ornament. Its charm is the charm of symmetry and well considered spaces. Its precision results in elegance. Its reserve suggests all that one has ever known of the ritualism of French social custom. It is a type undeniably suited to the formal town dwelling; in cool, aristocratic contrast to the over-exuberant life of a great cosmopolitan city. It verifies statements made in one of the English chapters on the resemblance in the characteristics of Adam and Louis Seize. It provides an excellent background for fine furniture and furnishings which need not be, necessarily, of its special era, provided they make the artistic liaison. The library, one of our special admirations, is handsomely paneled in a beautifully grained American walnut with the paneling designed as a framework for a set of five tapestries. It is a balanced arrangement of angles and arches which works out imposingly in a room of so definite a material. The arched openings for the books illustrated are repeated at the opposite end of the room by a mirror of corresponding shape and proportion, above an imported mantel. The tapestries on each side of the L171 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY arched opening are reflected in oblong openings for the books each side of the marble mantelpiece. The drawing room is conceived around Eighteenth Century paintings in the style of Boucher. The walls are delicately beveled panels with the ornament especially planned for the various spaces. The lighting fixtures are not set arbitrarily into the moldings; they are designed into them, which is quite another matter. The color of the walls is a light, very light, French green. The furniture here, as throughout the residence, is old and full of character, Mr. and Mrs. Burden’s residence expresses authentically that reborn love for the more ordered forms of city SEU gis: which was lost oan: one period of our development. The town house of Mr. and Mrs. John S. Rogers at 53 East 79th Street has another very fine library. This, as has been observed, is in the period of the Regency. It is very large, very graceful, very comfortable, with a grate fire to give that fitful light on the color of the books on a winter afternoon. The house has, according to the architects’ own statement, been built around the furniture and tapestries, which are confined mainly to the drawing room which is not illustrated. The library is on the second floor, facing on Seventy-ninth Street. The walls here are in walnut, as in the Burden residence. A special feature is the rounded corner, shown in the illustration. The books are flush with the wall, the openings for them utilized for the introduction of delicate curves and light decoration. The dark wood of the walls is connected quite beautifully with the light cream of the ceiling by a cove, colored a deep ivory, with delicate beadings and corner ornamen- tation. The room is filled comfortably with furniture, all good, all suitable. Several of the chairs are of the Louis XV type in walnut, with needle point and tapestry seats and backs, the wood here and there revealing a glint of gold. The hangings are old blue and gold damask. The rugs are richly oriental, deepen- ing in color and tone as they near the stone fireplace. Admirable as the details of the furnishings are, it is, however, the room itself which represents the real achievement. It is at once domestic, spacious, elegant, entirely right. It is a room well worth doing. The dining room in the Rogers residence is composed of panels painted by the famous Jansen of Paris, the architects having supervised the moldings and [e172 3) 4X9} OY} UL Peqhosep sv “UIl1} BUOJspues patieA A]SuY}Sa19]UT UB YIM OddN}s o1e |sNoY eq} JO S]T@M OYJ, ‘uOTVeATIOp 8 Yons 0} a[qissod ‘sfquiasusa yxvUIs ey} ‘oI, puw youd Jooa Jo Aouenbrd oy} st oxazy ‘pueysy aspoyy GaodmaN woz souvsIP JOYS B ‘IOATY JOUUOYeS 94} UO “Y{NouIs}10g ye sA0TABT, “AP JO 9}e4Sa aATsuUO}xa AIOA ay} uo odd} yuvysodu ai10ul vy} Jo asnoyueZ YouarT vy} Jo JauueU oy} UL sUIOY MoU YW LYOdMAN UVAN YUOTAVL SHSOW ‘SUW GNV ‘UW AO AONACISAY peyyory “AdOd TIASSAY NHOL siessq “Y ‘QO Aq SuIMvIp B WoIg AR A CA tye ACMCE- RT CoAgN HO MES Oc et Ora yay other architectural details. Jansen also designed and painted much of the furni- ture. The tone of the room is the green which Corot brought to such a point of appreciation, the floral and landscape decoration introducing soft natural colors which do not interfere with its abstract beauty. The silk hangings keep the scale of the panels, touching a note a little higher on the keyboard of color, yet still a gentle, subdued note that is neither dull nor dead. The one tone rug more definitely touches on the gray in the Corot green. A small and compactly modeled marble mantel with rounded corners, in a very original design of dwarfed pillars, is an attractive decoration for a particularly charming room. The residence throughout represents this quality of charm and tone. The residence of Mr. and Mrs. Moses Taylor, at Portsmouth, a twenty-minute P : ae . ae a aauaieinetad é " : BES eae rae ce amr repre coerce GAR SORE. 5 Se, as oes Shop Photo. by M. E. Hewitt DELANO & ALDRICH, Architects RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. OTTO H. KAHN This is the South front of the country residence at Coldspring Harbor, Long Island, overlooking the garden. The long garden plan extends out from this front, the central garden, illustrated above, being reminiscent of the French parterre type, the original grass forms having been replaced, in the present instance, by water bor- dered with grass, adding the color and variation of sky reflections to the design [ 174 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY automobile drive from Newport, Rhode Island, is a unit of one of the very large estates in the process of development as this book goes to press. The admirable drawing by Mr. Eggers shows it to be in the French farmhouse manner upon which the home of Mr. and Mrs. Kahn on Long Island is based. Here, again, is found the piquancy of roof and chimneys, the smart line possible to such a derivation. To appreciate the xsthetic relation of the house to its environment it is necessary to understand both the site and the materials which provide a texture suitable to the style and the country. The site, which presented somewhat of a problem, was a big, steep hill into which, after considerable deliberation, it was decided to carve the entrance court, which, in consequence, is surrounded with a retaining wall. Photo. by M. E. Hewitt DELANO & ALDRICH, Architects ARCADED WALL OF THE KAHN RESIDENCE ON LONG ISLAND This detail of the arcaded wall which secludes the house group from the forecourt and is centered by the en- trance door, gives the keynote to an austerity that is almost monastic, to the fine simplicity of this big, yet never grandiose house of the more important French farmhouse type [ 175 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY The desire of the owners to have the house on a parallel with the river (the Sakonnet) so as to derive all possible enjoyment of a particularly fine view, added to the characteristics of the site, engendered an unusual and amusing entrance plan. Instead of being on an axis with the house, as is customary, the entrance driveway is on a parallel, so that it is possible to drive straight through the court to an exit which leads, through a charming wooded, natural glen, with little brooks and springs, to Mr. Taylor’s very extensive farm group, which has been established for some time and is one of the biggest and most important in the country. On the East side of the house, which is the view shown in the illustration, is a large terrace from which paths lead down the hillside. Perhaps it is more accurate to describe it as a tremendous lawn which slopes down to the embankment, well shaded with trees and bushes, which borders the river, with its boat house and private dock. The materials of the Taylor residence are Ohio sand stone of variegated colorings and cement stucco. The general texture resulting is sunny, with a pre- vailing sense of buff and orange. The color of the stucco walls is a tone picked up from the light buff shade. The roof is of a small, green slate, with a slight mixture of black, laid irregularly to give a more interesting effect. All the gutters, hips and exposed metal work are of lead. The chimneys of red brick have stone quoins, so that the color combination is very interesting. The brick chimney is, of course, a familiar French feature. The shutters of all the windows, typical of the French style, are painted to harmonize with the stone in color. At the right, looking at the illustration, is the garden, on an axis with the loggia off the living room. This has been developed by Mr. Pope and Olmstead Brothers, of Brookline. It is interesting to find the same architect, John Russell Pope, at practically the same time, developing such fine and extensive works as this and the Marshall Field estate, one from a French premise, the other from the Georgian. C1764 ASI SACO ai at Sveoy doy: voto du eataacanenbenn aah ecedorgs Sacra zat eae FRENCH ROOM IN A NEW YORK HOUSE A little drawing room in the New York home of Mrs. Henry Phipps at 1063 Fifth Avenue. Probably no style is more generally popular with decorators than the French period of Louis XVI. There is observed here, as in numerous other instances, a strong Italian influence SaT1qUNOD Japf[oO vy} JO SaeNAIA [BANzo}IYoIe ay} Jo Apnys Jloy} Ul SuBdTIOWIW AUPUI OS 0} UOT}eIe[IYXa pue ainsevald oIyaYy}sx UdATS sey YIM yey} JO uorssordwuy syste pue poptatds vB aatB 0} syoopHYDIe UJapou ano Jo AzyIGe ay} Jo o[duIexa A9y}OUR ST 1] pues] Suoyy ay} 0} snouasipur seed} oy} pue a[A4}s YoueT Vy} Jo Ap[eUIIOJ Vy} UZEMJoq epeuI 9q Ud UOTUN ZuUTULIeYS pUe [eINyeU B YY SurMoys YUORUVH ONIYdSAIOO LV ALVISH SNHVM “H OLLO ‘UW NO AIYHONVUO “Sulq4es HIMCH “EW Aq ‘0}0Na gictseibnere sgeeee ee aInpoo}tyoue Jo adA} asnoyulues oy} YM Surdaay ul st YoryM pue doVI19} IIAISUeIO 94} JO MATA BY} UL pdzOU ST YoIyM Yonoz Uvotioury oy} uTeSe Burars ‘9013 oie a[SuIs & SI JANOD YORI UT ‘IaSNOY 9Y} UY} [PAZ] JAMO] B UO Suleq S}inod 9Y} ‘00H UTeul 94} 0} Surpeay, asvoireys yeas v Aq paplAIP 91B s}INO asayy, “UOT}eAYSNI[E Joy}JOUR UT pe}oU [[VM papvoie sy} JO [IeJep B US SI }J2] I} V AONAGISHY SNHVM “UW AO SLUNOO UANNI OMI AHL tO ANO spoyyoy “HOINGIV ¥ ONVIAdG PIMOH “A ‘W 4q “0}04d FER ea epi ; SMOPUIA YouaI,T Buoy ay} Jo AyTeorovad ayy smoys osTe y[ ‘so¥JAnS oy} Ul 9AeM B Jo uoTsadsns wv sey “y Burke] Jo J9uUeUT 9y} pue ojeI[S ozIS JUIIOyIP oy} WoAZ “YOIYM FOOL oy} JO Sainzeay Sulyseatp oy} [INF ay} 07 Ysouye ‘fofua 0} Ayunz1oddo ue sapraoid 4y *suolyea}sNTIE 94} yo Aue uey} asnoy ay} JO Ao}OVAVYD oY} JO UOTssorduMT JUINUGT B JO AOUI SAAIS ‘10}eM OY} BULYOO[IPAO “JUOIF W19}S9A\ SY} UO UML] OplM OG} JO MOIA STUY, NHVX ‘H OLLO ‘UW AO AONACISHAU AHL AO MHIA NMV'TI V speyqoIy ‘HOIUCIV ® ONVIEG PIMOH “A “W Aq *OJ0Ud S19I}INOD Jay PUY 9}}9UTOJUY IAe JO osseyd 9p SsNoAzoepuel oY} FO YUVosTUTUIaI AI|A ST YW Fsyly oy} JO ouly oY} MopfoJ sAouuYD pasesue oy} pue Foor Suruels dsap oyy, ‘puvysy Buoy ut ysoysty ayy ‘sdeyszod ‘st yorym ‘oyIs ay} JO AdjoUR -IByd Ieynoed ay} PMNs 0} pous{sap sv qT ‘puL[S[ Suo'T ‘UML[UIeID JO o[vd0[ BY} 0} pattoszsuery xoq Surooys youary v jo ojdurexo ue AT[eod St Sty, ANV'ISI DNOT NO (1009 ‘V SH TUVHO 'SUW AGNV ‘UW AO HONACISAY poyrypIy “AdOd TIASSNY NHOL NS = Sul[lad ay} PUL POOM HIep 9y} Buryoouuoo 9aod Vy} JO UOL}V1Od.apP J9UIOD BUY 2Y} 2JON ‘JUoUIeUIO YYSIT PUB SBAIND azedTTap JO UOTJONpoOAzUT 9Y} 1OF pazi -[jn sdutuedo oy} [eM 94} YA YSN oie syoog eyy, ‘ainzyeos [NJIYQSYap pue [efoods we sdauIOD popuUNOL oy} “nUTeM UY die sTTeM oyy, “AoUsday oy} WOIf SIATIOP JT ‘a[qu}oyuod Ato ‘[nJaovas Aida ‘oBaey, AIA ST WOOL SITY, ‘BNoY YOK MON ¥ UL Surpsey yOusty oy} JO Sulsspuat yoosasd Aiwa V SUHDOU “S NHOL ‘SUW GNV ‘UW AO HSNOH NMOL AHL NI AUVUATT spoyqoly ‘NOLSONIAIT ¥ ANCIYUAMOUL sqqeL Aq ‘soj}0Ud | | FE ih {HII Ht Photo. by Tebbs TROWBRIDGE & LIVINGSTON, Architects DINING ROOM IN THE TOWN HOUSE OF MR. AND MRS. ROGERS This is composed of panels painted by Jansen of Paris, the architects having supervised the moldings and architectural details. Jansen also designed and painted much of the furniture. It is all cool and essentially polite. The theme is Corot green, with the sense of gray noted in the rug. (sasS0y *S UyOL ‘sIpT pue “Ap, JO AreAQI[ 9Y} UL pajou JauIOD paadnd ay} UTeSe 998 9M J1OY YSnoy}[e) sojsuejzoo1 uO popunoj afAjs B Jo ‘sIno’]T Suliaquiny 19y pue o}0UTOJUY sey JO poriad ay} JO UoOISIaA [NJIYSI[oOp AI9A v SI SIYT, ‘puep[sUy Ul yUOpUsDSe 94} UL SeM WepY usr UOT}VAIOIOP PUL IINJOO}TYOIV Ul VoULAYT UL Sutop a1aMm Avy} PeYM JO UOTPLdIPUL UR SI VWIOY YOR MON SUMaping ‘sayy pue “1p JO Wool SurMeAp UJ, NHGuYnd GNHUSNMOL ‘I ‘SUN GNV ‘UW AO HONUCISAYU NMOL SOTTIND eovypem uyor Aq ‘oj04g speupoy ‘OLLVA ¥ UONVAUL y gies a cece x bes Photo. by John Wallace Gillies TREANOR & FATIO, Architects TOWN RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. I. TOWNSEND BURDEN Here, as in Mr. Rogers’ residence, is a definitely French library, quite distinct in personality from the British. In its rather formal grace there is no hint of a well worn leather chair or an old pipe; yet there is every pro- vision for comfort in the generously spaced period chairs and sofas, in the arched windows, letting in plenty of sunshine and light. 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Apvaipe SsuIool Youd Qa ay} YPM VoULTT[e S}] “AIUIO}G Weq TV Aq soyjouny YAM ‘pue[s] ouo'T ‘yassokg ye ‘ouroy doryzUrA, 94} Ul anbayyorqrq IIHT Fyy SMoys ydeasoyoyd ayy, AOUHLNIM “I NOLUADA ‘SUN AGNV “UW AO ANWOH AULNNOO HHL spayyory ‘HOIUCTV ¥ ONVIAd WIMOH “A W Aq *070Ud CHAPTER NINE DEEDES PZ BE HeAN SP Gal Reta One lr ever a definition asked for trouble it is the one at the beginning of this chapter, because the buildings described herein are by no means necessarily Elizabethan and, so far as I am aware, this is the first time they have been officially defined as picturesque. On the other hand, the definition has the merit of a lot of really unscientific things of being very satisfactorily self-explanatory. When your companion suddenly interrupts a delicate problem in steering with the exclama- tion, “‘Isn’t that a picturesque building!” and you glance up quickly to something that, generally speaking, makes you think of the Hugh Thomson illustrations of Shakspere—why that is a perfect example of what is meant by the definition just given. By it is included the various types of building produced in England between the ends of the Wars of the Roses and the accession of George I, the whole Tudor, Elizabethan, Stuart, Carolean, Commonwealth and Jacobean periods, ranging from 1485 to 1714. Just as it was explained in the chapter on American Colonial that the attempt to define Colonial was a light and frolicsome undertaking com- pared with the discovery of a needle in a haystack, so it might be said that the growth, development, relation, correlation, and interrelation of the buildings erected in England between the development of an artillery force by the Tudors to the beginning of the Hanoverian dynasty has apparently always been a source of profitable amusement to architectural writers and shows no signs of ever becoming anything else. But for us to-day, generally speaking, these two centuries focus in and are best typified by the reign of the last and greatest of the Tudors, Queen Elizabeth. So much so that an attempt to point out to your average college gradu- [190 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY ate that a building he called Elizabethan was really a composite of very early Tudor, contemporaneous with the discovery of America, plus a few fancy Flemish details characteristic of William of Orange at the other end of the period, would be a rather graceless and useless thing. The passing of another two centuries has succeeded in softening the outlines of each sub-period and of coalescing and blend- ing the whole so that to-day we see this type of building, even more than the Colonial, through a mist of literary romance and it has become to us, probably, something much more than it was to its contemporaries. Before pursuing this point in a further paragraph, it should be added that, while the feeling of the period is in our eyes largely English, yet we tend to associate with the correct English models certain rather more austere structures erected at the same time in Scotland and also French detail, particularly Norman, gathered from across the Channel. Architecturally, the interval in English history passing between the accession of Henry VII and that of George I mark the passing of the Gothic urge and its final emergence into the formalism of classic mould. Practically no dwelling houses livable-in by moderns were erected by Englishmen before that date. Mobile artillery, the one weapon of offense beyond the reach of a private, even a ducal, purse, was perfected about that time and its ownership was imme- diately made a royal, later a governmental, prerogative. That fact made the building of fortress homes no longer commercially efficient. Consequently the country gentlemen and architects of those days began to plan their houses with the gardens and windows which had been denied their grandfathers. They still thought, however, along the lines of their immediate predecessors, whose one prob- lem had been to crowd as many small, dark, narrow, and uncomfortable living rooms as possible inside of the external wall. The main feature of all medieval buildings, the great central assembly hall, was improved, elaborated, and enriched; and their remarkable skill in the use of wood paneling and carving found full vent there as well as in the comparatively speaking spacious staircases and upper apart- ments which gradually grew on to the central hall. But, when all is said and done, a real Elizabethan building, putting aside all the literary bunkum which has be- come associated with it through our fondness for the poets and playwrights who ed RES ACME Tol CAN aE OOM Fess. Ona OF lorney. flourished at that time, was a not altogether comfortable, though exceedingly picturesque, camping out place. The Gothic attitude towards building has been spoken of earlier. This attitude the builders of the time brought to their house construction. While basic planning only gradually improved, detail was made wonderfully effective from the point of view of the sculptor, the woodcarver, and the bricklayer. I have just said that to us to-day an Elizabethan building has ineradicable literary associations. When we see a good example we also mentally visualize Henry VIII chasing one of his numerous wives through the shrubbery, or Queen Elizabeth being coy with Leicester. Think of the Georgian, the Italian or the French houses previously discussed and you think of people living in them; think of the Elizabethan and you think of a pageant. In previous chapters an attempt has been made to show how absolutely archi- tecture reflects the mood of the people who produce it; and in the five previous types discussed how closely that mood corresponded to one facet or another of our own. Before attempting to give the position of the Elizabethan picturesque in our own local and contemporary cosmos, let us consider the period from the literary point of view. Modern literature, by which, of course, is meant literature which may be read without special vocabularies by the intelligent laymen of to-day, started then. It was really a very remarkable beginning, at least as descendants of those who made this beginning we like to think so. There certainly was a burst of pro- ductivity of the highest kind in England at the end of the Sixteenth Century which was not equaled in France and which, for the first time, brought that astonishing young nation, England, onto a plane of literary equality with the acknowledged past master of literary art, Italy. Like all fair beginnings of young men, it was, as a contemporary complained of Marlowe and Shakspere, “the swelling bombast of braggart blank verse.’ The Elizabethans, including, indeed particularly including Shakspere, set out to out-bombast, out-declaim, out-exaggerate their fellows. Christopher Marlowe, the most characteristically Elizabethan of them all, the gentleman who was or was not killed in a bar room brawl over a disreputable woman (Clemence Dane thinks that Shakspere himself did it), wrote a play called “Tamburlaine the Great” which certainly dazzled his own generation and gives [192] ANCE RG ANe HOMES: OF TO-DAY one a perfect idea of the stuff the Elizabethan intelligenzia and gentry, the people who designed and dwelt in Elizabethan houses, were in the mood to enjoy. The play is a quasi-historical affair about a very successful Mongol bandit who made quite a stir in Southwestern Asia in the closing years of the Fourteenth Century, conquering and killing off the local kings like a row of ninepins. One of the big entries in the play is where he appears in his chariot, drawn by the kings of Trebizon and Soria, “‘with bits in their mouths, reins in his left hand and in his right hand a whip with which he scourgeth them.”” He speaks: “Hola, ye pamper’d jades of Asia! What, can ye draw but twenty miles a-day!”’ Those two lines have lived in literary history ever since Marlowe wrote them. While to us they are a mental curiosity, by his contemporaries they were treated with overwhelming seriousness as a proof of not only profound poetic genius but marvelous dramatic ability. Marlowe is a much better example of what the Elizabethan age was really like than Shakspere, because Shakspere has, in the course of time, become so emasculated that unless one undertakes to write a doc- tor’s dissertation on the gentleman it is practically impossible to know him as he really was. By common consent, Thomas Bowdler, who undertook to expurgate Shakspere, is an object of polite ridicule; but the centuries have done imperceptibly what we mock Bowdler for doing openly. Of Shakspere’s thirty-seven plays only some seventeen or so are still acted; and of the twenty now confined to the obscurity of a library some are so repellant to modern ideas that soft-hearted people try to claim that Shakspere never wrote them. Our partial knowledge of Shakspere is typical of our partial knowledge of the period which produced the Elizabethan buildings and the real attitude of mind of the people who dwelt in them. We like the general outward aspect of the times so much, they fought so well, they wrote some such startlingly good poetry, the greatest poet and playwright of the English tradition flourished then, and they made some such very attractive houses, externally at least, that we deliberately close our mental eyes to all the hardness, brutality, and animalism of the times. These are all qualities of the individualist and the youth who despises convention for its own sake. In architecture, the Colonial, the Adam, the Georgian, the French, and 193] AMERITGAN, HOMES, OF 8.002 DAW Italian styles, are very carefully thought out conventions. The Elizabethan pictur- esque is an expression of individualism with the defects of its qualities and the qualities of its defects. By this time even the hurried reader will have gathered that the style called Elizabethan Picturesque is antipathetic to the writer. To give the Elizabethans their due, however, it must be admitted that the same genius that lightened the plays of Shakspere corruscated through some of the buildings that went up at that time. The Elizabethans had just discovered that they could fight, write plays and poetry, and build country houses, and they went through these problems with the fine assurance, the overwhelming vitality, and the occasional startling success of youth on its first mental jag. A good Elizabethan house is the most flamboyant architecture which ever came out of the British temperament; and it came out unconsciously. Architectural authorities claim this attribute for the perpendicular or Tudor Gothic, the sort of thing so thoroughly familiar to us in certain modern types of conscientiously mediaeval churches. But these buildings are basically stiff and conscious, as self-conscious, in fact, for their period as the Houses of Parliament were in the last century. The Elizabethans who produced the houses which have given the inspiration for such modern examples as the Coe place, the Jeffords house, the Stuart Duncan, and the Allan Lehman houses illustrated in the following pages, were having altogether too good a time out of life to be conscious about it. As said in an earlier chapter, it is a style that is somewhat alien to the century which produced the Empire State Express and the airplane. Elizabethan buildings ramble in a time which is accustomed to get somewhere on schedule. There is the same sweep of vitality, however, in a well handled Elizabethan house that there is in similar well handled Italian, the same underlying throb of intense energy. In the Italian this driving power manifested itself in the enrich- ment of a comparatively simple structure. In the Elizabethan model the structure itself was played with as well as the detail. The English mind first faced the idea of symmetry in building about the time they were erecting the Elizabethan house and they faced it with a rather bad grace. While a number of Elizabethan build- ings are, apparently, symmetrical enough externally, as a matter of fact they are rather patchwork inside; so to-day a house in the Elizabethan manner is really a [ 194 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY carefully thought out patchwork, with arrangements made for those modern con- veniences which were inconceivable to the Elizabethan mind, all coédrdinated by a masterly intelligence. That this sort of thing can be very successfully done now is amply shown in the photographs accompanying this chapter. But it needs a rather hearty, robustious and sturdy frame of mind to rise triumphant over so strongly an individualistic setting. The Elizabethan house is probably the most splendid background in the world for a fancy dress party; it is pretty strongly colored for everyday life. When successful it is supremely successful. On the other hand some of the worst fail- ures in modern architec- ture have been _perpe- trated in its name. Frequently the archi- tecture of a residence is determined by the desire of the owners to retain an old building already existing on the property. ‘This was true in the case of “Hunting Hill Farm,” the Walter M. Jeffords home near Media, Penn- sylvania. It was a little stone farmhouse the family had been using as a hunting lodge for some time which, con- sidered with the charac- Courtesy of Town & Country JOHN T. WINDRIM, Architect THE NICHOLAS F. BRADY RESIDENCE teristics of the site, gave the inspiration for the The illustration shows one wing of a very successful example of the pic- turesque style in the English manner. Gothic details are apparent in the chimneys and there are traces of Renaissance in the balustrading. An is enclosed porch, thirty-four by forty-three feet, has been incorporated with- ouse and grounds along fie sweeney 1954) development of the AWCE RE GANS EEO NEE SO tae Oe aie informal and picturesque lines. There is, of course, nothing that sets so well in the Pennsylvania country as these houses built of native stone; they are so right in their rela- tion to the old buildings still standing throughout the state. The architects of Philadelphia have long recognized this truth, with excellent results in WILSON EYRE & McILVAINE, Architects their suburbs and _ out- MR. WALTER M. JEFFORDS’ HOME The illustration gives a detail of the terrace side of “Hunting Hill Farm” at Media, Pennsylvania. Other views of this handsome expression of the English picturesque are shown in this chapter. Its harmony with the land- Perhaps there is no one sie eg see tar thing more interesting in contemplating the work of an accomplished and experienced architect than the way in which he practically models his house to his site. The photographs illus- trate the flexibility of the handling of the two levels of the site of Mr. Jeffords’ estate. The old stone of which a large part of the house is composed was obtained lying country districts. by buying and razing a number of old barns and buildings in the neighborhood and requisitioning the weathered material for the new structure, a thoroughly pictur- esque device. The homogeneous effect thus obtained was furthered by the intelli- gent use of the buff Ohio cut stone employed for the trim of the exterior. This has been very satisfactorily treated with rather rough hand tooling, which produces an attractive texture and gets away from the hard and formal appearance so at vari- ance with the ideal which the architect has wished to express. The house through- out is very successful in craftsmanship, one of the most difficult things to achieve, always, on this side of the water. The extent of the estate, which embraces a thou- sand acres or more of splendid hunting country, and the rolling character of the land, make the long winding driveway, which finally curves about the entrance L 196 ] ACNE Ee LC ne Nee CONDE Sh Ome TOr DAY forecourt, a natural part of the landscape scheme. The illustration of the terrace shows how the na- tive trees have been made part of the architectural composition. A closer view would reveal the manner in which a mag- nificent old tree has had the stone terrace built around it, showing a proper reverence for its age and beauty. Both ex- | HARRY ALLAN JACOBS, Architect MR. JOSEPH LAROCQUE’S HOUSE The home of Mr. and Mrs. Larocque at Bernardsville, New Jersey, is another instance where the building has been carefully conceived to seem autochthonous to the landscape. The country lane effect is delightful in the picture ternally and in its inter- iors the Jeffords’ house is a very handsome work. The feeling for reviving the genuine old respect for craftsmanship is a very vital part of the residence of Mr. William R. Coe near Oyster Bay. The house itself is constructed of mixed limestone laid in very much the manner of the old feudal places in Scotland. Everywhere the spirit of the early Tudor house has been maintained. The workmanship throughout emphasizes the fact that the Tudor ideal has been kept constantly in mind. The draughtsman had the advan- tage of Scotch training; the modeler worked for years at Wells Cathedral; the head stone mason had a knowledge of the old way of doing things from the restoration of ancient Scottish castles. So that the laying of the stone, the irregularities which give play to the walls, are founded on solid experience as well as on artistic imagi- nation. The interior work is executed in a very bold and simple manner. The detail is Tudor with a touch of Norman. The woodwork is handwrought English oak. All the leaded glass was made in England and the handwrought hardware was designed especially for the house. The various rooms have a quality that is something more than the mere suggestion of authenticity; they have style. This [ 197 ] ANODE Re CAN 3H OWL ES O-Rie TO = DEA results from the careful spacing and the thoughtful placing of the decorative units against the plain wall spaces of hard, trowelled plaster, in a soft fawn color. These wide wall spaces are valu- able from several angles. They are rest- ful because they suggest breathing space in a generation that is so continually breathless in its pursuit of excitement. They give tapestries the vital place they had in the days when they were a genu- ine decorative necessity. They leave place for such a tour de force as the English oak doorway of the dining room seen in one of the illustrations. The JOHN RUSSELL POPE, Architect EARLY ENGLISH DETAIL Gable over the driveway entrance of Mr. Allan S. full of engaging contrasts with its tall Lehman’s home at Tarrytown. The ornament evokes ; memories of the days when every timber craftsman 117 1 Fee ct ceiling, its low fireplace, its broad arched entrance hall, which is also illustrated in this chapter, is rich in character and stone-bound openings, its tower-like win- dows, its feeling for opposing angles. For color it depends on the hewn timbers, the old stone, the Fifteenth Century tapestry, the slate tiles and the suitable furni- ture, dwarfed to proportions which give the hall its proper scale emphasis. It is one of the notable houses of America. A very superior version of the robust English style is Mr. Stuart Duncan’s residence at Newport. This has a position overlooking Newport Harbor. In spirit the residence is Tudor, without following the Tudor plan. Its charm is asym- metrical. The rambling character of the structure has made it possible for the architect to take advantage of certain breezes and shelter from the sun which are so essential to the comfort of a summer residence. Here again, in the interiors, is the careful study of the relation of ornament to the bare wall spaces. This is considered one of Mr. Pope’s finest expressions in the early English manner. 19s) eVibene eG AaN es O MibsS9 O lasiO=D AY Another by the same architect in a spirit somewhat less chastened is the summer home of Mr. Allan S. Lehman at Tarry- town. Mr. Lehman’s house seems infi- nitely more domestic, with less reserve, than the Duncan house. But it has the pleasing irregularities, the length of line, the effective angles which are definite reasons for the persistence of a liking for the style. The house has the ap- pearance of having developed through the temperaments of several generations. Temperament is, perhaps, its real key- note; an early English house without temperament is stale architectural mat- ter indeed. It is designed to be color- A SCULPTOR’S ANDIRONS - The entertaining genius of Hunt Diederich, the ful and the careful selection of the sculptor, is expressed in an individual treatment of : z Z ; ironwork which is quite in the Elizabethan feeling. materials, the skilful manipulation of — The illustration shows the fireplace in Mr. Joseph the brick, stone, wood, and slate which cd bee compose it are to this end. Throughout, moreover, is felt the ability of the architect to play with the original idea, to express himself with the flexibility of a good draughtsman. The plan provides variety from several angles. There are typical Tudor compositions in which gray timbered gables, brick walls, oddly patterned and twisted chimneys are concerned. There is the special interest of the forecourt, which realizes, as we have learned to realize, the value of old trees, which the care of skilful nurserymen preserved during the building of the residence. The forecourt of the Lehman residence is angular and is enclosed by a seven- foot brick wall with a stone coping, the long stretch at the east shutting off the greenhouses and the gardens. A gate in this wall, opposite the main entrance, provides the exit. The privacy insured by this enclosing wall is one of the most welcome features of our modern planning and is in direct defiance of the early [ 199 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY b Photo. by Gillies JOHN RUSSELL POPE, Architect HOME OF MR. STUART DUNCAN AT NEWPORT A view across the lawn of a very fine accomplishment in the early English manner developed in stone and carefully selected brick. The residence has been conceived on a scale suited to the architecture and the results are notably successful. The materials used are sturdy and interesting and the long informal plan is both entertaining and practical for a summer residence American predilection for a house set high upon an absolutely unscreened lawn, a method which made any possibility of using the grounds, in the comfortable English fashion, highly impracticable. The view of the West terrace which is shown in one of the illustrations is another example of the tendency of modern building to take advantage of an existing tree and make it a focal decorative point. This terrace is paved with worn flagstones framed in turf. It is a matter of interest to note that no less than eight porches, four on the first floor, three on the second, and a service porch on the North, have been incorporated into a style which knew originally nothing of America and its affection for these outdoor living rooms. The individuality in the workmanship of the interiors and of the exterior detail is sufhciently apparent from the illustrations of the entrance gable and of the dining room. The contrast between such residences as those discussed in the preceding paragraphs, and others illustrated of the same character, and the effective barren- ness of such a type as the summer home of Mr. Frederick G. Hall at Gloucester, is enlightening. The architecture has been largely determined by the personality of the site upon which the house was to be erected. Mr. Hall’s home is so obviously suited to its situation on a barren acre of ledge, pitching sharply from the public road to the waterside, that it needs no emphasis. The waves beat upon its sturdy [ 200 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY lower walls and below its windows the fishing vessels lie safe at anchorage. The house, with its garage, studio building, gateways and secluding walls, is built of a beautiful varicolored granite set in white mortar. The stones of varying size and shape were blasted from the site in excavating for the cellar. From the level of the public way a road circles down through the rocky forecourt enclosure and the visitor steps through a door into a peaceful courtyard around three sides of which is built the house. From the cloistered way descending to the level of the main house the view is into the reflections of a quiet pool, with a flash of gold fish among the lily pads. On the harbor side of the house are terraces and covered porches along the entire length. Steps connect the various levels and lead to the sheer ledge and the landing pier. At the southerly end, on a ledge, the studio of the owner, a well known Boston painter, seems to spring from the water. High walls, through which various gateways give unexpected water views, link this building with the house and the garage. Mr. Hall has expressed his individuality both inside and outside the house. The chief point in building a home is, naturally, that it should honestly represent the owner’s preferences. If his mood be for the Elizabethan Picturesque, as it is defined in this chapter, the illustrations provide him with the best examples which have been erected in this country. “WILSON EYRE & McILVAINE, Architects RESIDENCE OF MR. WALTER M. JEFFORDS Mr. Jeffords’ home near Media, Pennsylvania, is situated on the slope of a hill which looks out on the broad meadows and colorful rolling land characteristic of the best hunting country in Pennsylvania. The estate con- sists of more than a thousand acres. Note how well it has been tied to the ground through its terraces [ 201 ] WILSON EYRE & McILVAINE, Architects RESIDENCE OF MR. WALTER M. JEFFORDS ined by the existence i te incorpora “Hunting Hill Farm” seems defi- try. ia coun The architecture of the house was more or less predeterm as a hunting lodge for some time and which they wished to nN. ing the traditions and the character of the Pennsylvan ite of, or because of, its British origi h the family had been us The stone house has proved itself best adapted to uf a little stone farmhouse whic nitely a part of the soil in sp WILSON EYRE & McILVAINE, Architects HALL OF MR. WALTER M. JEFFORDS’ RESIDENCE The character of this hallway is so in sympathy with those of the great English country houses where hunting has also been the chief interest that it would not seem an affectation to find a dog-gate on the first landing, as in the stairway of Cold Overton, Leicestershire. Incidentally, the stone walls emphasize the real reason for being of the tapestry, which was originally designed to illumine large stone-lined rooms SNO[NdIIpld eq p[NOM puUTYy sty} JO woor v ut sedAy opISe1yy “punoid -youq dy} Wns 07 Apanys Apu Poyyns Te ate Ady} “AazovreY UT JUaIEZIP oTYA ‘asnvoeq a[quiasue snofovas v ayvU “oINyUINZ Utapout Jo savard a[quytojut0d qoyjo pue areyo qnpo v Surpnyour ‘sported oy} Tye Ayfeoroead Jo oanqzuInZ VY} 9}0U 0} Surysa1ozur st yy ‘spotsed ystysuy ATAwe VY} JO dIYsSTIoJovAVYO suotjsodoid puv Ayrprfos ey} JO Wool v UT anzUINZ Jo sadA} snolIea sUTGWIOD 0} MOY UO UOSse] Joofgqo Uv sv UDyv} 9q ysoue ys yYdvasoyoyd sy, AWOH SGUOIMde “W UALIVM “HW NI WOOU ONILLIS V speyyouy “ANIVATPW ® AYAM NOSTIAL soyeqoip Aouvy AIAVPLYAM 10 WOOL BI} ‘WOOL SuTqyIS ‘ATeAQI] B LOZ YT SUISN 64 I9AO [Te VAI, ATTENJoR s}san¥8 aray}y pue ATrurez oy] osnedeq SUIOOA BUTATT auInues B SI Jf “JANOIaIOF Vy} PUL sadVI19} dy} ‘sUapIeS oy} JO MIA ve Burpraoad ‘sapis «moj [[e uo sinsodxa uv YIM “yaaz AWYSIO 0} YYSI-AyUIAVS UIOAZ BIYMOWIOS SULINSKIT YZSUIT VY} ‘JUIUTZVII} PUB ozIS UT JATssotdut st yy ‘UR{d 94} Jo sIN}Vaz prIpuatds AtoA vB ST BUIM JSOA, JY} UL WOOL SUTATT OU, HONUGISHY SGYUOdHHL "NW UALIVM “YW NI WOOU ONIAIT Old AHL spoyo1y “ANIVATION Y AYAH NOSTIM & a3ed aztsoddo oy} Uo UMOYS SI MATA JayJOUY “pULTJOOS Ur seov{d Tepnoz po oy} Jo JouUeM oY} YonwT AIOA UT prIey ‘9U04SOUTIT PeXIU JO PoyJoNI}suOd SI VDUAPISAI $900 “AJL ‘asnoy 1opny, ATIva VY} JO 91n}x9} 94} ‘uoTjIodoid 9y} ‘ouTT Jo AjI193snNe 94} sArIOSaId [][IS SyoozTYOIe 9Y4 STYy S@ dUSpISal B YoNS UI ‘aT}seo S,UeUIYST[SUy YUoloUe Ue Z[qUIASeI OWIOY S.ULUIAT}UES UvdIIOUIY Ue oyxvUI 0} ‘A1}UNOD sIy} UT SAI} JOdUCT OU OM YsNOyITY GNV'ISI DNOT ‘AVE UALSAO UVAN AWOH S.AOO “UY WVITIIM “UW spoyyoy ‘ALLATIUD ¥ UAWIVA SOTTIND eovrem uyor Aq ‘0j0Ud % hy ¥ NEY etc. S. ae hts 4 Rar kD ha ae Photo. by John Wallace Gillies WALKER & GILLETTE, Architects RESIDENCE OF MR. WILLIAM R. COE AT OYSTER BAY This is a view of one of the South gables of the house. The photograph opposite is from the South looking into the court; the view gained through the long vista shown in one of the chapters on gardens. From this front are seen the sunken gardens and the turquoise pool Jeq tay wor BurZuel proyssnoy ey Jo sXay oy} Jo Younq wv pue yTYs oy 10J Suraued pjojzueuty yy Apel ew pue JoULIe [[NJ ul ueM ev Jo sfaued azaddn oy} ur seanSy peared AT[NJYNveq [eaAet pfnom ABMIOOP Bq} JO IPIS 9819A04 ayy, ‘souuem Arnyusg yyueeIy ‘feyueysqns ‘Aavoy vw UL paateouod [Te ore AeMIOOP 9} UO SuTAvd oy} pu SuT[Ieo 94} ‘sov[dory IT ‘eUepIset 2} JO dIYsliapeieyo [Ieyep [eaxtpout oy} uo prey st stseydwe osed oztsoddo ay} uo yey} pu UOT}eI}sNTTT sty} Ul AONACISAY AOO “HUH WVITIIM AHL NI WOOU ONINIG spay ‘ALLATIO F UAWIVAL si a 2 Photo. by John Wallace Gillies GILLETTE, Architects WALKER & HALLWAY OF THE WILLIAM R. COE RESIDENCE This is the entrance hall, of old stone, slate tiles and hewn timbers, with a Fifteenth Century tapestry over the fireplace. As is stated in the text, the detail of the house is Tudor with a touch of Norman. Here the Nor- man arch has been most successfully handled ABM100p BY} JO JUSUI}vaI} VY} pue sAIUUTTYO VY} ‘JOOI VY} a1B JTYSTIeyoVIeYS AT[VPedsyY *19}deyo sty} Ul UaAIS sBurpping 1eyjo oy} Jo edAyo}o1d vw ‘sa[sy ysiyig oy} ul Suroara cram Ady} out} 9y} Ye ‘puv[suq 0} ysetvouU VoUvIT JO UOTJI0d yey} UT ‘foUUeYD 94} UT ssotoe Burpying a1aM AQY} JINJoN.A}s jo odd} oy} St yy ‘uoTyeardsur sy ul UeUION AT[eNJoR st yey} UO ‘eaT1eUIY UT punojJ Ajarea apA}s ve syuasaidor syyasnYyoessepY Ul BUIOY JUIUINS sIty, UdAId SHTUVHO LV NOSCUVHOTY “M "IT OLYUACHaUa “UW AO ANOH speUyV ‘NOSGUVHOIU F LLOUVA ‘NOSa adVHOla —— he 7 . ape > cr ? i Pr uost[Ig semoys, 4q “oj04d IIATY SIpIVyO oy} Suryoop1aao ‘sarse AyUIM} puke paipuNy suo Jo JaqzUI. oy} UT ATa}eUTxo1dde st ‘oU0}s BSpo] [eooT JO St YoryM ‘asnoy OL ‘JYSIl oy} ye SuIM WOOL dISNUL 9Y} YIM SUOTPVATI JSAMYINOG 9Y} SI STIYT, *0} Powojsnooe st ATIUIeJ ULopoUI 9Y} YOIYM JALOZUIOD oy} Jo s19ydsourze ue apraoid 0} poyesiryru uveq sey Ajliajsne oy} W19FT ‘WUOIZ voUvAIYUS oY} JO AzIOAVS BY} YPM payseajuoD sv Sursosoqur Ajre~Moazed st MOIA SIU, HONACISHUU S.NOSGUVHOIY “M “I OLYHCHUA “UW AO HCGIS WOVUYAL spoeqoly ‘NOSCUVHOIY ¥ LLOUVA ‘NOSCUVHOIU uosT][a svuoy, 4q “o,0Ud BELLOWS & ALDRICH, Architects RESIDENCE OF MR. FREDERICK G. HALL AT GLOUCESTER This home of one of Boston’s well known painters is an example of the Elizabethan Picturesque style when it is of Scotch derivation. It is soberer, with a lack of the exuberant fancy noted in the buildings erected in Eng- land at the same time. Here the only decorations are the grotesque heads at the head of rough hewn pillars BELLOWS & ALDRICH, Architects RESIDENCE OF MR. FREDERICK G, HALL AT GLOUCESTER This view gives an excellent idea of the sturdy characteristics of the architecture and of the location of the house on the eastern shore of Gloucester Harbor. The very simply treated pool is the feature of the forecourt about which the house is built. Mr. Hall’s studio is in a separate building barely indicated at the left of the illustration = SE eenpeeeiainmemmntenenermntaiit: rr rent tn nt tenner : SISOS! SSO TREE IM Ee 4 Fa ee z é ‘ ¥ Photo. by John Wallace Gillies LEWIS COLT A COUNTRY HOME OF MR. GEORGE ARENTS, JR., AT RYE This is an example of the derivation of the Tudor rendered into something absolutely American and domestic in contrast to the institutional effect which the Tudor work so often has. It is a pleasant, fanciful, rather gentle style, obviously suited to its location and as patently out of key with a site such as Mr. Frederick G. Hall has chosen for his Gloucester home LBRO, Architect ROM Bone . 3 ee ns Si JOHN RUSSELL POPE, Architect RESIDENCE OF MR. ALLAN S. LEHMAN AT TARRYTOWN A strong breeze at the time the photograph was taken makes the tree instrumental in expressing the picturesque note emphasized in the whole structure. This is the West terrace, which seems to embody the spirit of domes- ticity as interpreted in a Tudor derivation. 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STUART DUNCAN’S RESIDENCE The long gallery, one of the vital features of the Elizabethan house, shows the dining room at the end of the vista. ‘The details in the photograph are worth noting; the substantial treatment of the handsomely wrought metal door, the beautifully molded ceiling, the chests and a ship model on its sturdy support; all so well within the spirit of the time of which it is reminiscent Photo. by John Wallace Gillies JOHN RUSSELL POPE, Architect THE MAIN STAIRCASE IN MR. STUART DUNCAN’S RESIDENCE In the Elizabethan picturesque house the staircase, instead of being gracefully and lightly circular, or tucked into a wall, as it was in most pre-Elizabethan architecture, became one of the features of the house. The general attitude of importance and affection to which these staircases are entitled is very adequately interpreted oUIpISe VY} JNoYsno1y} uses drysueuisyjes19 jo Aytyenb oy} Jo oartzejuesaader st pue Yeo ut AJaatque pozjeued st Areaqry sty, “stoydeyo ye~ods yey} 0} Wey} WUT, prnom YoryM suoTyesyIpow soeds ay} 0} ofqns you oie Ady} yey} BTVOS B@ SNOJoUIs os UO pouUL]d o1e Ady} VsNBdEq VINPo YI AZO 0} Poyoasp Jo}deyd sy} Ul UY} JoY}eI o19y popnpoUT aie AIT, *YIOK MON *3921]1S YIOL SPU LOL Fe VUIpIsel UMO} SJUOUIL’T “IP ‘osnoy AjIO B WOIZ 9Ie I9jdeYD oY} UL SUOT}eAYSNI]I SULMOT[OF oy} pue WOOL SILT, ‘UW HO ANWOH HHL NI AUVUAIT SOTTIHD PvTTeM UYyor Aq ‘O04 DNOWV'I ‘M SVWOHL soppy “ALLATIIO Y UAV z : # ig i Ae sovjdery ropny, 243 Aq uoals yAozuod JO UOTeNUISUT 94} PUL dUTT}NO. PITOS 94} 0} TaMsuUe sUBAIP UAOPOT dq} [JaM MOY 2AIVSqQ ‘sIOOp oye1oqeys ay} puv yoyueUL onbryUe oy} OF onTeA dAT}eIODIp [[NJ SUTATS “UOT}e}UIMIVUIO JNoY}A yJoT Aoyse~d AerS Jo ore sTTeM OYJ, ‘soprs OM} UO SMOPUTM popeay ][e} WorZ WS] YW parddns AT[nJrWUe]d st puke 10oy puooses 9y} UO st WOOA SuTATT payrusip pue Suey ou, HWOH MHYOA MUN ScALNOWVT ‘MM SVWOHL ‘UW NI WOOU ONIATT spoyorIy “ALLATIIO ¥ UAWIVA WALKER & GILLETTE, Architects DETAIL OF A FIREPLACE IN MR. LAMONT’S RESIDENCE The mantelpiece is an unusual and particularly interesting antique. Its position in relation to the woodwork in the fine library will be noted in a preceding illustration. Observe the individuality and interest of the decoration; the ecclesiastical type of the figures in the recesses, divided from each other by effective architectural motives. All the ornament is freely rendered and rich in character Photo. by John Wallace Gillies WALKER & GILLETTE, Architects DOORWAY IN MR. THOMAS W. LAMONT’S LIVING ROOM This doorway fulfills the expectations of those who respond to the joy of the Jacobean carver in the elaboration of a vigorous design. It does exactly what it is intended to do; it supplies one of the chief decorative interests of the room and, as will be seen by consulting the illustration of the room itself, is entirely in the spirit of the antique mantel which also enriches a bare wall space CHA PT ERs Tay. THE MODERN PICTURESQUE Unpber the definition of Modern Picturesque are included two groups of buildings. In the first are places in which are blended so many elements that it is inadvisable to attempt to assign them to any one of the previous chapters. Perhaps the most outstanding example of this type is the residence of Mr. Thomas Hastings of Carrere & Hastings, erected for himself in Westbury, Long Island. A first glimpse makes one think of the Georgian period in England, a second shows that the architect was inspired by a strong feeling of reverence for the Italian Renaissance. Then the eye begins to pick up detail that is French. And the general plan is undoubtedly the product of American needs. Another example is the Robert L. Bacon house, also at Westbury, which is the Colonial idea influ- enced by the Italian. What is more particularly in mind in this chapter, however, is a very special and a very modern type first developed by British architects and only imported to this side of the water within very recent years—a type founded on a glorification of the peasants’ cottages of England and France. ‘These have remained more ‘‘lizabethan’”’ (in the sense of that word as used in the previous chapter) than any other domestic building. Consequently, at first glimpse, a distance view, a house in the modern picturesque manner is not at all dissimilar to the Elizabethan Picturesque as just described. A closer view, however, shows that the Modern Picturesque, while retaining all of the Elizabethan feeling for the delightful incongruities of minor portions, for special sub-sections, beautiful in themselves as well as in relation to the whole, still admits a lack of the true Elizabethan feeling that a wood carver with a‘mallet, chisel, and strong muscles has been turned [2264 AMERICAN: HOMES: OF. TO: DAY loose to do his utmost. In other words, the Modern Picturesque building is rather inclined to be picturesque in -initial plan rather than in accidental local develop- ment. In; addition to the lack of quasi-gargoyle adornment the Modern Pictur- esque type tends to be finished either in dark red brick or in stucco. There is a very general absence of all adornment, pillars, urns, cupids et alii, traceable to the Italian. The Modern Picturesque is of all contemporaneous styles the most modern in feeling and it is a curious blending of the passion for simplicity which now controls us, together with an urge for the asymmetrical which will not down even in 1924. ‘This style appeals especially to. those who, in Carlyle phrase, have swallowed previous formule, who have, perhaps, outgrown the attitude of mind which permits them to take their country house architecture too seriously, who want to play a little with house design. ‘This is the urge to which all improve- ment in architecture is due. It is also the itch which leads to the monstrosities which our grandfathers used to call Jones’s Folly. So far, at least, this country has been rather fortunate in examples of the picturesque type which have been erected. The Modern Picturesque has certain easily recognizable characteristics, in addition to.the fact that it makes you think of a group of English cottages. First and foremost it is conscientiously asymmetrical, the type which our English cousins call the sun-trap house. There is usually one basic wing from which a number of others radiate, each one figured out to get the morning, the noon, and setting sun, or a glimpse across a certain meadow, or over Peconic Bay. As a subsidiary aid to this principle of planning, the house is usually erected on sloping ground with two or three levels so that as one circumnavigates its walls every few yards bring a different angle of vision, a new Series of pictures. Just as in its prototype cottage there is always a sense of the structure being low lying and well tied down to the ground, one has a feeling of driving down into its forecourt rather than ascending to stately distances and spectacular views. The Modern Picturesque type must be intimate or it fails. Its most noticeable feature has been reserved till the last; the roofs of European peasants’ cottages, at least in England and in France, are covered generally with either thatch or slate and are high peaked. Furthermore the ridge line of these buildings, in the process of centuries, has sagged from the true eva AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY and assumed a characteristic flexibility bespeaking century worn wooden supports within. This effect the modern architect has striven most determinedly to repro- duce. Actual thatch is, of course, impracticable for general use, but one of the illustrations to this chapter shows an attempt to reproduce its general effect in more durable material. Most of the buildings in the Modern Picturesque manner are roofed in slate, in the color selection and size gradation of which meticulous effort has been expended to achieve what a famous local contemporary has designated as the carefully careless look. This point is especially elaborated with a discussion of the Sabin house later in this chapter. The definition of Modern Picturesque applies only to the exterior of the building; there is no such thing as a Modern Picturesque interior. The note of the interior is taken from the general period and locality of which the exterior is a picturesque-ization. The most outstanding example of this is to be seen in the Sabin house at Southampton, Long Island. This house was erected by the archi- tects, Messrs. Cross & Cross, in very close codperation with Mrs. Sabin, who has a definite feeling for the most delicate type of English interior decoration. Precisely as the exterior is unmistakably English in general tone and is exquisitely proportioned and considered in detail, so the interior contains some of the most perfect specimens of the extremely restrained and graceful English manner to be found in America. These interiors might very properly have been included in the Fifth Chapter devoted to a discussion of the Adam feeling, but have been reserved for inclusion here in order that the Sabin house may be seen more as a unit. Incidentally, a very charming exterior has already been given in the illustrations for the second chapter. Mrs. Charles Cary Rumsey’s residence at Wheatley Hills, Long Island, has all the quality of an old English squire’s residence. The house is just that sort of a rambling, comfortable place and the beautiful rolling country, of a type made for riding over, contributes to this impression. The individuality of the house is due, in part, to the fact that it has been developed through a series of alterations, additions having been made at different times. The first of these additions was in the shape of a breakfast room, which is decorated with black and white monkeys from Robert Chanler’s fantastic brush. Then a large sun parlor was thrown out (22 VovVle hur Nee LOM IGS, OF TO-DAY towards the south, to which was added a little porch at the eastern end, with a sleeping porch above it. This room is entirely of glass with old tiles inserted in the green lattice panels. Later a service wing was extended. The ensemble, as is realized from the illustration, is very charming. The silhouette of the hounds, cut in the shutters, is symbolic of the interests of the country and of the various amusing works of this character, by Hunt Diederich, inside the house; a bas-relief hunting scene carved in stone for an overmantel frieze and tall metal standards supported by hounds at each side of the fireplace in the big living room. It is a country house which, in the interiors, lives up to the promise of personality in the details of the exterior. It answers very attractively to the definition of the Modern Picturesque. Another very smart little English house in America is the cottage at Jericho, Long Island, built for Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt II. The characteristic feature is, primarily, the roof, a composition imitation of the old country thatch. It has been colored by hand to make the resemblance complete. Another interesting note is that the stucco has been treated to conform to the apparent age of the roof. This was put over an absolutely waterproof surface and the last coat purposely crackled to give the desired effect. Then the chimneys and the shingled bits were brought into the picture. For the former discarded brick was used because of the irregularities in shape and the variety in coloring. Farmers were given new shingles in exchange for old ones covered with moss; and for the trim around the windows and for other work of this kind, old wood from the barns originally on the site was used. Old-fashioned lead flashings over the windows, projecting out about four inches, contribute their verification to the architects’ version of an old English cottage, to which the windmill, modeled after an original in England, adds a very plausible postscript. Mr. Thomas Hastings’ home at Old Westbury, Long Island, has a little of the French, the English and the Italian, yet is planned for American needs. There- fore it fits admirably into this chapter. The interiors have a certain feeling for the effectiveness of English development. The entrance, with its central arch, is Italian. Other details have a memory of the French. The house is set in the native woods and is planned for seclusion rather than for views. The charm of an alley 2298) AMERTCGAN? HOMES) OF POe Diy of linden trees, which outlines the court on one side, the ivy covered retaining wall which encloses it at the other, and the stables and garage group which close the Southern end are very satisfactorily explained by the photographs. The home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert L. Bacon at Westbury, Long Island, is on the estate of Mr. Bacon’s mother, Mrs. Robert Bacon, being situated on a knoll to Ss Courtesy of Town & Country DELANO & ALDRICH, Architects HOME OF THE MISSES PARSONS AT LENOX, MASSACHUSETTS Another view: of: the residence of Miss Mary and Miss Gertrude Parsons at Lenox shows how pleasantly it is, set and how well it is embraced with trees. This illustration)makes’a*point of the flat grass terrace, so easy of access from the house, providing a view over the valley the east of the larger residence. The house; while influenced prima- rily by Colonial ideas, is sO reminiscent, in the execution of the work, of the smaller Italian villas, that it is well suited for inclusion in this chapter. The Ital- ian insinuation is easily understood ‘because, as is shown in another chapter, one of the char- acteristics. of the best Italian work is the plain wall surface, and the small windows, sparsely dispersed. In the pres- ent instance, however, the expanse of wall ‘sur- face has been the-result of a direct consideration of the plan. The en- trance court is __ par- tially defined on one’-side by the wall of the service wing of the house and the court has been otherwise fully enclosed by a brick wall, somewhat after ‘the Italian L230] BOVE eC ASN | Oe MESS* OOF TO). DAY Photo. by John Wallace Gillies MARIAN C. COFFIN, Landscape Architect RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. CHARLES H. SABIN This photograph of the Peconic Bay side of the house shows the three garden levels. The wall at the left marks the location of the flat grass terrace. This wall and the wall of the garden enclose the intermediate planting of shrubs and evergreens. An oblong lily pond, well surrounded with border planting, is barely discerned in the foreground of the illustration fashion. This wall enclosing the entrance court is, of course, a relic of the time when the protection of entrance doors was a matter of practical necessity, but aside from its historical significance, there is an amount of intimacy and semi-privacy given by treatment of this sort which needs no further reason for being than the quality of the result. To our modern eyes it has no sinister suggestion of an enemy outside the gates but rather takes the form of a welcome at the gate, of an invita- tion into the house before the threshold is actually passed. Yet it retains, to a degree, the pleasant sense of protection, even though from no greater danger than the wind and weather. The overhanging balcony of the front entrance of the Bacon residence serves two purposes; one is to offer additional protection to the door itself and the other is to give space and balcony room to the little guest room above it. From the view shown of the exterior it is possible to appreciate the effective placing of the circular headed window which is a frank indication of the stair hall on the inside, seen in the full page illustration. In this stair hall the architect has designed a free- standing stair, the technic and execution of which he seems to have mastered com- pletely. In spite of its lightness and airiness, accentuated by the thinness and ge Lael ANCE REG ANS EO NUE Se Od Oe saa careful detail of the iron balustrade and the mahogany handrail, this stairway is structurally very rigid, giving an impression of exactness, a nice observance of the more aristocratic building practicalities which is in character with the rest of the construction. Its charm is, of course, greatly enhanced by the fact that the walls are severely plain in treatment. ‘This stair is a very satisfactory example of what is known as an easy stair, that is, one which is comfortable for everyone to ascend because of the variation afforded by the treads in accommodating themselves to the circular design. A certain additional charm has been given to Mr. Bacon’s house by the ingenious use of a whitewash preparation on the brick walls which has worn off just enough to give an agreeable texture and to suggest the masonry construction. The pleasing effect secured through this treatment is appreciated in the illustration given of the exterior, where there is more than a hint of the variety of surface obtained. As will be observed, it is felt even in the chimneys which add much to the impression of style because of the originality of their design and disposition. : : 2 eon Photo. by John Wallace Gillies FRANK EATON NEWMAN, Architect _ SEASIDE COTTAGE OF MR. AND MRS. ROBERT APPLETON The roof is obviously derived from the thatched cottages of England, the turning of the shingles over the edges approximating cleverly the softened outlines of the original. The hooded wall of a sunken garden, protected from the sea breezes, is seen at the right. The cottage is on one of the sand dunes, overlooking the golf course, at East Hampton, Long Island. The ocean is about five hundred feet away [ie252e| AMERIGAN HOMES OF TO-DAY In color the house depends for accent on its dark blue blinds and its carefully disposed trees, the roof being a soft gray which does not claim undue attention and yet has a tendency to emphasize the perspective which is quite valuable to the architect’s theme. A similar use of whitewash is observed in another illustration in this chapter, which, in deference to the owner’s wish not to have his name mentioned, is called merely a residence in Far Hills, New Jersey. This residence was built from the rubble stone of the foundation walls of an old farmhouse originally on the site. It is an example of the Modern Picturesque feeling that, when this stone ran out, instead of getting more stone, the architects used brick, as in the library wing, and stucco on terra cotta blocks in the service wing, encouraging the atmosphere of an old house which has been added to from time to time. This variation of material is not only on the most friendly terms with the site but with the picturesque infor- mality of the plan, which has been run on angles, in a pleasant, haphazard fashion, to take advantage of the views in different directions and to work in some fine old trees that existed originally on the site. The three materials have been unified by PEABODY, WILSON & BROWN, Architects THE RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. COURTLANDT D. BARNES AT MANHASSET A perfect example of the very Modern Picturesque type developed in brick, with a slate roof, It is a quite conscious but very entertaining arrangement of wide gables and keen-edged roof lines. Though it makes some slight use of dormers, it places little dependence on them for decoration, for which the location of the single type of cottage chimney, as distinct from the grouped chimneys, and the disposal of the windows, is relied upon £.23a4 AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY the coat of whitewash already mentioned. In style, the house seems to convey different messages to different people. It has been called Colonial, it has been likened to’a‘French manor house. It has been admired as English. It has Colo- nial detail in the porch. But it cannot be catalogued except so far as it is cata- logued here, as an example of the Modern Picturesque. Interiors of this residence are shown in another chapter. The home of Miss Mary and Miss Gertrude Parsons at Lenox, Massachusetts, is an example of a house that has been taken off the top of'a hill and set down well € ¥ ‘ % 3 e z Becket ty er oe Courtesy of Town & Country CROSS & OROSS, Architects A RESIDENCE AT FAR HILLS, NEW JERSEY A’ Modern Picturesque type which is founded on the Colonial farmhouse idea yet has connotations of both the French farmhouse and the English cottage. It is composed of three materials, rubble stone, brick and stucco on terra cotta blocks, unified with a coat of whitewash [ 234 J AMERICAN HOMES. OF T:0-DAY into the landscape at-the bottom of it. The core of the present residence was a very old homestead, of which the architects took what they wanted and then pro- ceeded to build rooms around it to produce the engaging results seen in two of the illustrations. One of the views gives a hint of the attractive manner in which the house hugs the ground and the part which the garage and ice house have had in pulling the structure out to the required length. It is not possible for the photo- graph to show the architects’ emphasis-on the effectiveness of a down-grade drive into the entrance court. It does show the large amount of wall space which has been so skilfully utilized. We used to build our houses as high on a hill as was feasible and surrounded them with a lawn solemnized with geometric garden units. Now we frequently see the advantage of bringing our houses down from this ele- vated and public position and settling them comfortably in among enough trees to Photos. by Mattie Edwards Hewitt DELANO & ALDRICH, Architects HOME OF THE MISSES PARSONS AT LENOX, MASSACHUSETTS Another example of a house which has been set well down into the landscape, at the foot of a hill, with the drive- way following a downward grade into the entrance court, as opposed to the popular American.custom of set- ting a-house on the top of a hill. The court is enclosed in. a square wall of stucco and the garage and ice house help to accentuate the long lines of the structure [ 235 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY soften the edges and not enough to promote dampness. The Misses Parsons’ house is nicely embraced with trees, with a big elm as the most imposing veteran of them all. The walls of the house are of yellowish gray; the roof of variegated slate with a tendency to blues and greens. The trimmings are strong blue. It is o°, in our almost another example of those smart smaller houses which are becoming, 1 servantless country, more popular every day. The summer home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Appleton at East Haniiren is quite definitely a seaside cottage. It is built directly on one of the dunes over- looking the golf course. The architecture is based on the view, which is over a broad, beautiful expanse of natural country, embracing green hills on one side of the dunes and the ocean on the other. The chief interest of the house itself is centered in the roof which is similar, in effect, to the English thatched roof, a likeness fostered by the manner in which the shingles are bent over the edges. These are wide cedar shingles which turn an earthy ay instead of the more customary silver. The weathering is from two and a half inches (interesting in comparison to the inches exposed in the clapboards of Mr. Charles Smithers’ residence in the Colonial chapter). At the right of the illustration will be noted a hooded wall which encloses a cosy little sunken garden which affords protection CROSS & CROSS, Architects from the ocean breezes, incorporates a HOME OF MR. AND MRS. SABIN shaded seat for tea time or an hour’s There is a touch of Italian or Spanish in the little ‘ oo iron hooded balcony set so daintily on the broad gable _ reading, and has an artistic relation to the of the breakfast room ‘ lines of the house. Mr. Appleton’s cot- tage is in sympathy with the low-toned harmonies of the old houses in the town and in character with the country, as has been said. Its wide surfaces and its overhang- P23Ga AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY ing roofs give opportunity for strong sun and shadow plays and the fenestration of the stairway and the care used to make all the openings and doorways personal and interesting add much to its success as a seashore cottage of a very likable and legitimate type. The seashore cottage is, admittedly, a difficult problem. It lacks background. The only color is the color of the ocean, converted into a hot glare at certain portions of the day. The country is flat; there is no framework of woods to foster the picturesque element. The architect is safest in working, as Mr. Newman has done, for answering contrasts in light and shade. “Bayberry Land,” the Southampton residence of Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Sabin, is on Peconic Bay, next door to the National Golf Links. This means that it is in that interesting, rolling country which we know as the Shinnecock Hills. According to the newer traditions in American architecture, the house has been flattened out gracefully in a hollow, the ideal being to settle it in the ground as if it had been there as long as the sands themselves. ‘To reach the house you pass over a ridge, drive through the _ garage, which serves as a gate lodge, down into the forecourt (as in the case of the Misses Parsons’ home), the walls of which help to keep the house tied to the ground. Walls are, altogether, a very vital part of the layout. The grass ter- race on the Peconic Ba a . y MARIAN C. COFFIN, Landscape Architect HOME OF MR. AND MRS. SABIN m A little hint of the informality of the garden, which is in the English man- alae red cedars gBUBE ner, the main influence of the house itself. It is very delightfully done i / eae side is walled in from side and the rough plant- ing on the other. The gardens are enclosed in walls, ending with a retaining wall at the top of the cliff. Brick walls confine the rose garden at the end of the living ee 7et AMERIGAN HOMES OtecLOS bay room porch. It is all very delightful and rather English, just as the house is tem- peramentally old English, though it has other touches, that little bit of the breakfast room gable, which has a hint of Italian or Spanish in a small iron hooded balcony set daintily on the broad gable, as illustrated in one of the smaller plates, and the detail of the entrance, which has no precedent yet makes such an alluring approach. It all makes for charm. The Sabin house is built entirely of terra cotta blocks and concrete, stuccoed, with a little stone introduced to add to the interest. The stucco used is of a gray green tone which harmonizes with the surrounding hills. Particularly worth noticing is the stone roof with slates an inch thick, laid so that no gutters are neces- Photo. by M. E. Hewitt . CROSS & CROSS, Architects DINING ROOM IN THE CHARLES H. SABIN RESIDENCE This photograph of one wall in the dining room is a particularly lovely Eighteenth Century arrangement, with a portrait of Alexander, Fourth Duke of Gordon, by Sir Henry Raeburn, at the right and George Romney’s portrait of “Mr. Forbes,” Lieutenant of the Royal Horse Guards, at the left of the mirror. Everywhere throughout the residence is that discrimination in the selection and disposition of fine things evidenced in these two views of this room, which together form a perfect dining room scene (32385) AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY sary, the work having been entirely done by Welshmen, the only workmen who know how to lay a roof of this type in America. At the ridge of the roof a sag has been made of about three inches, this departure from the rule making just the difference between pleasure and indifference in looking at it. All the lines of the house are just off the straight in the way that a building would settle in time. The way in which the living room wing has been turned to accommodate itself to the view over the garden and bay is another amusing idea which the picturesque type of building makes permissible. It is as successful as it seems casual. This living room is, as it should be, a huge room, thirty by forty feet, with a ceiling seventeen feet high. Photo. by M. E. Hewitt CROSS & CROSS, Architects DINING ROOM IN THE CHARLES H. SABIN RESIDENCE In this chapter it has been said that there is no typical Modern Picturesque interior. The two views shown of Mrs. Sabin’s dining room prove this point. It is as essentially rather formal English as the house is, externally, very casual English, with exotic touches. The fireplace here is scaled to the proportions of the overmantel painting [ 239 |) ydeisojoyd oy} ut papnyour you st yotym ‘punoarZor0z dy} satdnooo paeyoso atdde payuvidsues} [jews y ‘peoiqe dn poxord [erp uns UO! pep[is pue vu0js plo uv puNoie spe, yyed ou0}s Surddaqs ayy, ‘uapaed aso1 oY} sasopous jy} [[eA Yolaq ey} pue WooI Suratt e8ny oy} 0} yorod 24} SMOYS SIYT, ‘YOod ay} UT peyoAap st voeds YonuUI Os YoY 0} GWIOY JoUIUINS UOYdUIeY NOS sty} UL SayoNo} 97371] J2Ag[0 AuUvUI ay} JO 9UO Soyer]SNI[I SIYT, HONACISHU NIGVS HHL AO GANH WOO" ONIAIT FHL qoepLyo1y advospue'y] ‘NIGGOO ‘O NVIUVN & WINCH “HE “W Aq ‘oj0Ud Doe ZZ fies Photo. by John Wallace Gillies CROSS & CROSS, Architects AN APPRECIATION OF LINE IN THE SABIN RESIDENCE Here is a little porch tucked in between the living room and library to provide another architectural fea- ture and one more outdoor sitting room. Note the effective sag and swell of the Welsh slate roof, which comes smartly down, close to the ground, in the half gable over the doorway. Observe the occasional use of stone in the window, corbelled out to provide a picturesque interior passage around the chimney 9UII} UL 9[}}9S ATTeanyeu plnom asnoy B yey} AVM ayy Ut ‘yy sreI4s oY} Yo ysnf aae vsnoy ay} JO Saul, oy} [TY ‘YLOMUOI! [eyUeUIVUAO Jo vdeId aotu A9A B Aq paoejaid st aouvajua yANODaI0} sIyy, ‘edeospuvy, [einyeu oy} Jo WAed suaes pue puUNoIs oy} 0} MOT SatT YyoryM ‘1ado1d osnoy 94} 0} odo[s v UMOp pue ‘aSpol oye v jo aovid oy} sayey YoOryM ‘oBvaeZ oy} Ysnoryy ‘s[[I_{ YoouUlYS 0} AvlpIwe saspla sy} JO VUO JIAO SUTALIP 19}Je polovad ST 4ANOd SIT, HONHACISHU NIAVS AHL AO LYNOOAUON GNV WONVULNY ; spopyypIV “SSOUO ¥F SSOUO 4 YMOH “A “W Aq ‘oyoyg CROSS & CROSS, Architects DETAIL OF THE ENTRANCE DOOR OF THE SABIN HOME This is, of course, a close view of the doorway shown opposite. It provides an opportunity to appreciate the value of the grassed spaces, each with its single small cedar, at each side of the door, and to get another glimpse of the stone roof, with slates an inch thick » ; 1 PE aes NG ce ot” Photo. by M. E. Hewitt oinyeay & 9MOSpuLY OS 0} o1qQeINS Buys pue soeds sapraoad ‘s100p Sse[3 poyoie oy} qua ‘Aeayey epi oyy, ‘amoy Arzunoos & Jo Jayowreyo 9} YT Zurdaey UL S}aoU0d Jay}O puUe SpAIG ‘SIaMOY {S9AT}JOUI sNOJeUINU sedRIqUIO USISIpP III, ‘poronboey, pue jysnorm ‘uory Jo are Ay, ‘ouop AT[NZyWNwveq ‘sTres Surmeyo Aprepnorjzed savy ‘100p yuOIZ oy} 19A0 dn pula yory ‘sile}s V[qnop eseqL, NIAVS ‘H SHTIUVHO ‘SUN GNV ‘UW AO ANOH AHL NI AVMUIVIS spoytyo1y “SSOUO ® SSOUO MIME “A “W Aq ‘OJON cVavexeys [NJAySrap A19A st Woo oy} JO yUOUTZVAI] [eANPoPTYIIe YT, “‘Woor yseM v 0} AVM oy} Susdo pue sSuIY I[qQIUIZOSIp Afereq ev UO YoRq sduTMS asBoyOod sy} JO UOTdas 4sIY dy} UOWNq v Burssard Aq f100p yortoas eB sey AAVIQI, SIG, ‘SSUrpfouUI paared oy} UT Surpyls savy yorym ‘stoop Auvsoyeut plo WWM AvMAOOp UvISIOdy TeUIsIIO Ue pUNOIe YIN SI I] ‘ST[FE, YOOoouUTYS 9y} Ul sdUApISeA UIQeg oY} UL SWOOL YsoUY VY} JO GUO patopIsUOD ST SIT, NIGVS ‘H SH TUVHO SUW GNV ‘UW AO HNOH AHL NI AUVUAIT FHL syoaztyory ‘SSOUO F SSOUO IMM “AW Aq “070Kd : , Sr URE GE = tare anges 5 : 7 ‘ 3 as iat ae: ae a4 wins al til i Bias VA sfauutyo pasodstp Apareuls ay} Ul eAtoeye ATpetoedsa st yoIyM ‘SyoIq a4} JeAO YseMozIYyM uty} Jo asn ay} Aq uoatd Azyenb [eanyzxo} vy} pue saoeds [fem ured ay} Jo ofquiesua [el1ozId ay} 0} eouUvJA0dMIT oY} ayerooidde 0} Ayunz10ddo ue septa -oid d0uv1jUa BY} JO MITA STU], ‘SBI[IA UBITeI] AoT[ews oY} JO JUooSTUTUIEI ST ‘YIOM 94} JO UOT}NIexe oY} UT ‘YoIyYM odA} [BIUOTOD Sso[ IO B1OUI B ST STU, GNV'ISI DNOT ‘AUNALSAHM LV NOOVE "I LUAGOU ‘SUN GNV “UW JO ANOH poyyoy “AdOd TIASSOu NHOL SOITIED eve uyor Photo. by John Wallace Gillies JOHN RUSSELL POPE, Architect STAIRWAY IN THE HOME OF MR. AND MRS. ROBERT L. BACON Modern mastery of technic and execution as revealed in a free-standing stair which, in spite of its lightness and airiness, accentuated by the thinness and careful detail of the iron balustrade, and the mahogany handrail, is structurally very rigid, giving an impression of exactness, a nice observance of the more aristocratic building practicalities which is in keeping with the rest of the construction 210 OU pue ‘UTY pozIns sey se yonur se ysnf zt pazipeu10j sey *41N0d S$} UTYITA ‘puke SpooM [eIn}eU ® UT [Jam oWIOY SIY poloz[oys SvYy SSUTISeFT “AP *FOSUTY AOZ spying yoyyore ue yoy asnoy Jo dA} oy} Apnys 0} SuTysor9zuI SAeMTe SI 4[ ‘o[OYM a[qQealUIpe 19Y}0903/e pue [eosoy Apyejiod ev O,UT sooUANPUL USIa10J snolwea JO Suttapuat aaiz ALIA B SI PE asnevaq 194deyo sty} OyUL ATqeatwIpe s}y IUEpIsel ssUI{seEy “AJ AYNALSHM GIO LV SONILSVH SVWOHL “UW AO FONACISHY poppy ‘SONILSVH SVWOHL JANOD VY} JO VpIs 9uO Vso[d 0} ATV UspuUT,T B JO apeU SI asn DATJORIzWe UY ‘sydeas OSs opeys pue yYyST]T JO satztenb svsoy} soy pouueld useq savy }nod pue IpvdeJ oATJUS OYJ, ‘aoUvIYUE aTqaeuI oWOSpuLY AI9A eziseydwa yorym satpood xoq 9QHT 943 Jo Azyenb Sursnure oy [[MJ ut 9ze1~e1dde 03 Ayrunzaoddo uv saatS uorlyeaAysNIII STU, dNOUD AWIAVLS CNV AOVUVS AHL -oyoyd ay} ut passaidxa [am oy} JO JaJoVIeYO UvITe}] 24} LYNOOdYOH AHL AO ANH ANO ONISOTO ‘SONILSVH SV WOHL qoazlyory ae oR EIN 932[dw0d soue[quiesaa oY} BHeU 0} puey Aq Patojod Useq sey YoIyM ‘Joor yoyey} ArzyUNOD pjo oy} JO UoTye}TUNT UOT}ISoduIOD oY} st yuIOd [eo0J s}[ ‘saoUapIsad Zutsodumlt Jo pojt} vsoy} 10f osnoyAeyd 91331] JAeuIs AIOA B ST 4] ‘Tooquiye’]T WRITE “Sat Aq out} B 1OF UT paat] Sem pUe ‘puL[s] BuO] ‘oyster ye “TI BIqrepueA “YM WRIT ‘StI 1OF YMG Al[eurst1o sem oSvz}00 Sty, NOILNALNI ANOSAUNLOId ATAUNd AO ASNOHAV'Td AILLIII V speyry ‘MUVIO ® NAYUVA SOIT eovrem uyor £q ‘0,04 IOI19}UT PY} UT pasn ‘10}d[Nos ay} “YotIaparq yuNFT Aq [ejoul pue suojs ul yom Zursnure oy} Jo pue pjoyssnoy sy} Jo sjsa10qUT ay} FO offoquiss ov ‘s.19};NYs ay} UT yd ‘spuNoY ay} JO SazJONOYTIS SY], “oUIT] 0} SUIT WIOIZ 0} poppe UV2Eq S¥Y PT FEY} JRF 94} 0} “4qaed Ur ‘“onp st ssnoy 94} Jo Ay[enplarpul oy], “12a Surpli JoJ spur susses yoryA ‘Aryunos Surpjoa ATMJIyNveq 94} 1oJ dov,d a[qvyzoywioo ‘“Burjquier Jo yzos ayy ysnf st esnoy ouy, GNV'ISI DNOT ‘STTIH AVTLVAHM LV HANOH S.AMSWNAU AUVO SATUVHO ‘SUN peHw4Vy ‘NVNAIAOH TIVEUNE ‘A a re CHAPTER ELEVEN THE MEDITERRANEAN MODEL THE fact that America, geographically, covers about as much ground as Europe, plus its adjacent islands, makes it very difficult, in fact impossible, to lay down any series of principles which will apply to all four corners of the country. This is just as true of architecture as of anything else. The previous chapters have concerned themselves only with the Atlantic coast from Maine to South Carolina and with the country immediately West as far as the Eastern base of the Rocky Mountains. Barring over-emphasized but relatively unimportant variations of detail, architectural taste and development have kept common step in this territory, so much so that it might be considered an architectural unit. There are two parts of the country to which practically all that has been said before this chapter does not in the least apply—the far Southwest and the extreme South, or to limit them still further, California and Florida. While of course their discovery and sparse settlement was contemporaneous with that of the rest of the country (Florida, I hasten to add, for fear somebody will accuse me of not knowing it, having the reputation of being the earliest European settlement on the American mainland), their acquisition of sufficient population and wealth to warrant the erection of houses with any claims to architectural style at all is a matter of comparatively recent years —say, since the Civil War. Most Californians will admit that it took at least a decade or so for the Pacific Coast to emerge from the status of a mining camp; and Broadway and Fifth Avenue’s discovery of Palm Beach and Miami is unques- tionably still more recent. The architectural styles previously described, Colonial, English, French, and North Italian, whatever their divergencies, have one point in common. ‘They are none of them constructed for a sub-tropical climate. The unprotected facade, the abundant window allowance, of the English and French (e2bee| AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY house of any period since the Gothic are based on a desire to let in the surrounding light and climate; while in Southern California and in Florida the chief necessity of a building is to keep them out. Even the North Italian villa is based upon usage in the hot weather of the temperate zone, rather than in tropical heats. It is a perfectly natural but not generally understood principle of racial immigration that nations move along lines of climate. Consequently such Span- iards as came to America unerringly headed for such portions of the country as exhibited the same blinding sun as their homeland, and proceeded to erect therein the dwellings in which their ancestors had been accustomed to dwell. When the Forty-Niners first reached California and the patrons of the Jacksonville Express first ventured to Palm Beach, they both found at their journey’s end the tradition of Spanish building and some scattered fragments of what might be called Spanish Colonial architecture, established by the Missions. It would be paying too high a tribute to the commonsense of human nature to state that the incoming northerners and easterners had the judgment to adopt these norms at once. ‘The earliest automobiles were made to look as much like a wagon without a horse in front as possible. So the first buildings erected on the hills of San Francisco or the sands of Florida were precisely the buildings which were going up in Bangor, in Schenectady, in Cleveland, or in Baltimore. However, about the same time that the rediscovery of architecture occurred in the northeast, a realization of the peculiar appropriateness of the generally Spanish type of architecture developed in the West and South; so that to-day there is a distinct and very flourishing school of architects developing buildings of this type, both in California and in Florida, the type which, for purposes of this book, has been called the Mediterranean. In all of the countries which have flourished along the Mediterranean littoral, from the prehistoric civilizations of the Mesopotamia Valley to the Iberian Penin- sula, all architecture but ecclesiastic has developed around a common form, that of a blank walled house, facing inward toward a central court. The Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Turks, and the Spaniards have built or still build upon this principle. The only two countries contiguous to the Mediter- ranean which do not accept the enclosed central court as the indispensable feature of a house are France and Italy. Italy, it is true, partially accepted it, but early eeoert AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY attained an attitude of mind which permitted her in her country places of the Renaissance to open one side of the basic court to the outer world. Spain has not yet attained that attitude. As houses of the pre-Charlemagne period have abso- lutely no influence upon modern domestic architecture, and as the whole trend of influence in the Mediterranean Valley is most perfectly symbolized to us in Spain, modern American architects who have sought consciously to build for their clients perfect and consistent examples of Mediterranean architecture, have gone to Spain for their inspiration and their detail. Now the Spaniards who produced the type of building, copies of which are being erected in California and Florida, were a very curious people, judged by the standards of the average American of North European ancestry, and the buildings they evolved at about the beginning of the Sixteenth Century (the type we copy to-day) were produced as a result partially of climate and partially of the Spanish attitude towards life. It should never be forgotten that the Spanish peninsula was conquered and held by the Moors for nearly eight centuries, practically from the downfall of the Roman Empire of the West to the year of the discovery of America, when the last Moorish stronghold, Granada, was conquered by Ferdinand and Isabella. Most people know this fact from Velasquez’s well known painting of the subject, but they do not realize how long and how firm was the Moorish imprint on Spain, not in scattered architectural relics but in an attitude of mind. Spain of the Sixteenth Century was at least half Oriental, mentally. The only facets of this quality which interest us are those which express themselves most obviously in domestic architecture; they are a fear of one’s neighbors, and a distrust of one’s women. So, when the Spaniards of the Sixteenth Century erected houses they accentuated the normal Mediterranean features of a large, blank, easily defendable outer wall, with few, heavily barred outer windows, and a small entrance portal. The life of the household focused on a large inner courtyard or patio. There the communal life of the household functioned; there the well bred woman was supposed to spend her entire leisure time. Anyone who thinks this exaggerated is referred to the Spanish monk, who, at about this period, the early Sixteenth Century, censured noblewomen for going to church in public when they could just as well hear mass in their own castles. L 254 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY Courtesy of The Architectural Record ARTHUR HEUN, Architect “MELODY FARM” AT LAKE FOREST, NEAR CHICAGO A garden view of the former residence of Mr. J. Ogden Armour which lies West of Lake Forest rather than in the exact confines of the Chicago suburb. This is a detail of an elaborate garden development of triple pools. An artificial lake of twenty acres with two tiny crown shaped islands is a feature of the estate Coupled with all this, there was a rude and elemental vigor which demanded expression in ornament. A similar streak in the Moors vented itself upon the patio; something, probably chance, though this is a point those more learned in the refine- ment of architectural history alone are qualified to argue about, developed in Spain the style known as Plateresque. A platero, in Spanish, is a silversmith. When the Italian Renaissance struck Spanish architecture in about the first decade of the Sixteenth Century, its influence there underwent much the same modification that Georgian architecture experienced when it struck the tool chest of a New England carpenter. Forms perfectly good in themselves were diverted to uses their creator never intended. The Spaniards of that time were an intensely proud, intensely bigoted, utterly self-satisfied, and completely ignorant people as far as anything outside of the Spanish Peninsula was concerned. They had precisely the attitude towards the rest of the world as the modern tired business man of New York. So when the Italian workmen invaded Spain, as they had previously done France, with their plaster casts and their drawings of the wonders of the Italian Peninsula, the Spanish architect and overseer took from this wealth of material designs intended by their creators to be expressed in silver and gold work, in monstrances L 255 | AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY for the cathedrals, in jeweled caskets for the palaces, and proceeded to wrap these designs around the entrance portals of their perfectly bare houses. In so doing they developed a new style, just as the American workman made the Colonial a different thing from the Georgian. A typical Plateresque house is a low lying structure, squarish in effect, with a low pitched roof of tiles and an outer wall of perfectly plain rugged stone or stucco, with two or three focal points, the door invariably, symmetrical flanking windows usually, enriched with the most elaborate carving executed from designs Gillies McCLURE & HARPER, Architects and on principles which in other coun- MR. JOHN J. RASKOB’S RESIDENCE This patio in the home of Mr. Raskob at Claymont, Delaware, is centered by a fountain by Charles Keck : «Wee the sculptor. It is a rather North Mediterranean type in metal. As the style was first originated showing strong Italian feeling in the double arcade tries were reserved for the use of workers when Renaissance met Gothic across the Spanish temperament, the detail is an unusual, entirely unacademic but quite pleas- ing combination of Gothic theories with Renaissance forms. The original Spanish examples were exuberant to the point almost of being grotesque. The earlier exam- ples, the usually recognized first instance of the Plateresque style in the work of Enrique de Egas, such things as the entrance of the Hospital of Santa Cruz in Toledo (Spain) and of the Royal Hospital in Santiago de Compostela are of unquestioned beauty. They overwhelm the intelligent observer precisely as does the West portico of Notre Dame, or the first twilight glimpse of the Cathedral of Milan. The Plateresque style needs a strong disciplinary spirit; otherwise it degenerates into something which might be described by a horsy person as having been sired by Pastry Cook out of Coney Island. Even within half a century of its invention they erected the Palace of Monterey at Salamanca in a style so obviously fitted for reproduction in lath and plaster that it has been used as a model by the Spanish [ 256 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY Government for every World’s Fair building she has had to erect since; and the Palace of the Marquis de Dos Aguas in Valencia, erected in the Eighteenth Century in a style that we nowadays reserve for a holiday creation in marzipan, looks so sugary that one wonders it has stood the rain of more than two centuries. The point of all this is that it should be remembered that a Plateresque house for a person with Nordic antecedents is distinctly an exotic. When treated as such, as a playhouse, a summer place, an expression of the vacation mood against the sunlit background and warm climate and characteristic sub-tropical vegetation of Pasadena or Miami, it fits into the mental picture well enough. Effort should be DAVID ADLER, Architect RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS, RICHARD T. CRANE In the home of Mr. and Mrs. Richard T. Crane of Chicago at Jekyll Island, Georgia, there is a skilful Ameri- canization of the Mediterranean feeling in the introduction of the turf effect and of the vines. The photo- graph proves once more the appeal of the style and its adaptibility to outdoor living L 25% | AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY MYRON HUNT AND ELMER GRAY, Aeoidtects RESIDENCE OF MR. E. M. TAYLOR AT ALTADENA A Colonial type, derived from the old New Orleans houses, adapted to the contours of California. This is the South garden view showing the broad terrace and pool and the mountain background. The almond tree in full bloom is an inspiring detail of the picture. The house is built with many porches and much provision for out- door living. In certain views the heavy, brooding tropical trees are in dramatic contrast to the architecture ve } ‘item : Cie Photo. by F. W. Martin made, in so far as it is practical, and with all due and necessary concessions to modern insistence on domestic convenience, to keep the interior in the original Spanish feeling. Floors of tiling, walls of stone or stucco, gorgeous polychrome ceilings, huge structural arches, heavy furniture of Spanish or Italian model, a liberal use of ironwork and an avoidance of the more delicate styles definitely — associated with the Eighteenth Century in either England or France are, as the doctors would say, indicated. Side by side with the Plateresque styles in California there has developed another, a composite style which, in general effect, is that of a white clapboard house on the Southern Colonial idea, built by a man accustomed to erecting the type just described. Seen through an orchard setting it makes a pretty enough picture. Whether it fits as well with the stern rock of the hills back of it is a question, after all, for individual taste to decide. The residence of Mr. E. M. Taylor in Altadena, California, is one of the most successful of the clapboard houses and the illustration gives an impression of the great charm of its setting. [R25 5%] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY The inspiration of the architecture is from the old New Orleans type, the French- Colonial. A grove of lemon trees secludes the residence from the road, the foliage being in excellent contrast to the white of the residence. The almond tree, which is a treasure of the foreground in the photograph, reflects into the pool which so engagingly mirrors the house. The architects of Mr. Taylor’s residence have also done some very interesting works in the Spanish influence in stucco. The residence built for Mr. J. Ogden Armour, just West of Lake Forest, illus- trated in one of the photographs, is an American version of the Mediterranean. The style is based, frankly, on the type of thing which the architect and the owners deemed rational and harmonious with the sort of life the family had planned to live there and with Mr. Armour’s intention of owning a sufficient number of acres on the development of which he expected to spend his energies when he retired from active business participation. Mr. Armour’s ambitions in this respect began systematically with the purchase of the sort of land which would best fulfill them, with the buying of twelve hundred acres or more of connecting farms which lay Photo. by A. Sturtevant COTTAGE ON THE ESTATE OF MRS. JOHN J. MITCHELL, JR. The photograph illustrates the main cottage of a group on the estate of the former Miss Lolita Armour, “El Mirador,” in the Montecito Valley which is being used as a temporary residence until the house has been erected. The cottages are of a modified Spanish type and, contrary to the Spanish custom, are set in a frame of foliage characteristic of California 20a AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY i Photo. by Hiller MARSTON AND VAN PELT, Architects RESIDENCE OF MR. W, T. JEFFERSON AT PASADENA Mr. Jefferson’s home on South Grand Avenue is an interesting example of the bare fortress effect of the true Spanish type. This insinuation of old fighting days is emphasized by the bridge which spans a small moat, actually a natural barranco or small stream, and connects with the entrance door. The higher elevation of the central motive gives the hall greater height and gives room for the enrichment of the doorway about thirteen miles from his house in Chicago. It was because he wanted land that was usable rather than land that was merely pictorial that he bought property west of Lake Forest, rather than within the confines of Chicago’s most beautiful suburb, where the natural and handsome woodlands would not have lent them- selves to any consistent energizing of the farm idea. Our illustration gives, of course, no hint of these practical plans on the part of the owner. It shows the residence in a formal view which gives a hint of the water garden that makes the view from the West terrace especially entertaining. This is a traditional plan, designed for perspective and balanced beauty. The broad turf walk shown in the photograph extends between two oblong pools very cleverly planted. The view is extended over a second pool to a casino. Back of that is an artificial lake of twenty acres which extends along the Western shores of the estate and holds two tiny [ 260 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY crown-shaped islands in its embrace. The main entrance to the house is through a large loggia and vestibule from a forecourt centered with a pool and fountain. The estate has, I understand, been sold and may, the rumor goes, become a hotel. - One of the illustrations shows the main cottage on the estate of Mrs. John J. Mitchell, Jr. (Miss Lolita Armour): ‘El Mirador,” in the Montecito Valley outside of Santa Barbara. This is an estate of sixty-five acres with certain elevations which command those views for which California is famous. The detail shown is one of a eroup of cottages designed for Mrs. Mitchell’s use as a temporary winter home, with the intention of building a large house later. In type these cottages are a t re MARSTON AND VAN PELT, Rpokatecta RESIDENCE OF MR. JOHN HENRY MEYER NEAR PASADENA This detail of Mr. Meyer’s residence provides an especially satisfying example of the Plateresque doorway under American treatment, which has so simplified and restrained it that it might almost be called a pre-Plateresque type. The grille work around the small windows on the ground floor, the little iron balustrades on the second, the character of the roof, all verify the Spanish implication 26189 AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY modification of the Spanish; they are constructed of hollow tiles and plaster. The main house and the chevalier cot- tage or guest house are connected by a sheltered loggia. The planting around the cottage includes excelsior palms, and other tropical growths. The trees above the roofs represent the euca- lyptus, live oak and other interesting and typical species. The residence of Mr. James Deer- ing at Miami was one of the sensations of seven or eight years ago, The architects were Mr. F. Burrall Hoff- Re eter oa man, Jr., and Mr. Paul Chalfin, but MRE. M8. MUCHMOBE: Devor* it is. Mr. Chalfini whogeemmoenmee am MR. WELLINGTON MORSE’S HOME : ss : At Pasadena. ‘This detail and that of the home of Mr. nitely associated with its exuberance. J. P. Jefferson are given as examples of the picturesque- ° ' : ness of the Plateresque feeling as simplified to American In the article which was published preference against a California background on it in Town & Country it was en- titled “A Florida Echo of the Glory of Old Venice,” and the photographs were referred to as “the outward and visible sign of the persistent and magnificent rumors which have been rippling through artistic circles for many months past.” As has been said, it was a sensation. Everywhere everyone seemed to know some- one who was doing something for the Deering house. ‘There were tales of weeks spent by expert fingers in constructing a grandly proportioned tassel to hang over a grandly proportioned bed; of ancient embroideries that were being lifted from their tattered silken foundations to be applied with infinite patience and skill to modern fabrics. The rumors of this Venetian splendor which was to glorify the already glorious blue waters of Florida were endless. As a final exclamation point to its magnificence Mr. John Singer Sargent requested permission to paint in the splendor of its Italian shadows. Our several illustrations give some slight idea of its motivation. L 262 ] AMERICANS HOMES OF TO-DAY As the illustrations intimate, water has entered very largely into the theme; it has been important to the color and to the determining of the architectural character. Perhaps it was a small island, lying between two sea arms developed into the symmetrical curves of the lower terrace, which start- ed the real magnificence of the effort. For the very location of this small island and its genuine value as a break- water demanded individual treatment. Seeing in it some resemblance to a great barge, it was Mr. Chalfin’s fancy to mount it with monumental figures REGINALD D. JOHNSON, Architect = ae : MR. J. P. JEFFERSON’S HOME Calder, at the bow, to equip it with At Montecito. An example of the American version of the Spanish enthusiasm for making the doorway the fountains and planting and pyramids jewel feature of the residence and leaving the walls plain. The planting is American by the American sculptor, A. Stirling and gay lighting, for the evening, and then to connect it romantically with the house by a gondola which, in its lazy grace, acknowledged no speedier means of communication. This is not to say that the island was developed before the house was built, but to emphasize its inclusion in the primary scheme and to point the impossibility there would have been of arriving at any satisfactory conclusion without giving this freakish little bit of water-surrounded land serious architectural consideration. “‘Hence it stands naturally as the pro- nunciamento of the architect’s ideas—the preface to the book of the house, an- nouncing to all who wish to read the note of joyousness and freedom from art con- ventions which is so strongly expressed both in the decoration of the residence and in the planning of the estate of one hundred and twenty-five acres.””’ Glamorous words, these, but suitable. The house itself dominates the upper of two terraces overlooking the Bay of Biscayne and the open sea in the direction of the Bahamas, the lower terrace being [ 263 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY prolonged into the arms of stone already men- tioned, which terminate at one end in the yacht landing and at the other into the small tea house observed in one of the full-page _ illustrations. The upper of these ter- races is about twelve feet above the mean tide and leads to a point on the South overlooking the garden, where radiating e -" vistas, centered in the Hewitt PAUL CHALFIN, Architect garden room, have been ee planned to give minia- Swimming pool on Mr. James Deering’s estate at Miami, The ceiling fan- tasy is by Robert Chanler. It involves fish carved in bas relief and a ture pictures, which in- clude here and there a glimpse of the sparkling, jewel-like waters of the lake. On the Western facade the wide, triple allée of the drive leads straight through the woods, up a gentle slope and out towards the gates in less formal lines. On the North a long turf walk, bordered by trees, ambles past ancient sculpture to the winding of an underwood promenade. So skilfully has the estate been planned that the progress along the allée, with its low-voiced waterways hidden under ilex trees, is full of the pleasant- est surprises. The climax of the unexpected is the house itself, which has been carefully screened by the planting and which is finally reached through the iron grilles and open arcades of the first loggia. Here the sounds of water, remote and near, dropping, falling, rushing water, water in fountains, are heard, and glimpses of a gallery beneath broad, overhanging roofs give a hint of the importance of the courtyard plan. An impression of the color and texture, impossible to be gained from the [ 264 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY photographs, is given in the following description. The vestibule is of a reti- cent Empire coolness, emerald green, with dusty black on the wall, echoed by deeper blacks mingling with the cream of the marble floors. This is a French touch. Next is the library, where the impersonal grays and clear Adam yellows are vivified with a breath of orange. In contrast to its aristocratic pale tones is the darkly gleaming ob- scurity of the reception room with murky old mirrors, high silken walls with a pat- tern of palm trees rising tall and golden in a silvery green sky from a ledge-like golden base. Crossing a valuted pas- Hewitt PAUL CHALFIN, Architect THE ENTRANCE COURT One of the two Seventeenth Century marble fountains +c. from Venice used to screen the court into privacy, is through the half outdoors, so characteris- cen" in ‘the illustration, ‘The North colonnade. illus- trated on a later page is seen at the right sage of stone, carved and vermiculated, tic of many parts of the house, the great living room is reached. Here is found the grave and high textured beauty of the Renaissance as expressed in the closely ornate tapestry, in the grandeur of the velvet and embroideries, in its solemnity, emphasized by the one wall of uninter- rupted textiles, by the tall columns by Cippolino, of Fleur de Péche, and Numidian marble. Through the Eastern windows, facing the sea, the sound is heard of the waves lapping softly and ceaselessly against the long stone steps of the lower terrace. Going partly indoors again an open loggia is crossed, where severe and cool forms on the walls and vaults are enlivened by the gaiety of cushions and of bright informal willow furniture disposed among the Roman marbles, behind a sturdy system of great awnings and curtains of Venetian blue and yellow. The airy blues and golds of this loggia influence the lights and shadows of the shaded music room beyond, which is pervaded by a frivolous sort of grandeur. There are smiling busts of Cupid, exotic bits of coral, garlands on a fabulous and impossible 26a AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY painted échafaudage looking down on conscious groups. of elaborate chairs ranged in a stately formality. Beyond lies another grave room, the large dining room, glorified with tapes- tries of the most minute mille fleurette. The walls are painted in the simplest water color; the vast curtains are linen with gay silks darned in an open band of bright colors, throwing into relief the rich old chairs, the sculptured mantel, the lordly Florentine beauty of the sideboard, and the finely wrought ceiling. Through narrow gilded doors dignified progress is made to a room Hewitt PAUL CHALFIN, Architect with high walls spaced with rhapsodic THE OPEN LOGGIA Here the modern note is sounded, the wicker chairs and gay cushions mingling with the rich memories of Seven- Here a faintly tinged flood of sunlight teenth Century Venice. The airy blues and golds of this loggia influence the lights and shadows of a shaded music is gathered ina crystal vase at the cen- room beyond, each gaining by the contrast painted fantasies in coolest of colors. ter of the pattern of the floor, a vase which is often seen from across the whole house, burning like a luminary. It is composed in a spirit of romance. To mount any of the staircases of the house is an adventure. Follow the wide marble outdoor stairs from sunlight to sunlight, or slip up a dainty spiral one, with its gray green panels of smiling ornament, its shadowed landings and flattish vaults inviting the hand to delicate detail. Or pass the gilded gates to the open air break- fast room, with its serious, painted ships on the wall often shut away behind white, lustrous thin Genoese plushes with faded souvenirs of rose and blue and yellow arabesques and so find the real gold of Venice in the red and yellow marbles of the floor, the tall scarlet chairs, the shadow-searched black and gold around the mantel and the door. From the open side of the room the view is over the great parterres of the garden, down endless leagues of green coast into long, tropical sunsets. The [ 266 ] ASV ete Nee OM ES OF shO- DAY descriptions have the color and roman- tic inflection of an Arabian Night’s ad- venture. They represent Mr. Chal- fin’s pulsating enthusiasm for this creation of his and are couched in his own fervent terms. The color and the vistas and the lure of the place are seen so well through his eyes that it has been a temptation to follow his en- thusiasm at some length. Certainly there has been no more magnificently exotic building in this country, noth- ing more consistently lavish, more ex- travagantly complete than Mr. Deer- ing’s famous plaything in Florida. What response one makes to it is, pal- Hewitt PAUL CHALFIN, Architect THE NORTH COLONNADE The photograph illustrates the pictorial value of the In regard to this matter of tem- native coral rock used in the pillars and arches. Though this is one of the graver aspects of Mr. Deering’s resi- perament, it would be fascinating to dence, it maintains the note of color and buoyancy know what national spirit will be predominantly manifested in our future Ameri- pably, a matter of temperament. can building. At present, as we have said, the Mediterranean is a type exotic to an America which is still preponderately of British ancestry. With the con- stantly increasing hordes of peasants from Italy, Russia, and Central Europe, with the strong Oriental influence to which the large cities are even now subjected, it seems incredible that the country should remain representative, in its architecture (or its government) of either its British or its Dutch forefathers. It seems in- evitable that what we now call the “‘foreign’’ influence should prevail. Already we have admitted the primary colors of Scandinavian and Czecho-Slovak pottery and linens into our homes. In our slum-suburbs there is many a stucco house, swarming with Italians, built by Italians, a structure as alien to the old America as it is natural to the peasants who have erected it. Certain of our future mil- lionaires will undoubtedly work up from these various races. And then? 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E. Hewitt ie ~ as PAUL CHALFIN AND F. BURRALL HOFFMAN, JR., Architects THE TEA HOUSE ON MR. JAMES DEERING’S MIAMI ESTATE An example of lattice work architecture the origin of which is explained in one of the chapters on gardens. This is at the terminal of the South sea arm. A detail to observe with considerable pleasure in the nearer ground is the beautifully sculptured old Venetian vase surmounting one of the piers of the balustrade. The little bridge spanning the entrance to the South woods canal is a keynote to the playful character of much of the detail Photo. by M. E. Hewitt THE LILY POND ON MR. JAMES DEERING’S MIAMI ESTATE This is seen from another view, or rather, it is suggested, in the illustration shown of the Entrance Loggia. At each end of the oval court are marble gateways, This one, at the entrance to the North woods, is protected by Neptune and Flora. 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SILT, HOVaUd WIVd LY NNOW 'V SH THYVHO “UW AHO HONACISHAY pouty ‘MUNZIN NOSIGGYV figunog yp unogz fo fisajimop uauIy10M paysodur £q youog weg 3S9A\ IwoU opeUl oie ‘AzI[BIOT OY} JO BINJoITYOIB Seq JY} YPM poyeloosse Suru0v0q o1¥ YOIY ‘100 94} JO SOI} ey, “WuoWSueIe oATOVIYeE ue sfemye ‘ydeiJojoyd 943 UT UMOYS ISSO] oY} JO [PAI] BY} MOTAG Joo OMY SI 4 “soryed ay} JO oUO OWUT pue ueve00 sy} uo susdo woos Sururp styy, “10}deyd sty} UT AaT[TVO UMOYS SI YORog Weg ye sUI0Y S,Ao[SsuTY “AJ JO JOL1a}x9 Vy} JO MITA V HANWOH SAWISONIM NOAT AWTIIM “UW AO WOOU ONINIG WHHL fyunop Pp umoyz fo fsazin0p powyory “TANZIN NOSIGCCV Jayres Arnquad & st 9fqez ayy, “Aanqusd yyUseqYySray ‘ystuedg ore sayeyo oy], ‘punosZyoeq oy} 0} 9[qQe}INS YW SoyeUI YOIYM soUNPUr Yst -100W PY} JO 9vI} B PUNOJ SI JoJUVW 9Y} UL ‘UseIs pue onyq ‘yuId ‘UMOAG JO SopeYs UI So[I} PoeTO[OOTAvA UT SI IOC OYJ, “1OTOD ut yno poyord ssurppou yourd yyIM “Iepoo st Woo SuTUIp oy} Ul YIOMpooM oy], ‘aWOY YORog Wye, SI} Ul WOOL SULA] oy} JO WATS OSTe ST UOTJeIYSNTTT UY HONUCGISHU SNNOW ‘'V SHIUMVHO “UW AO WOOU DNINIG AHL V6 COO MiQ NS poyypoiy “WANZIW NOSIGAV fiuyun0pn 7p umoz fo fisajzunop = ~ CHAPTER TWELVE TH Ran GARDE IN Prat Re le OUNaEs THE more one considers the subject of gardens, the more one is inclined to believe that the first act of the anthropoid ape after descending from the tree tops to the solid soil, was to construct a garden; the second to write a book about it. While it has been pointed out in earlier chapters that there have been only four outstanding codifications of the architectural orders in twenty-five centuries, there have been dissertations on the whole and complete theory of gardening in that time too numerous to mention. The Roman list, for instance, starts with Cato the Censor, at the time of the Punic Wars, and runs through Varro, Columella, and the two Plinys to Rutilius Palladius at the time of the downfall of the Roman Empire of the West. We are in a position to reconstruct Egyptian, Grecian, and Roman gardens almost with more certainty than any other feature of their lives. And, apparently, the only outdoor amusement they had beside fighting in the Dark Ages was garden design. Like anything else with any intellectual content, however, our own theories of gardens start in Italy with the Italian Renaissance. All that has been said in previous chapters about the manner in which Italian creative skill impressed the outlanders from the North in matters of architecture applies with absolutely parallel intensity to the matter of gardens. And the streams of influence followed the same course, to England, via France. On their way, however, these streams of influence were greatly modified by local conditions and by local handlers, so much so that the biggest name in connection with the history of gardening is not Italian but French, that of André Le Notre, the designer of Vaux Le Vicomte, Chevalier of the Order of St. Michael, Counsellor of the King (Louis XIV), Controller General [ 284 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY of His Majesty’s Buildings and of the Gardens, Arts and Manufactures of France. Louis XIV made him everything that the grand manner permitted a gardener to be made; and to this day gardening on a grand scale is usually some modification or another of the Le Notre theory. In the following century the English contributed a theory of their own to gardening, the so-called landscape school with which are associated the names of William Kent, Lancelot Brown, Humphrey Repton, and Sir William Chambers. The theory of these gentlemen was that a garden was perfect only when it imitated a romantic landscape painting. While England’s architecture has probably had no influence upon the Continent, the English land- scape school of gardening had an enormous popularity, reaching even into Austria, Prussia, and Russia, before its wave of influence subsided. There are, of course, two ways of looking at gardens, from the house outward or from surrounding nature inward—as an extension of the house archi- tecturally into the landscape, or as a breaking of the landscape in waves of more and more conscious cultivation upon the house. The garden is, of course, the liaison between the house and nature; which of these two elements should be the more important constitutes the difference in the two schools of garden design. That point of view which considers the garden from its architectural aspect as a pro- longation of the main axes of the house itself outside, treated architecturally, with considerable stonework and sculpture is represented by the Italian school and Le Notre. The opposite attitude which would consider the house as a hillock dropped in the midst, so far as such a thing could be managed, of wild and untrammeled nature, is the English landscape school. While architectural styles have so well taken definite form that they may fairly well be codified into easily recognizable separate styles and chapters, gardening of to-day in America is by no means so easy to define. It might rather be said to be based upon a knowledge of the existence of both these theories of design together with innumerable modifications, adaptations, interminglings, and coalescings thereof, together with memories of the medieval walled garden which we know best through its English Elizabethan form. A discussion of these historic precedents will serve better than anything else the purpose of indicating the esthetic principles which animated their first producers and the suitability of these principles to modern purposes. ee saiy I AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY As the amount of illustrative material available is large the discussion of gardens is divided into two parts, this chapter being concerned more with the French and English manner and the succeeding chapter with the Italian. One of the pleasantest features of modern gardening is the intimate walled garden immediately attached to the chief assembling room of a house, the library, or sitting room which is most frequently in use. Probably nothing which arises to satisfy a perfectly normal human wish for entertainment needs a historic prece- dent. We do not eat wheat and meat to-day because the ancient Egyptians did. Any garden constructed within rectangular walls in a necessarily limited space, with no vistas, must tend to small geometrical beds of symmetrical design with brilliantly colored flowers as a relief from the presence of stone or brick. Allowing for differ- ences of temperature and climate that description applies to an Egyptian garden of the time of Tut-ankh-Amen, the Roman garden of Pliny, and English gardens of the period which I, in this book, have referred to as Elizabethan Picturesque. At that time domestic architecture was still conceived along military lines where space was valuable and where gardens might be admitted to relieve the deadly monotony of a garrison commander’s wife, but had to be tucked away in some corner of the building in very restricted space. The mental thought back of the walled garden is, somewhat in the Robert Louis Stevenson quotation given earlier, furtive, or if you prefer a friendlier rendering of the same feeling, intimate. And it is most appropriate with the picturesque types of architecture, Elizabethan or Modern. This kind of gardening came to its perfection before the other styles of architecture which are now more common, those of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, with their final abandonment of the fortress tradition and their enormous expansion of the house architecturally into the surrounding countryside. There is one feature of the intimate garden which is perhaps not sufficiently appreciated in America to-day. As the intimate garden, in its nearest approach to us, is of Gothic origin, it is much more susceptible than any other form for the intensive cultivation of highly complicated and bizarre developments. The touch of quaint- ness is entirely permissible. The medizval prototype of the walled garden was vivid with color in a way our more sober modern eye would probably repudiate. The low-lying beds were surrounded by wooden balustrades, gaily painted and gilt, L 286 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY with the posts surmounted by heraldic beasts, all violently colored. They also used to hang gilt bird cages and little panels of colored glass in sunny spots so that their flashing and twinkling would enliven the whole enclosure. They even, though this sounds incredible, gilded their fountains and sun dials. The progress of garden design in England does not altogether parallel the progress of domestic architecture. The formal house was perfected in England during the Hanoverian dynasty from 1714 to 1830. The formal garden, based on Le Notre, was developed between the Restoration in 1660 and the middle of the Eighteenth Century, when it was succeeded in fashionable favor by the purely English landscape school. Le Notre’s greatest single monument, the gardens of Vaux Le Vicomte, were complete in 1661 and he was invited to England by Charles II in 1669 to reconstruct the gardens of Hampton Court. Which leads us, properly, to a consideration of the Italian urge in French garden design which culminated in Le Notre. The first important French gardens to be laid out on recognized Italian lines were those that Francis I built at Fontainebleau at the beginning of the Sixteenth Century. When Henry IV was resident at that castle he employed Francini, an Italian designer, to introduce additional Italian features. When Catherine of Medici laid out the garden of the Tuileries in the latter part of the Sixteenth Century and when Marie of Medici laid out the Luxembourg some years later, they were consciously modeled after the Medici villas at Pratolino and Castello near Florence and after the Boboli Gardens adjoining the Pitti Palace. The Luxembourg is con- sidered one of the earliest instances in France where a palace and garden were considered as one whole design—which is the basis of the whole Italian theory. André Le Notre was born in Paris in 1613, the son of one of the gardeners employed by Marie of Medici. When Fouquet, the peculating General of Finance of Louis XIV, entered upon his ill advised scheme of building a chateau to surprise his royal master, Le Notre was the man to whom the designing of the gardens was entrusted. As this place, Vaux Le Vicomte, was the first great triumph of the Le Notre style, and is even more characteristic of its creator than Versailles (which has too much the character of a public building to be comprehended as a unit), it is worth while to quote a description of Le Notre’s work which we borrow from 237 AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY Sir Theodore A. Cook’s “Twenty-five Great Houses of France’’: “Around the build- ing spread the unending acres of a formal pleasure ground. Nature, almost as far as the eye can reach, has been subdued, corrected, measured by the hand of man. Discreet ponds, lined with clipped hedges, make a mirror for the sky in calculated spaces. Obedient river gods, with their attendant nymphs, stand ready to pour out their never failing urns. Clusters of cherubs hold aloft baskets of never fading flowers. ‘The very divinities themselves, in attitudes of cold. and silent expectation, seem like stone courtiers in some Versailles Olympus, whose protec- tion is no longer needed by the great ones of the earth. One stairway only, guarded by carved hounds upon each side, moves upwards into the unknown, and leads you to a mysterious glade of woodland where the scattered Termes peep out as though afraid to lose their freedom if they beckoned you away. Save for this one spot, save for this single artifice of contrast, the ordered landscape is completely subjugated to its role of decoration. The distances are but perspectives. The far off forest serves but as a background for the chosen scene.” Vaux Le Vicomte sent its owner to prison but it made the fortune of Le Notre, who went from there to the construction of another gigantic garden scheme at Chantilly and later at Versailles. Versailles has for so long been a tourist’s focal point, a historical monument of France, that, with the best intentions, it is impos- sible to consider it as an example of domestic architecture; and its gardens are so parklike in effect upon an American that it is almost impossible to dissociate it from its museum aroma. It is only fair to state in this place, however, that Versailles, and not Vaux Le Vicomte, is officially considered Le Notre’s greatest triumph. As Le Notre has come to be the name of a style rather than of an indi- vidual, a grouping and a background for the display of ingenuity, not only of the art of garden design but in sculpture and architecture, it is worth while to insert here a quotation from H. Inigo Triggs’ monumental “Garden Craft in Europe” which analyzes the La Notre motive in the voice of authority: “Besides the immense garden schemes at Vaux, Chantilly and Versailles, Le Notre, in the course of his long and busy life, laid out gardens over the whole of France and established a standard and tradition of the garden design in the grand manner which were accepted as a matter of course throughout Europe. Plans sufhcient to fill several [ 288 ] AEN GCAN. HOMES OF “TO-DAY — MRS. GUY FAIRFAX CARY’S GARDEN AT JERICHO, LONG ISLAND This is a view from the lawn of the intimate little garden which is of special interest to the owner. At the right is the living room porch, a remembrance of the delicate iron porches of the Adam period, which is equipped with a large table for handling flowers. At the left are the two little garden loggias which flank the end walk and tie the composition together. A view of the interior of this garden appears later in the chapter volumes exist of the work he carried out and either he or his pupils were at some time or other engaged upon nearly all the important estates in France. Le Notre was invited by Charles II to come over in person to lay out Hampton Court garden, but although he did not accept the invitation he probably inspired the design, which was put into the hands of French gardeners. It is said that he also made plans for Greenwich and St. James’s Parks. At any rate, for the next half century, his style was paramount in England and his influence spread over the whole of Europe. His pupils became court gardeners in Russia, Austria, and Germany whilst his methods were even adopted in the Sultan’s gardens at Constantinople.” No wonder that his influence is still powerful in America to-day. There are three noticeable detail features of the Le Notre style which should be mentioned; the use of water, the perfection of trellis work, and the codification of the planting in a parterre. The parterre is, of course, the large central flat space in any formal garden scheme which is the focal point of the decoration and from which all lines of perspective diverge. It is almost invariably arranged so that it is sunk below some important walk or assemblage place, a terrace or, at least, a long [ 289 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY chamber with large window spaces. The planting therein assumes the form of low-lying flower beds of elaborate design, arranged to be seen more or less as a unit from some point of advantage on a higher level. For what Le Notre did with the flower planting in the parterre we again quote from Triggs: “The parterres of Le Notre’s gardens are lighter and more refined than those of the previous century, animal forms being omitted and an attempt made to imitate embroidery patterns. Parterres were divided into four kinds: Parterres de broderie, in which the boxed line imitated embroidery—these were considered the finest; Parterres de comparti- ment, which consisted of a combination of scrolls, grass plots, knots and borders for flowers; Parterres a l’anglaise, consisting of grass plots all of one piece or cut into shapes and surrounded by a border of flowers—this was considered the most unattractive kind of parterre; Parterres de piéces coupées, differing from the others in that all the parts composing them were in symmetrical shapes of boxwork and that they admitted neither grass nor embroidery.” How it echoes the times! | It was Le Notre, also, who was first, or among the first, to raise trellis work from a utili- - tarian position to an arch- itectural: dignity of its own. Again quoting from Triggs: “At first it was used only to train espalier branches, then to separate the paths of thickets and the different parts of the vegetable garden; these Photos. by M. E. Hewitt TENNIS COURT were its principal uses On the estate of Mr. and Mrs. Harold Irving Pratt at Glen Cove, Long 2 * Island. ‘These views of the turf and clay courts are characteristic ‘of the until the days of Louis English and American intrusion of sports into the garden plan XLV whenties ihe oui 4 ance of Le Notre and J. H. Mansart treillage began to form a distinct and separate part of garden craft. The use of treillage became very popular. Summer houses, [ 290 J ANE RGAINS HOMES OF TO-DAY salons, gateways, galleries and, indeed, any architectural feature could be easily imi- tated in treillage, and fromits lightness of construction and cheapness it is often more suitable than solid stone or stucco.”’ Trellis work on the Le Notre idea is an architec- tural feature in itself, such things as the classic temple of love, done under Le Notre’s direction at Chantilly, are not intended to be a support for vines. Finally, a perfectly Le Notre garden contains elaborate provision for the decorative use of water, either still, as mirrors for sky and foliage, or in motion in cascades or fountains as a center of attraction in itself. In this one feature the French designers followed their Italian originals more closely than in any other. The money that Louis XIV, XV and XVI and their courts spent on water works, of the kind they still turn on for the tourists at Versailles and St. Cloud, has, so far as we know, never been figured; but the gross total would certainly stagger the imagination if it could be found out. When the garden grand manner of Le Notre was translated to England it suffered the same modifi- cations, the same casting into British molds of thought, that the archi- _tectural manner of Louis XIV received. Generally speaking there was a re- duction of scale. In France the Le Notre method was the play- thing of royalty; in Eng- land it was subject to the more limited income of TENNIS COURT private owners. The im- Which is associated in the garden design with the tennis court on the oppo- site page. There are no classic prototypes of what provision should be portance of stonework made for outdoor sports, These fit attractively into the landscape and sculpture in the gen- eral scheme became minimized and the importance of the natural background and of the yew hedge emphasized. The same sense of livability which so radiates from (20 ty AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY the Georgian house is to be felt in the English adaptation of the Le Notre formal garden. In England such a garden was made for the owner to admire; in France for Fouquet or Louis XIV to give a féte champetre in. Fouquet issued six thou- sand invitations for his own unlucky house warm- hoto, by M. E. Hewitt ing. In America the only DR. JAMES HENRY LANCASHIRE’S GARDEN even passable imitations A little walled garden which was hewn out of solid rock at Manchester-by- the-Sea. This overlooks Gloucester Harbor, the waters of which can be of the Le Notre method seen through the trees ei of Le Notre in the original manner, are to be found in public parks, though of translations of the English adaptations of Le Notre there are numerous examples, usually reduced, however, to the parterre alone, with a bare minimum of accessory stonework, sculpture and avenues of approach. Our formal garden architecture is used merely to make the liaison between the house and a natural landscape. The illustrations to this chapter have been selected to show those gardens in America in which, generally, the planting is predominant rather than the archi- tectural arrangement. ‘The precise place of some of them in the whole scheme of garden consciousness, as we have the same to-day in this country, can be better appreciated after a reading of the next chapter, where the tentative mingling of theories, the combination of modified Le Notre formalism with the English land- scape school, plus the sudden revival of the walled garden, are discussed more fully. The first illustration is that of Mrs. Guy Fairfax Cary’s personal walled garden showing the architectural connection between the garden and the house. Ona later page appears an interior view. One of the photographs of Mrs. Cary’s garden in this chapter gives a view Zo zal AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY looking into the West garden from the lawn. The living room porch is shown at the right. This is practically part of the intimate little garden which is the special inter- est of the mistress of the house. The living room porch itself is a remem- brance of the very deli- cate iron porches of the Adam period, the. chief ™. E. Hewitt DELANO & ALDRICH, Architects MR. OTTO H. KAHN’S GARDEN riumph of which lies in t P : This is a very charming and informal retreat which is in contrast to the * ._ more formal garden treatment shown in other photographs of this Long the harmonious and nat Island estate. It is, of course, quite French ural connection which it achieves between the house and the garden. With the flower beds at each side and the grass center of the garden com- ing practically to its door- way, its union with the outdoor world is an ac- G.Oufl DP laiecinee Ceniea cit. Equipped with a large table, the porch answers “avs 2%. to the requirements of a_ Se? oy 2 &- a _¥| flower room. Here Mrs. Gillies HISS & WEEKES, Architects THE HENRY R. REA ESTATE At Sewickley, Pennsylvania. A very handsome version of the parterre in a modified form. It will be noted that it does not belong to any of the : h l ff f four parterre styles sponsored by Le Nétre inates the color etiects for Lazo =| Cary attends to all her cutting and here she orig- AMERICAN HOMES OF} S02 DAeYy the four beds of her garden-between-walls, in which the flowers are changed every few weeks and in which she does practically all the work herself. Below this gar- den, on the intermediate terrace, is the rose garden, access to which is gained by attractive little double circle stairs. Below that again is a very long garden con- taining a motive in the shape of an old English casting pool, where in the old days they had a platform at one end from which they used to practise casting flies for trout. The two garden loggias shown in the illustration flank the end of the West garden and serve to tie the composition attractively together. The steps into Pi 8d gO Courtesy of Town & Country CROSS & CROSS, Architects A RESIDENCE AT FAR HILLS, NEW JERSEY This is the library wing of a very delightful house of the informal type shown in the chapter on the Modern Picturesque. Here the setting in the trees emphasizes its Colonial tendency. ‘These trees were all trans- planted and the fine old box was moved from a Long Island garden [ 294 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY the garden were made from old metropolitan sidewalks, broken up into proper size and into interesting shapes. Mr. John D. Rockefeller’s garden at Pocantico Hills has been developed on broad landscape lines and provides interesting terminal motives embracing hand- some views, with sufhicient architectural detail to establish the right of a famous piece of ancient sculpture in an appropriate setting to a place on the grounds. It is also concerned in establishing a background for modern sculpture, in connection with which George Grey Barnard’s colossal ““Adam and Eve’’ is most recently remem- bered. Another big and famous garden illustrated in this chapter is ““Blairsden,”’ Mr. C. Ledyard Blair’s estate at Peapack, New Jersey. The illustration of the main axis looking down from the orangerie to the lake gives the key to the French and Italian feeling which has been adapted for American uses, which means, of course, that its formality has been modified. 4 Photo. by John Wallace Gillies WELLES BOSWORTH, Architect MR. JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER’S JAPANESE GARDEN One of the most difficult and alien styles to translate into American terms. This has been adroitly simplified to suit the broad landscape which is one of the beauties of this estate at Pocantico Hills. A Japanese gardener assisted in the details of this garden which is about a hundred yards from the house proper [ 295 ] IJATI OY} SOIBJ YIYM SMUIpISel IY} JO JUOAJ OY} SSOIOV SWIOOI JO SdIIIS UTeU JY} WIO1f SMITA SB JNO PIX] I1¥ ST[IFT OoURIOg ye spuNOAS s.Ad]JIJayooy “A wo seysta [edioutad oy], ‘ousos yst[suy poiq-[joM *e Ysessns wey pue Aynvaq $}][ *9}e4S9 dy} Jo yUsuIdoOTIANp Vy} 0} 9J0UADY JY} SUTATS “ADATY UOSpN_T 94} spreMmo}y Suryooy, ‘yoyo odeospury [eanyzeu wv ST SI, HLVLISA SMATIAAANOOU “dG NHOL ‘UW NO poppy “HLYOMSOM SATIAM - huunog Pp umoy, fo fisazimop sofful dAY-AJUIMY JO BULYSIP B Ula} AVAUOD OF YORI sasaoy aATaM} pattnbat ‘ysty yoas AJUVAaS 0} BAY-A}ZXIS ‘suI[a asayy, “UoTpIsOduIoOD ayy Jo AJLUSIp 94} 0} ppv sulpo Uvolioury peyuerdsuvay ayy, ‘aouapisat oy} JO AaJoVAvYyD JOpNy, VY} 0} UOTZeLaL IqvatuIpe ut SAyTTeNnb snoreds v ‘AzuUstp Suldsvms v sey ‘oinysed yeulsi1o0 94} WoaZ podopasop ‘UMLT BPI IY, *YWOIFZ YYNOS VY} JO vovA19} ssvis puv UML] Udo adav_ VY} SMOYS ST, NAISOW UVAN ALVISH SAGVU UA SWIOHOIN “UW poppy ‘WIMGNIM “L NHOL popyouy odeospuvy ‘SNOSUVd IMOANVS si ees igh: sojejS po}ugQ ey} ur sumnyourd poumo azeatid ysouy oy} JO UO sey Yolg ‘AJ ‘Jo}eM JY} Ssoioe uses smof pue saodrunl jo Surjuefd usuoeds e yo ydessojoyd v st styy, “Sutpping Jo add} [eruojog pue ys[su_q oy} Joy punoasyoeq v se sudeIZ19A9 JO ONTBA 94} JO UOTpUSOdA Zulsvoriour ATyUeYsuOD vB uVeq ‘s1vok dYV] JO ‘sey soy], “1a\deyo AaT[Iv9 uv UT UALS st YnotyoouUOD ‘pyeyare,y ye osnoy [eUoOD s,jjeIg “AJ JO MOIA V ALVLISH SaLLHUd ‘d HOUOHD “UW NO SNHHUOUAA swayos odvospuv] proig 94} 0} pons you St YoIYM yey} Jo voeds poy[eM & UTYIM [BMLIPYIA SITY} UT puNogZ oq 0} ST ZI yey} UAIeYD ay} Soytaa YJ *puodaq Ajsadoad 94} Woaiz uapaes a]}}] Teuosied sty} sepnpoos [TVA oy} JO UoTyenUTWUOD ayy, ‘Yde1Sojoyd 19430 oY} JO Ao] 9Y} Ye pojoU SBLddO] Uspied OM} dy} Mozaq ysnl st yy ‘19}deyo sty} UT UOTyeAYsNTTT Surpaoeid we Uy UMOYS ST YOTYM Uspses ysa\\ 94} JO JUoWdopaAop oy} Jo zed ST STU, GNV'ISI DNOT ‘OHOINAL LV NAGUVO S.AUVO XVAUIVA AND ‘SUN peyywaiy “AdOd TIASSOU NHOL A ae . ee eS, SOTTTHD eovrrem uyor Aq ‘ojoUd yyed ay} Jo Sutueld sapioq ay} 0} uOT}e[e1 ysa}ULsvatd ayy UL “ued [eYyoIelIyed pus A[pustIy v axIT ‘spueys pue yurod JeI0J ay} opeul usaq Ayysul sey YL “ynotoauUOD ‘ppeyarey ye uepies sqyoig ‘ap UY ‘AyuTOIA oy} UT Yeo Aue ueYy AeS1e] st yy ‘read YOR yA jo dois Siq & s1eaq pue UOTIpUOD Pozaad UT st YoY ‘plo save porpuny B 19A0 ‘9013 ALIOYO BV ST UOT}eAYSNI][I IY} UT ySo1eJUT JO 19}UID OL, ALVISH S.LLAU “‘d AOUOUD “UW NO NVUHLHA V ~ Photo. by Tebbs DONN BARBER, Architect GARDEN TERRACE-OF MRS. WALDRON WILLIAMS’ HOME AT RYE The importance of the big tree is again recognized, in a more architectural obeisance to its beauty. The delight which the architect has found in the yarious levels that made the building of the house fascinating is reflected here, as is the sturdy, handsome stone contour of the residence itself JOHN RUSSELL POPE, Architect MRS. M. S. BURRILL’S ESTATE AT JERICHO This is an excellent illustration on a Long Island estate of the effectiveness of the long walk in the French manner. One of the recognized principles of the Le Nétre garden was a series of long walks with an ornamental perspective, which is, in the present instance, an architec- turally treated water cascade we de? fe ‘ tut. s s~ * Photo. by John Wallace Gillies | CARRERE & HASTINGS, Architects MR. C. LEDYARD BLAIR’S ESTATE AT PEAPACK, NEW JERSEY Mr. Blair’s estate extends over a thousand acres and is famous for the many points of interest it presents in the way of landscape and garden architecture. The long walk illustrated is in the Italian manner. The vista is one looking away from Peapack, over an ornamental and practical private lake on the grounds. Mr. James A. Greenleaf is the landscape architect er Photo. by M. E. Hewitt DELANO & ALDRICH, Architects THE ROBERT S. BREWSTER ESTATE AT MT. KISCO The photograph gives a very good illustration of the classical temple on a hillock of which the English have been fond through all their garden periods. The straight walk marks it as derived from the time when they were still under the influence of Le Notre. The steps through the woods are another pleasant English feature a © s we 5: se oe Ve aS B Xo be WALKER & GILLETTE, Architects Photo. by M. E. Hewitt MR. WILLIAM R. COE’S HOUSE AT OYSTER BAY The long walk here is given a rather simple treatment in character with the feeling of the house, which is in the spirit of the early Tudor. There is no architectural emphasis but it is consistent with the ideal which has domi- nated all of the landscape; that of keeping the house and grounds intact, as one complete idea CHAPTER THIRTEEN THE GARDEN—PART TWO In the preceding chapter the French theories of garden design to and through Le Notre were considered. This French period was preceded by the Italian and succeeded by the English, an examination of both of which is in order. After nearly a century of unquestioning acceptance of the theories of Le Notre, the English suffered one of those violent esthetic reactions which are the delights and curiosities of mental life. Every once in so often the conventional, the formal, the academic, become distasteful over night, as it were, with volcanic suddenness; and a new school is initiated, the chief principles of which are a negation of the school which immediately preceded it. |The post-impressionistic, vorticist and sphericist movement through which painting went twenty years ago in France and this country is exactly typical of what happened in England in garden design about the middle of the Eighteenth Century. At that time the cry was, as it invariably is in such movements, centered about a return to nature. In the case of the English garden reaction of the middle of the Eighteenth Century, it also centered around the personality of four men, William Kent, Lancelot Brown, Humphrey Repton, and Sir William Chambers. What these four men stood for in the matter of garden design is so ably expressed in a chapter from Mr. Triggs’ book, “Garden Craft in Europe,” previously mentioned, that we will again make a quotation: “As time went on Kent entirely left the formal garden and substituted for it the landscape style. ‘Nature abhors a straight line,’ was one of his ruling principles and he accordingly set himself to destroy the grand avenues left by former generations and to make his paths wind aimlessly about in all directions, their destination always concealed by an artfully placed clump of [ 306 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY bushes. The ornamental sheets of water were either swept away altogether or converted into artificial lakes fed by winding streams and with miniature water- falls. The height of absurdity was attained when he planted dead trees in Kensing- ton Garden ‘to give the greater air of truth to the scene.” The most popular of all the landscape gardeners was Lancelot Brown, Kent’s collaborator and pupil, better known as Capability Brown from a habit he had of expatiating on the ‘capabilities’ of any place he was asked to improve. His first attempt at designing was in 1750, when he constructed an artificial lake at Wakefield Lodge for the Duke of Grafton. The formation of artificial lakes was a strong point in his design and one upon which he prided himself. “Thames! Thames! thou wilt never forgive me,’ he was over- heard to exclaim when lost in admiration of one of his pet schemes. Brown died in 1783 and was succeeded by Humphrey Repton who was the first to assume the title of landscape gardener, ‘Because,’ he said, “the art can only be advanced and perfected by the united powers of the landscape painter and the practical gar- ep Mlk dener. The last of the quartette was Sir William Chambers, who has earlier been quoted as the author of a book on the architectural orders and who was for a time in charge of the royal gardens. In Sir William Chambers is best expressed the very extraordinary British revolt against formalism which found its most perfect fulfillment in the Victorian Gothic movement of a later generation. All of the various manifestations of Gothicism in England at the end of the Eighteenth and during the first two-thirds of the Nineteenth Century had one idea in common; that anything would do in art, architecture and literature provided it was not modeled on classic models or Renais- sance derivative. The whole movement has been discussed in previous chapters on architecture but it took a peculiar individualistic shape in Chambers’ work. In 1772 he published his “‘A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening” which highly inter- ested and excited his contemporaries. The practical upshot of his book and his theory was that no English garden felt itself complete unless, dropped somewhere casually in the midst of its landscape effects, there was a Chinese pagoda, a Mohammedan mosque, or a section of the Moorish Alhambra at Granada. The famous pagoda, still standing in Kew Gardens, was erected by him in 1761. If anybody wishes to moralize on the futility and vanity of human ideals a complete ee Tes AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY example could be obtained by the realization that the great quadrilateral of English landscape gardeners regarded the long lines of clearing in woodland or of special planting verging from one point, preferably the center of the main parterre, lines specifically designed to give reposeful dignity, and an impression of vast space, with precisely the same esthetic nausea with which we now regard their own dead trees and pagodas. A still greater joke, especially on Le Notre, is the fact that towards the end of the Eighteenth Century le jardin anglais became as popular in France as Le Sport, biftek and rosbif are to-day. Being proselytes, the French became more English than the English themselves in the matter of gardening; and erected some curiosi- ties which outdid the most bizarre efforts of Sir William Chambers. France, intel- lectually, at that time, was just ripe for the pseudo-pastoral, under the influence of Rousseau and the back to nature movement to which city civilization is periodically subject, a purely literary revulsion, coupled with a fashionable fad, to lead French taste into admiration not only of the English theory of gardening but into the erection of fictitious rustic groups designed as playhouses for the nobility. Marie Antoinette hired an English gardener who enriched Trianon with a pagoda, a Chinese aviary, a theater, a temple of Diana, Turkish fountains, and a practicable dairy farm. Trianon had been preceded by the erection at Chantilly of a group of thatched cottages, externally as nearly like the habitations of peasants as might be. “One farmhouse of modest exterior contained a richly decorated salon and boudoir and a dining hall with ceiling painted to represent foliage that one might fancy oneself in a dense forest; other thatched cottages were devoted to the billiard room, library, etc.”’ As the apex of calculated triviality to which the English type of landscape gardening may logically descend, Mr. Triggs quotes from a project, published in 1784, describing a prospective garden of the time: “Like the Chinese gardens its perfection was to consist in the number and diversity of its scenes and in the artful combination of their parts, planned to suit every mood of the owner. Arriving by the grand avenue we find the chateau placed in the midst of the garden, with a path leading to the village, a tiny Gothic ruined chapel and a group of cottages, a pyra- mid overlooking a pond, a fishing lodge, dairy and sheepfold. Hard by is an Italian L 308 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY vineyard overlooked by a temple appropriately dedicated to Bacchus; as a great contrast the visitor passed from this joyous spot to one more serious, the aisle of tombs, with monuments dedicated to the great dead of all times, virtuous citizens, dead or even living friends; this scene, we are told, would always evoke emotion . then on to the Dutch garden, formally laid out with tiny canals and a temple of Venus, decorated with shells and coloured spar in the usual Dutch manner. This garden was to be surrounded by roses and to be as gay as possible in order to form the greater contrast to the next scene which was to represent a fearsome desert and ought not only to offer a spectacle of sterility but one which by means of ruined habitations, the débris of burnt houses, trees overturned by the tempest and caverns inhabited by monsters, is calculated to inspire sadness. It is suggested that the effect might be still further heightened by a volcano artfully constructed in imita- tion of Vesuvius, emitting smoke by means of a coal fire . . . each elevation of the house was treated in a different style to suit the garden it overlooked.”” The preceding is so absurd that did it not have the authority of quotation from the work of one occupying as recognized a position of garden literature as Mr. Triggs it would be almost impossible to admit its existence. The reductio ad absurdum of the English landscape school is a simple enough matter; the results are obviously humorous. But practically all of our public parks of to-day are constructed along lines which Lancelot Brown would himself have approved. Central Park in New York, with its curving paths leading to ficti- tiously picturesque summer houses, is a perfect example of the English landscape garden school of design. And the general theories of the landscape school still control the outline of garden design for private owners in this country, though modified, at least so we hope and feel, in the general interest of simplicity. There is still, speaking by and large, the same dislike of straight lines, of axial avenues in the garden, which we inherit from the landscape school. For the feverish desire to inflict every square yard of soil with some romantic object of attraction, Chinese, Turkish, quasi-classic or romantic, we have substituted a willingness for expanses of lawn space and for plantings of trees more or less in homogeneous clumps, instead of the collection of specimen trees which was one of the by-products of the landscape school. With this modified landscape effect has been fused a treatment near the [ 309 ] AMERICAN, HOMES OF >. TLOSDAY house along the English version of Le Notre, plus the use of walled and sunken gardens in some attractive association with the architecture of the house. While the distinction between various architec- tural styles is sufficiently rigid to become a matter of codification and of easy dis- tinction, the whole art of garden design has remained much more fluid. A house is a rather solemn undertaking, requires a great deal of thought and preliminary planning; conventions are likely to be accepted for fear of permanent disaster MELLOR, MBIGS & HOWE, Architects if they are too violently departed from. A GAZEBO In a garden it is much simpler to change In the garden of Mr. R. T. McCracken at German- ‘ ; ; town, Pennsylvania. A contribution to American a detail here, insert a statue there, incor- garden design from the Dutch school porate a trick first seen in France or in Italy, as so many of the English did in the Eighteenth Century, that the distinction between separate styles of gardens seems to blur. The most perfect composite of all, since the beginning of garden design, is quite naturally to be seen to-day in our own country. As esthetic approval is the codified opinion of those held by common consent to be in the best position to occupy the rights of an arbiter ele- gantiarum, it is obvious that if the opinion of these persons has not become codified there is no formula which may be offered as a slide rule for taste. The best that can be offered in a book such as the present one, dealing with the esthetics of the whole situation, is to point out the connotations back of each of the more easily recognizable units in the landscape garden composite of to-day and leave it to the owner’s good taste to decide which aspect of the composite seems fitting to him or to her to emphasize. The Le Notre school, as typifying the whole formal attitude towards gardening, is unquestionably the best type of garden for a large country place in the French manner and its perfect adaptability to the style is completely to be sensed in the illustrations of the Otto H. Kahn house shown [ 310 | AMERICAN HOMES OF=TO-DAY elsewhere. A similar garden treatment to a house in the picturesque manner, either Elizabethan or modern, such as the W. R. Coe place at Oyster Bay, or the Sabin place at Southampton, would be startlingly incongruous. The Elizabethan Pictur- esque building calls for a mingling of the formal and naturalistic methods on a more friendly and personal scale, the Modern Picturesque for a still further accen- tuation of the intimate note. The Colonial and English models are probably most appropriately placed when seen across a much simplified English landscape effect with formal touches and intimate gardens, English in detail, impinging upon the house walls. Beyond such a mild laying down of the law it is, in reason, impossi- ble to go. In so far as it is possible in a non-technical work, and by one who has not spent a lifetime in a study of the subject, the two main schools, the formal and the naturalistic, that which defines the garden as an extension of the architecture Photos. by Gillies THE LONG WALK DOWN TO THE HUDSON RIVER ON MR. UNTERMYER’S ESTATE These two views illustrate the value of the long walk The vista terminates in a circular landing enclosed ending in a classic form. This vista leads down from by a Greek balustrade adorned with two huge antique an upper terrace for many hundreds of feet Cippolino columns imported by Stanford White exe EG AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY of the house and that which considers it purely as an amelioration of nature, have been indicated and their poten- tialities characterized. There still remains to be considered the Italian garden. In the discussion of architecture it was pointed out that we had progressed to the point where we had become dissatisfied with accept- ing our Italian inspiration through Eng- land, via France, and had returned di- rectly to Italy for the source of some of our most attactive and, so far as we are concerned locally, newest ideas in archi- MR. J. E. ALDRED’S ESTATE tecture. Precisely this same thing has Detail of the footpath gate observed in the entrance % : composition on the opposite page. Gate designed by happened recently In garden design. It ieee imate nae wre so happens that one of the most outstand- ing garden creations of recent years, that on the estate of Charles M. Schwab at Loretto, Pennsylvania, is so thoroughly Italian Renaissance in inspiration and in physical manifestation that it might very well have been built for one of the Medici to whom Italy owes so many of her architectural and artistic monuments. Italy is the only country in which the garden of a consciously planned country gentleman’s estate was designed as an integral part of the whole scheme by the architect of the house itself. As a matter of fact one might almost say that the architect planned the house to suit the gardens which the site and wealth of the owner permitted him to build. The outstanding villas of Italy were chiefly erected during the concomitant intellectual activity and acquisition of wealth which marked the early days of the Italian Renaissance. Their erection is chiefly centered in the big families of Italy who, for one reason or another, acquired political power at that era with the consequent economic means to erect desirable country places. As the Medici family exhibit in their various members the more magnificent aspects of this period they are usually taken as typical. First and last they put up eleven 3125] 75! SREP, TWO EXAMPLES OF IRON GATEWAYS IN AMERICA Above is the main entrance of Mr. Horatio G. Lloyd at Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania. Wilson, Eyre & McIlvaine are the architects. Below is the main entrance gate of Mr. J. E. Aldred’s residence at Locust Valley. Hen W. Rowe is the architect. These gateways are examples of the well known work of Mr. Samuel Yellin of Phila- delphia, who has been awarded gold medals by various societies for his achievement AMERICAN HOMES aE task Rai ONS DELANO & A DRICH, Mremiedes RESIDENCE OF MR. BERTRAM G. WORK A very good pictorial representation of what is supposed to be one of the greatest charms of the pergola, the light and shade resulting in attractive patterns on the tiled floor Ptah s TROWBRIDGE & ACKERMAN, Architects MR. TRUMAN H. NEWBERRY’S HOME A very substantially built pergola in a severe classical design which is obviously arranged as an outdoor sitting room. The photograph shows how architectural a pergola can be [ 314 ] OF (DOD Any villas in the neighbor- hood of Florence. As the sites were generally in the foothills of the mountains with which Italy is ridged and bor- dered, the villas were placed on a hillside; and an abundant supply of water, some swiftly flow- ing mountain stream or streams, was immediate- Both the climate and the lack of a ly available. rich soil prevented the development of flower beds in the manner possible in England or America. The greenery was supplied largely by trees and by potted plants and the main dec- orative principle lay in the architectural expan- sion of the house down the hillside in a series of stairways and balus- trades intermingling with and _ bordering water, which, owing to the flow developed by the drop of the hill, was AMIE REGAN HOMES OF TO, DAY rapid enough to add a remarkable anima- tion to the picture. The first essential to a good Italian garden is a hillside; the second a plentiful supply of water. At the juncture of the house and the water course were developed the great architec- tural parterres which the French were to enlarge and to thrust out into a setting of vegetation rather than retain within stone in the Italian manner. Being pa- trons of art, with a keen, intelligent ap- preciation and interest in the enrichment ERG e FESS tend REGINALD D. JOHNSON, Architect “THE BACCHANTE” The famous bronze by Frederick MacMonnies designed originally for the courtyard of the Boston Public Library in a similar setting on the estate of Mr. J. P. Jefferson at Montecito, California ae a “THE SPIRIT OF THE WOODS” This fine bronze by Edward McCartan shows an es- sentially modern way of placing sculpture in the garden. It is on the estate of Mr. and Mrs. Harold Irving Pratt at Glen Cove, Long Island of their surroundings by art objects, the gardens of the Italian villas were adorned with sculpture in bronze and marble. Some of the finest sculpture work of the Renaissance was originally made to dec- orate an Italian garden. The gardens of the Vatican were the work largely of Bramante, the architect of St. Peter’s, and Raphael, San Gallo and Peruzzi. Each have their villa gardens assigned to them. In a way an Italian villa garden was an outdoor gallery of sculpture. L 315 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY It is exactly in the Medician spirit that Mr. Charles M. Schwab’s gardens at Loretto, Pennsylvania, have been devel- oped. Mr. Schwab has proved himself a patron of the arts in the genuine spirit of the phrase. He has not been afraid to give American sculptors a chance to prove their right to a place in the Ameri- can garden. Others are beginning to fol- low suit. It is a move that is more valu- able than any other to the encouragement of the production of fine sculpture in this country. In Mr. Schwab’s garden, as is seen in the illustrations, are several exam- ples of the neo-archaic in- fluence on modern sculp- ture as expressed through the superb craftsmanship of Paul Manship. I have never yet met the sculptor who would deny Man- ship’s mastery of his craft. Manship, more than any- one else in this country, has classic imagination. He has, of course, many followers, of which the most talented is John Gregory. Mr. Schwab is SCULPTURE IN THE GARDEN fortunate in having one of The illustrations represent two modern schools. The little figure above illus- 2 trates what might be called the baby school. The very important bronze by Mr. Gregory S most com- John Gregory below is an excellent example of the extreme reverence with 1 ka : which we are treating the classic legend plete works in his ever- L 316 | AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY green court. This is the Bronze Group of Orpheus shown in a planting of boxwood, American Arborvite, and native white Here again is an example of the classic legend, pine in one of our illustrations. treated with great reverence, but enliv- ened by the play of modern imagination. The animal figure, instinct with feeling, thrilling all over in response to the irre- sistible music, is distinctly modern and personal. Mr. Gregory is an English- man, born in London, but is justly called American as his art has matured in this ARMILLARY SPHERE SUNDIAL On Mr. Schwab’s estate. Paul Manship’s Hercules, with the conventional attributes of lion skin and club, is a feature of the blue flower garden . “THE HUNTER” By Paul Manship. A bronze which terminates the allée by the arborvite, east of the formal garden on Mr, Schwab’s estate country. If Mario Korbel is not already represented on Mr. Schwab’s estate he undoubtedly will be. Czecho-Slovakian artist who is definitely At the present time he has a very special com- He is a young a part of American sculpture. mission, to provide the sculpture for the estate of Mr. George G. Booth near Detroit, which he has helped to plan as a background for art. Edward Mc- Cartan, one of our most purely Amer- ican sculptors, deserves a place, if he has not one already, in Mr. Schwab’s [ 317 ] A VUE Rib C ANS FROME Ss Oil Om DEY garden. His “Nymph and Faun,” “Diana,” and “Girl with Goat” suite are as fine examples of the Clodion type, in bronze, as anything in this country. Sculpture is so definitely a part of Mr. Schwab’s estate at Loretto that this digression is justifiable. And the author has a great affection for the sculptors who are pro- ducing genuine art in the United States. The art in the garden planning itself lies a great deal in the fact that it has been designed with a thorough feeling for the value of its American characteristics while it reflects, in its most formal and architectural aspects, the famous gardens of the Continent. According to Robert Imlay, writing on the Schwab gardens for The Architectural Record, Loretto was founded in the last years of the Eighteenth Century by a Jesuit minister who dedicated a church there. Fr. Gallitzin was a Russian nobleman who came to this country to enter the ranks of the Society of Jesus and, at the order of Bishop Carroll of Baltimore, went into Western Pennsyl- GARDEN FIGURES BY GERTRUDE VANDERBILT WHITNEY These figures were shown in Mrs. Whitney’s retrospective exhibition at the Wildenstein Galleries and are now in the garden of her studio at Eight West Eighth Street. Mrs. Whitney’s best known recent work is the statue of “Buffalo Bill” near the Wyoming entrance to Yellowstone Park, which received the award of honor at the Spring Salon in Paris in 1924 | 818 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY vania. Loretto was on the edge of pioneer America, stretching westward from the Appalachians. In Colonial times the route of the French travelers to Canada was not far West of it. “Such was the romantic birth of Loretto, which remains, to-day, a tiny, undisturbed, unambitious American village, of Catholic atmosphere and un-English ancestry. It is thus unique, though had it not been the birthplace of Mr. Schwab, it would no doubt have continued to slumber unvexed by any undue attention from the outside world.” The entrance to Mr. Schwab’s estate is practically made through the village cross road, with its tall cross. This makes the liaison. The estate itself consists of seven hundred acres, largely old farmland, woods and pasture. The farm groups are shown in another chapter. In these, as in other details, Messrs. Murphy and Dana codperated with Mr. Leavitt, the landscape engineer. The water feature illustrated in this chapter is designed down the slope from the house terrace to the large garden. The Paul Manship Griffons are the sculptured ornaments of the pedestals at the lower basin of the cascade. Quoting Mr. Imlay: “One may gain an idea of the size of the whole from the following dimensions: The distance from the great terrace to the garden is 247 feet, the drop in level being fifty feet in this distance. The main garden is 190 feet wide and 600 feet long. The width of the lily pools which center across the garden is twelve feet. The highway is ten feet or more below the garden. The design, therefore, derives much character from these decisive changes in level.”’ Below the South Terrace is a swimming pool, which is part of the waterway just described. Then follow the cascade, through the bosquet of white pines with the Griffon basin as a midway feature, terminating finally in the lily pools which lead, through the gardens, to the Crenier Fish Fountain. The gardens, planned as a horizontal oblong with semi-circular pergolas at the east and west, in which pendant tea houses are incorporated, are divided into the Blue, Pink, Iris and White Garden with the rose gardens, bordered with turf walks, directly at the sides of the lily pool. In this garden will be found some of the sculpture in the handsome setting illus- trated. The general effect of the scheme from the house is that of an open central motive well framed in indigenous trees. It is a delightful combination of the monu- mental and the naturalistic. eat AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY Mr. George G. Booth’s estate near Detroit, already referred to in a preceding paragraph, will, when it is completed, be a work worth leaving as a memorial to the city. I do not know whether that is Mr. Booth’s intention but the serious- ness of his enterprise seems to warrant such a conjecture. The garden is not being developed as a pleasant place where sculpture merely has a pretty part. As has been stated, it is being planned as a dignified and fitting background for serious sculpture work. A special Terrace of the Arts will have important fig- ures representing the various arts. Other sculpture will be designed into back- grounds of architectural significance. All of this has been given to Mario Korbel to plan and execute. Mr. Korbel has already completed certain of the figures, but unfortunately the garden has not progressed sufficiently at the time of writing to be represented in this book. Mr. Korbel is also designing figures for Mr. Nicholas F. Brady’s garden on his estate near Roslyn. For these sculptures Mr. Korbel has sought various inspirations. He has worked on models in Prague, London, Paris, and New York. He realizes that, in Mr. Booth’s handsome scheme, he has an opportunity that few modern sculptors are granted. And he is taking it seri- ously. An English sculptor, F. Lynn Jenkins, is also designing garden statuary for the E. T. Stotesbury estate near Philadelphia. In closing this chapter on Gardens, it is as well to state that the omission of any quotation from Bacon is quite intentional. L 320 ] MITA JY} JO 1oJUId 9y} UT psov{d APBIOApe ST 9nj}V}s VY, “SIM0}UOD dy} Us}JZos pue aunjeut 0} Ayrunj10ddo ue pey sey Suryjuerd swospuey oy} UsyM poriod ao}eT YORU vB YB aye} Ueq ‘esInood Jo ‘sey }T “AIA JO yurod ay1tsoddo oy} woz jood ay} St SIyy, ‘asnoy oy} YI UoreMTOD Ss} UT [ood oY} SutMoys soueysuT yey} ut ydeasozoyd oy} ‘1oydeyD paly} oY} UL poyeazsny[E St VoUap{sot OY, HAOO NHIO LV ALVISA LLIVUd LNOdNd ASUOHD AHL NO qooptpory edeospuey “AVA INGGUD “I SUWVE FIMOH “A “W 4q ‘07040 x de BZulpaey UvTTe}] 84} JO UOTezULoTIOULY oY} JO 9[duIexs Suljso19zUI Ue St 4] *SaoR110} 94} JO 9UO UO A¥YS U19}SvI IY} JSUILSY IUDIYTUSVU pTOg YIM poJoNo[Is st ‘snuedGO Aq pepUNOULAns ‘o[qrvVU 9PIYM JO UlVPUNOJ OYULSIS SIYT, ‘aUIIO[Y UT soVTeT Wd ey} pulyeq suapiey oqo poyeiqafso oy} Ul eUusO[og Jo uYyor Aq UTeyUNOJ SnoweZ oY} JO J[IUMISoORJ oY} ST ySoLoyUT JO yuIod ureul oyJ, STIIH OOLLNVOOd LV HLVLISH SUMATIHAAHNMOOYU “d NHOL ‘UA poayypiy “HLYOMSOM SATTAM fuqunog xp unog fo fisajunog sit WELLES BOSWORTH, Architect ANTIQUE SCULPTURE IN MR. ROCKEFELLER’S GARDEN The beautiful little classic temple enshrines the Montalvo or Altoviti Venus from Florence acquired some years ago by Mr. Rockefeller. This is considered by experts to be the work of a Greek sculptor of the Roman age. It has been rubbed down and polished until it has acquired an unusual brown tone Photo. by John Wallace Gillies CHARLES WELLFORD LEAVITT, Landscape Engineer MR. CHARLES M, SCHWAB’S ESTATE AT LORETTO, PENNSYLVANIA A view of the double stairway which descends each side of the cascade into the rose garden. The photograph gives an excellent idea of the combination of the monumental and naturalistic treatment of the estate. In the middle distance is noted the bosquet of white pines each side of the cascade Mee Sa Photos. by John Wallace Gillies CHARLES WELLFORD LEAVITT, Landscape Engineer DETAILS OF THE GARDEN DEVELOPMENT OF MR. SCHWAB’S ESTATE At the top is illustrated the terminal of the long lily pond scheme seen below and on the opposite page. This is the Fish Fountain by Henri Crenier, surrounded by limestone caryatides by the same sculptor, the latter obviously inspired by the terminal figures bearing vases at the Villa Farnese at Caprarola near Viterbo, Italy te fat y Wallace Gillies CHARLES WELLFORD LEAVITT, THE EAST FOUNTAIN ON THE CHARLES M. SCHWAB ESTATE Photos. by John Landscape Engineer Bronze figure by Paul Manship which is very attractively placed in a central position just below the East Ter- race of the residence. The feeling that the figure is part of the architectural consideration of the scheme is the antithesis of the informal situation of Mr. McCartan’s fisure on its naturalistic base in its unceremonious setting on the Harold Irving Pratt estate & MURPHY & DANA, Architects CHARLES WELLFORD LEAVITT, Landscape Engineer ANOTHER DETAIL OF THE CHARLES M. SCHWAB GARDEN “Hercules Supporting the World,” the sundial seen in detail in an earlier illustration is shown in the background against a wall which is thoroughly in keeping with the Italian spirit in that it almost ostentatiously intrudes stonework and bulk into the garden. Attention should be given to the bland modeling of the fountain in the middle ground of the picture Photo. by John Wallace Gillies CROSS & CROSS, Architects GARDEN DETAIL OF THE CHARLES H. SABIN COUNTRY PLACE A number of views of the Sabin summer home at Southampton have been shown because of their admirable pic- turesque quality. A consideration of these shows the logical association which this little walled garden has with the whole theme. The sculptural vases of floral motive are happily in scale and place in their present connection May Photo. by John Wallace Gillies CARRERE & HASTINGS, Architects THE C. LEDYARD BLAIR ESTATE AT PEAPACK, NEW JERSEY The illustration shows the perfect adaptation here of the French-Italian water motive, which resembles the Allée D’Eau at St. Cloud. It is distinctly French in the treatment of the trees and in the general background. Le Notre himself probably never did anything more effective. James L. Greenleaf is the landscape architect Photos. by John Wallace Gillies WELLES BOSWORTH, Architect MR. SAMUEL UNTERMYER’S ESTATE AT YONKERS This view and that on the opposite page of the gardens of “Greystone” give an excellent idea of the ornamental use of water which has obviously been inspired by the gardens of the Italian Renaissance and yet has been exe- cuted with the classic simplicity utterly alien to the Italian Renaissance mind. The two views are given here to illustrate the treatment of both sides of the pool ¢ - ee CHARLES WELLFORD LEAVITT, Landscape Engineer WELLES BOSWORTH, Architect MR. SAMUEL UNTERMYER’S ESTATE AT YONKERS Another view of the circular colonnade, showing the swimming pool. upper and lower terrace of the garden. This marble pavilion stands between the The floor is a classic design in green, yellow and gray marbles. The lions’ heads which spout water into the pool are by Frederick J. Roth. A band of mosaic in wave design con- nects the base of the pavilion colorfully with the pool, the bottom of which is brilliant with sea animals in mosaic P2NporzUL VARY I9AVU P[NOM SULIIOY 9Y} MOUY 9M YOY Yyono} uve 9} VATS sourA SulSueyseao oy, ‘rajovreyo ut ATYBnos0y} st jood 94} Jo ssurpunodins 9y} Ul Japio UROSNy, paytpout ve Jo yuosurAo;dwa vy} AyUanbosuog ‘uoTJOUN; [eIDOS B Se SUIYZeG YA SoUIVU ITey} YUL, 0} YsIY dy} I19M SUBTUOY Iq} VSNeIEq S}Uapaveque ULMOY Jo AroUIaUI ay} ‘sfood ZuIUMIUIIMS [BANpoopYOIe [[e ATfeooeid op se q[eoor yoryM uorraed pue jood y LASSVHNVW LV ALVIS SUAZLITAd HIV “UN cy ey pouyoy ‘LLVWId “V SUTUVHO UBUITINA, BQ uosyove Aq “004d ty Yi i ayy yl F ¥ ‘ punoaSyoeq ay} ut uses ysnl s[[IE] 19}s9Y9}S9M4 94} Jo dosoyno Ayoor AdyyzeI ay} YPM pue Yoaye ur uvauRaseppay ATTerouad st yorum ‘asnoy ayy yy AuOMIIeY TeINyooyYyore ul st 7 “uA e Aq pouyep Ajaiaut wtoZ vy} Susdo aq} ur no ‘Zuorqo ayduns v st styy, ‘apsoddo 093x459 s,197}[Ng “IP UO yy} JO StsoyyTUR JoRxs oy} ST YoryM food wv smoYsS ,UIRT YOO MOT[eYS,, JO META SIGT, OOSIM “LW LV NIMC IVE MUVIO HdoSOl ‘SUN UNV “UW AO HNOH Aq "040d pouTIVy “SIUMOW UVLSIM NINVENGE atduiay, “gq Svuloyy, UOT}VAYSNI[E Jayy}O oy} UT seinSy sy} 04 uostiedmos ur uUMOYS SE d[eos dnt} $}] ‘azIS dy} JaeMp 0} spuey ‘opts Try ey dn Av 9][}}I] & Wor Udy} ‘MIA SIYT, ‘UapIeS s,uvUaz}UIs ArzUNOD 9}3a[dWOD 94} UT oANyeas ve Jo YUsUIdOJBAVp UedTIoMTY ATTeoTdA} ysouN sty} JO ssouayo[duiod oy} JO vapl Ue BATS 0} B[QISSod st Pt SurjJoS OoSTY “PAL B OF YWOPLOUL satynveq sy} Sureaysnq{I Jood SurumumtmMs sty} JO SMoIA SuTOKy osoy} uy UAISMAUE 'S LYUAAOU ‘SUW GNV ‘UW AO ALVLISH AHL NO IOOd ONIWWIMS speypory “HOIUGTIV ¥ ONWIUG WOH “A “W 4q ‘o}0Ud 3 Sas ~~ Dene Bose Ayrorduys poouryeq s}f ul uevolroury Ay[enzow st ynq JUIoe USToL10J YYSI[S v sey uUoTysoduod oy, ‘1ajdeyo snorasid oy} UL UMOYS SeM YoY 0} Yovordde ureut oy} ‘opduis} sy} 0} Sulpeo] Yes Suoy ssyjouv Burpeoaos ‘food ay} Jo Suroetd oy} pue punois -youq ay} 0} uaaTs usaq Sey YIM UOTZeAeprsuod [nJorvo Ar9A ay} pusysitduos 0} Apunz10ddo ue sapraoad ynq apvos todoad oy} A[UO JOU SIATS MOTA SILT, UALSMAU 'S LUAGOU ‘SUN GNV ‘UW AO ALVLSA AHL NO TOOd ONINWIMS speyyory “HOIUGIV ¥ ONVIEd MOH “A “W 4q ‘OV0Ud CHAPTER FOURTEEN FARM GROUPS AND INCIDENTAL BUILDINGS Ar TER the great house, the outbuildings. Nowadays these tend more and more to be a garage and a superintendent’s cottage. And for the architectural treatment of these the rule is very simple—a development in a minor key of the chords struck in the main building. In this chapter, for example, we show such buildings in the Mediterranean, the neo-classic French, the French manorial, and the Modern Picturesque methods, all buildings in exact harmony to their main structures. They are included here rather to round out the text than because of any special architectural or esthetic reasons. The only one about which anything in particular may be said is the garage to the Sabin place at Southampton through which the entrance road to the main house runs and which, in itself, is a very striking and effective bit of modern picturesque architecture. When we enter the question of farm groups, however, the situation is much more complicated. Nothing marks more clearly the difference between the Seven- teenth and Eighteenth Centuries and the Twentieth than the disappearance of the necessity for what amounted to a small village around and dependent upon every big country mansion. Practically all the food supplies were raised locally and were handled from birth until their appearance upon the table as an omelette, a pancake, a sausage, or a roast, by people who were the servants of the great house, and in appropriate buildings for very special tasks. Every house of sorts had its stables, its barns, its piggeries, its sheepfold, its hen run, its smoke houses, its enormous storage spaces for the offspring of these industries, and even its brew houses. That was before the birth of modern transportation methods and the development of the package system. ‘Telephoning in the morning to the nearest grocer for the evening’s dinner necessities is a comparatively recent innovation. L 336 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY The practical necessity for surrounding a big mansion with dependent cottages and outbuildings is as nonexistent now as the feudal grouping of small houses under the protecting walls of a castle. When one undertakes nowadays to revive this system it is done in the light of a conscious and very expensive luxury. They tell a story of Paderewski years ago in Poland, long before the war, and in a country where farm labor, by comparison with American cost, is negligible, which illus- trates the point in question. Wishing to do something very nice for a visiting opera singer, he asked her whether she would rather have a bunch of asparagus grown on his estate or a diamond necklace, adding that they both cost about the same. A real number one yacht is considered about the most expensive hobby in which a rich man can indulge. That is a great popular mistake. One could sup- port comfortably several yachts out of what it costs to be a gentleman farmer in the grand manner. In spite of all these handicaps there are several very notable farm develop- ments constructed in recent years of which we show some of the most outstanding in the following illustrations. One of the best known is undoubtedly ‘Surprise Valley Farm’ on the Arthur Curtiss James estate at Newport, Rhode Island. The James place, while only a mile and a half from the center of Newport, comprises a hundred and twenty-five acres, mostly Rhode Island granite. In 1915 Mr. James, who is the owner of a prize herd of Guernsey cattle, decided to get rid of his New Jersey farm and bring the Guernseys to Newport. The moving was seized upon by Mr. James as the reason for erecting what is to-day not only one of the great show spots of Newport but one of the most unusual groups of farm buildings in America. It was approached in precisely the right mood. Both the spirit of the undertaking and the background were weighed and considered. It was not a house that was to be put up, something which had become as conventionalized as the clothes one may wear upon any given occasion, but it was, in essence, a village that was to be created, not for serious economic purposes but for recreation and amusement. In doing a thing like this both owners and architects can swim out beyond the guide ropes and disport themselves as their fancy wills. In this par- ticular case, led, perhaps, by the character of the native stone and the peculiar resemblance, if one let oneself down into the little gullies of the James’ estate, to ieSSirel AMERICAN HOMIES OF TOs DeAgy the secluded rocky pastures of the Swiss mountains, the general scheme of a Swiss Village, centering around a miniature common, was decided upon. The word Swiss needs a little explanation. Situated where four of the chief European nations, France, Italy, Austria, and Germany, converge, there are as many different Switzerlands as there are surrounding peoples. There is French Switzerland, German Switzerland, the Tyrol or Austrian Switzerland, and the Italian Switzerland—not in nationality, but in general culture, habits of living, and archi- tecture. Although the Swiss are a perfectly united nation, there is no Swiss lan- guage and the conductors on the through expresses warn you to get aboard in three languages, French, German, and Italian. When we ordinarily speak of Switzerland we mean Teutonic Switzerland, the Switzerland of Oberammergau, of wood carving and yodeling, and of Swiss chalets, that most Japanese of all Euro- pean architecture. A thing of over-ornamented, top-heavy wood which makes one think irresistibly of picture postcards and cuckoo clocks. There is another Switz- erland of totally different character lying on the Italian side of the Alps, where the buildings look as if they had been hewn out of granite and resemble nothing so much as a series of two-fisted, medieval fortresses grouped casually together for protection against attack. The buildings are constructed crudely, heavily, and very solidly of roughly cut rock taken from the neighboring hillside. Those Swiss who do not live upon the tourist, or wood-carving, derive their living from cattle and their by-products, and these Italo-Swiss buildings have for centuries been molded to house cattle and their attendant families. So that there has developed that appropriateness of tool for purposes for which it is used, which cannot help but come in the course of centuries. It was a touch of happy inspiration which led Mr. James and his architects to develop the farm along Italo-Swiss models. The first move was the blasting out of a level spot in the middle of Mr. James’ one hun- dred and twenty-five acres—which was then still largely rocky waste. This devel- oped a flat, sunken open court of about sufficient size to contain, say, four tennis courts and supplied the stone for the buildings erected around it. The focal point is the Guernseys’ home, the cow barn with a space for twenty-four cows, a bull pen, and the necessary storage allowance for feed and hay. This stands on one side of a rocky bridge underneath which one half expects to see a tumbling Alpine stream, [ 338 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY Photo. © by E. Hewitt ESTATE OF MR. JAMES DEERING AT MIAMI These are the superintendent’s quarters which recall somewhat the type of farmhouse that is seen in Northern Italy, in connection with all the palaces of Florence. It will be noted by a reference to the views of the house seen elsewhere in the book that the construction is similar to that of the main residence. The central open loggia is particularly charming. The color of the house is pale violet. The awnings are lavender and yellow rather than the peaceful motor roadway which is actually there. On the other end of the bridge is a carpenter shop constructed in very convincing facsimile of a Fourteenth Century watch tower and block house. Around the other side of this artificial amphitheater are the various necessary buildings for superintendents, farmers, and all the other purposes of a thoroughly going and entirely self-con- tained farm, with a dairy, hennery and piggery. The photographs we give look towards the cow barn, the bridge, and the carpenter shop. The other buildings are behind the photographer. The question of detail has been very carefully considered. In the picture focusing upon the bridge it will be noted that the driveway circling the sunken center plot, is rimmed with protecting upright stones in the true Alpine manner. Quite in the play spirit in which this colony was erected, the chief buildings have been identified by serio-comic wooden bas-reliefs in high colors. Again in the play spirit is the subnormal scale to which it has all been kept; assuming, say, that the average adult male is five feet, eight inches in height, this whole production has been staged as if he were about a foot less. The whole general effect has been so adroitly planned that when one stands in the middle of the sunken court and looks at the surrounding buildings and the broken ledges left by the blasting, one gets a (2339) AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY bce aietieg Photo. by M. E. Hewitt HORACE TRUMBAUER, Architect GARAGE ON THE ESTATE OF MRS. HAMILTON RICE AT NEWPORT The architect has, in this building, succeeded in doing a very difficult thing. He has translated that modern necessity, the garage, into a formally beautiful work which is in character with the architectural aristocracy of the residence itself. The situation on a terrace gives an interesting locational emphasis. The trellis work, as is shown in the garden chapters, is typically French. It is all very consistent definite impression of being isolated, and it is very difficult to realize that by walk- ing to comparatively few yards from where one stands, one can see the unmistak- able modernity of Newport all about one. “Surprise Valley Farm’’ is distinctly happy nomenclature. The place is all of that. If it were built for the owner to live in, rather than as an expression of a play mood, it would be judged by very different and much harsher standards. As it is, even to one irrevocably wedded to the Adam, it has a certain element of undeniable theatrical effectiveness which is as exhilarating as any masquerade. It certainly is unique in American architecture. The more usual manner in which to develop farm groups is along the models established in France and in England and we show an example of each manner in the illustrations to this chapter—the English manner in the farm group of the Schwab estate at Loretto, just mentioned in the previous chapter, the French in the Fahnestock place at Coldspring. As absolutely up to date as these farm groups are, in both instances, in neither have the architects been so absorbed in modern [ 340 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY sanitation and modern equipment that they have lost the romantic viewpoint. The Fahnestock group, which was originally built for the late Major Clarence Fahnestock, Dr. Ernest Fahnestock’s brother, has, as is stated in one of the cap- tions, been designed as an English work, along models originating in Normandy, in the sweeping gables and in certain other smart details. In arriving at the happy conclusion observed in the illustration, the architect, the late Lewis Colt Albro, has very legitimately taken what are usually considered the ugly requirements of a farm and made them an integral feature of the design. This is observed most particu- larly in the silo, which has lent itself most courteously to a tower treatment, proving its right to architectural acknowledgment from the beginning. As will be noted in the illustration it has been boldly made a central feature and is decidedly enter- taining in its relation to the various gables. In another instance, where a second silo for a second unit of cows had to exist, it was found advisable to seclude it in a gable rather than to include another tower in the composition. The buildings on Dr. Fahnestock’s estate are all constructed of stone found on the property, covered by a very rough stucco. The corner quoins and all the open- Photo. by M. E. Hewitt DELANO & ALDRICH, Architects STABLE GROUP ON MR. OTTO H. KAHN’S ESTATE AT COLD SPRING HARBOR As the main house has been developed along the lines of a French manor house, this group is practically an en- largement of what the stables of a French farmhouse might be. There is the same practical, frank, open treat- ment of a large yard, with no ornamental detail. The whole thing has been conceived in the utmost simplicity [ 341 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY Photo. by John Wallace Gillies CROSS & CROSS, Architects THE CHARLES H. SABIN GARAGE GROUP AT SOUTHAMPTON The illustration gives an excellent idea of the plan of the Sabin estate. The ideal, as has been noted in the photographs published of the residence, has been to settle the house well in a hollow and to emphasize the charm of driving down to it. The drive is over a ridge, then down through the garage, which serves as a gate lodge, into the forecourt ings of the buildings are of slightly dressed stone, which has great variety in the coloring. This, as will be seen in the illustration, is left in random lengths. The roofs are of an extra quality of slate, in variegated greens and purples, laid in ran- dom courses, with varied exposure to the weather. In the photograph the gable at the left marks the beginning of a wing housing one of the two units for sixteen cows each. The building with the attractive weather vane houses the large wagon room with a spacious hay loft above. On one side of this is the horse stable wing; on the other the first unit for sixteen cows. Another very charming feature of the group is the pictorial wind mill, equipped with the finest of modern wheels, which pumps water from an artesian well into a huge reservoir on a nearby moun- tain overlooking the farm building group. The view illustrated gives an excellent idea of what might be called the lilt of the whole idea behind the composition, the charm of line, the advantage taken of practical necessity to gain style and person- ality. Major Fahnestock, the original owner, an eminent surgeon, died of pneu- monia in France while serving in line with the 301st Infantry, U. S. A., in 1918. The farm group on Mr. Schwab’s estate in the Alleghany Mountains is delight- fully British in character. The charm that, as is the case in the Fahnestock group, has been incorporated into the practicality of the buildings, is expressed particu- [ 342 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY larly in the illustration which includes two haystacks in the composition. This might almost be a cottage group by one of the early English landscape men, lacking only the figures which were demanded by patrons of the art of that day. The site of Mr. Schwab’s farm is on two levels. Enclosing the upper farm yard are the farmer’s cottage, with its main entrance on the lower level, the stable, the lower floor of which opens on the lower farm yard, the slaughter and smoke house and the store house. There are attractive cottage gates leading to an orchard on one side of the court, to the sheepfold on another; and the main gates from the service road. To the north of the sheepfold is a large sheep yard; to the south of it in connection with the stables is the huge horse paddock. The lower farm yard is enclosed by the stables on the north and the kennels and piggery, connected with a wall centered by a drinking fountain, on the south. Both of these have large runs. The illustrations show the attractive treatment of the various hooded gates and retaining walls. The varying contours of the fruit trees and locusts add to the interest of the design, both in mass and line. Perhaps nothing more charming has been done in America than these farm groups, with their insinuation of a return to the land itself for sustenance. Photo. by John Wallace Gillies GROSVENOR ATTERBURY AND STOWE PHELPS, Architects MR. ARTHUR CURTISS JAMES’ FARM GROUP AT NEWPORT “Surprise Valley Farm” is one of the best known farm groups in the country. While only a mile and a half from the center of Newport it comprises a hundred and twenty-five acres, from which was provided the granite for the buildings. The general scheme is that of a Swiss Village, centering around a miniature common [ 343 ] 4x0} oy} UT pajou se ‘sstmg-uerye}] ore Loy} yey} ATduut 0} st ssrmg are sZurpying oy} yyy Avs oF, ‘Teoroesd Apusurme sem YW sv Sursnue se oq pom Yor ‘oBeyT[TA sAnyeTuyEA TeUOTJUIAUOOUN Uv JO UOT}eaId oY} UY IB[NpUl 0} Va1JZ SaafosuIoy} IEF s1osuSIsap 94} pue JoUMO OY} YDIYM uy ssounzserd yo yards yj Jo ynq podopaop PF yorym Jo yno vys AyDoI ay} Jo ATUO you joquiks v st dnoszd sty} JO orNpooHYoIe OY, LYOdMAN LV dNOUD WUVA SHAWVE SSILYUND YUNHLUV “YW spoypo1y ‘SdIHHd AMOLS CNV AWNGUALLV YONAASOUD SAITIED extrem uyor 4q ‘oZ0Yd sSurpying ey} JO eUOJS aATVeU 94} 0} DdUBIONOSUT pu IOTOD Jo a}0U vB 9NqQIIJUOD siajsod uUspoom Aed ‘AeMpLOA IOJOUI [NJooved v Aq paovydar st weasys ourdpy yuepnqiny oy} YyoIyA Jopun ospriq AyooI eB Jo apis auo ye st ‘aztsoddo uoryzerysNI[I ay} Wo1Z po}ou oq T[IM sv ‘SIY], “SMOD anoj-4juaM} 10J voeds ev pue ued [nq vB YPM uTeq Mod oy} ‘shasUXONY) snoUIeZ ay} JO SMOY oY} UO ST sWOYS [eINpoPYoIe oy} Jo yurod [evox oy], LYOdMYUN LV dnNOUD WUVA SHNVE SSILYNO YOHLAV “AN NGUALLY WONTASOUD : REE a we 3 Tone ate A : SA Sys a : eS ru ee ae spoiyouy ‘SdTaHd AMOLS GNV AU SOITITD SvyTeM uyor Aq ‘0,04 > tke Rake: SET So WEIS LSE ES teehee PACE: eo Photo. by John Wallace Gillies LEWIS COLT ALBRO, Architect FARM GROUP ON THE ESTATE OF DR. ERNEST FAHNESTOCK This group, which is on an estate in a secluded wooded section five miles back from Coldspring, in Putnam County, has been designed basically as an English work, though it has almost a touch of Normandy in the result, an impression given, probably, by the quoining on the stonework and by certain characteristics of the gables. A good deal of the charm, individually and collectively, of the buildings is contributed through the sense of movement in the roof lines ar Photo. by John Wallace Gillies CHARLES WELLFORD LEAVITT, Landscape Engineer BELL TOWER GROUP ON MR. CHARLES M. SCHWAB’S ESTATE The bell tower is a detail emphasizing the success of the designers in their general romantic treatment of the utilitarian group. The farm bell, which is used to mark the beginning and end of the working hours, is rung by a rope on the outside of the building. The illustration is of the bell tower and dove- cote in the horse barn group a8ed oz1soddo oy} uo uMoys AvMozeS ay} JO IpIsUT 9y} wo1f uayey st ydearsozoyd ayy, ‘uolyeJoUMOD Sz UT YSTPAG SI UOIZVAYSN]TE SITY} UL UMOYS 99e}}09 S.19UIIeJ OY} JO JUOAJ UT UapIeS IIIT VY} UOAT ‘safqed Surdooms oy} ur pue oatds ouva Joy}vaM JY} Ul oIVPY ITTeH Urez190 B ST 194} o1OyYM ‘dno1rd yooysouyey oy} UT se “SuTpooy Yous. oy} YIM peyonoy o18 YOIyM asoy} puv ‘ysTyag ATIpanys 91v YOIyM ‘ayejsa S.qVMYoS “AJ UO SSuIpTIng ey} UsaMjoq IouaIeyIP oY} 9}0U 0} Suljse19}zUT ST I OLLHUYUOT LV dNOUD WUVA S.AVMHOS ‘W SATUVHO “UW Jgeulsug advospuey “LLIAVAT GUOATIAM SATYVHO spoyioly “VNVdC ¥ AHdYOW Ara83id pue ppojdseys ay} 918 yYSII sy} FW ‘Je 24} ye Jae JyIsoddo uoreAYsNITITI ay} Jo youod pue 38"q]00 S,1aulIey IY], “JAAR JIMOT FY} UO pieAZINOD 94} 0} JOULIZUD 94} SMOYS UOT}eAYSNTT YT, ‘uetd porpnys [jem pur aatsusyatiduios ve Jo Wed o}UYyap vB speUr o1v YOIYM Fo [Te “lun WaAeJ 9y} pue ‘suUapIeS snoUeZ S}I YIM ‘BoUapPIset VY} SepIseq ssutprinq AueuUL SUIVJUOD YIM vIIe WFIVT B S19AOD pUP “‘YsInqs}Ig JO JNO salu poIpuny wv ynoge ‘sureyUNoy| AURYSaTTY 9Y} UT st qeMYOS “AT JO 9}e4S9 OUI, OLLHYOT LV dNOUD WUVA S.AVMHOS “W SHTUVHO “UN fiuun0g x7» unoy fo fsazunop CHAPTER FIFTEEN THE GITY HOUSE WHEN American domestic architecture is considered against the back- ground of the city there is a change in social atmosphere which has to be taken into recognition. In the country the owner may control this by placing his house at a sufficient distance from the community at large to have his background what- ever he wishes; the friendly impersonality of nature is easily substituted for the gaping criticism of the crowd in the street. In the city the fact is ever thrust home upon the owner of a big place that we are no longer a homogeneous people of common ancestry and the presence of a semi-alien lower class is something that is more and more consciously being taken into consideration in the planning of a city residence. The friendly and intimate and individualistic styles grow monthly more out of place in American city streets. Mentally a city home is becoming more and more a refuge from an unfriendly world. Fifty years ago a prominent citizen might erect a very gorgeous and rather bizarre place to show his fellow city dwellers how successful he had been, secure more or less in the feeling that the envy it aroused would be basically good-humored. There was then much less feeling of class distinction, both looking up and looking down, than we have to-day. There was respect for the successful rich man rather than envy and dislike. There is no desire to turn this chapter into a discussion of recent sociological tendencies in the United States; but the fact has to be faced that with the admission of enormous numbers of the Continental lower class we have admitted with them class feeling and class distinctions which still puzzle and irritate the native American when he first comes up against them. Consciously or not a recognition of this state of affairs has profoundly influenced recent city architecture. [ 350 ] OVE IEC ANS HOMELESS (OF TO; DA Y In the chapter upon the Italian house it was pointed out how Italian city architecture of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries was based upon precisely this attitude of mind. The Italian of that time was nearer the age of violence than we are and his city palaces were built to be capable of very genuine defense against mob attack, as well as being expressive of a desire to keep the inner life of the family, its intimacies and pleasures, remote and aloof from the passerby. Consequently, in all architectural detail they express that feeling of retirement into oneself, of separation from the outside world, of pulling up the mental drawbridges, of retiring into the circles of one’s intimates, which is the purpose of the modern city home, better than any other architectural style with which we are familiar. That is unquestionably the reason why houses founded on the Italian architectural styles of the palaces erected in the Italian cities during the Sixteenth and Seven- teenth Centuries are now among the most popular. Big, rectangular structures, monotone in color, simple to the point of severity, expressive of dominance, a self-chosen isolation, and the power of assured position, they are becoming each year more and more a principal feature of the city architectural landscape. The Italian type of house is the most forthright and unhesitating admission of this frame of mind. A more delicate but none the less definite saying of the same thing is accomplished by the French manner. Nothing can be more aristocrati- cally remote, nothing more unerringly expressive of the sense of abyss, than the French manner where it comes under the cold controlling hand of the classic feeling. There is the difference between the Italian and the French manner that there is between force and finesse, between, shall we say, Sforza and Talleyrand. The whole development of this isolation sense may be best appreciated by a con- sideration of our attitude towards French architecture. A scant generation ago the city was being placarded with the overblown, verbose, mildly vulgar struc- tures of the French Renaissance, cheerfully grinning at the surrounding world. Contrast these with the rigid decorum, the good taste, so unerring that it is almost cruel, of the patrician structures which we now trace from the French. Generally speaking, houses in the English manner are too ineradically based upon an aroma of hospitality to be as applicable as the Italian and the French to our present city mood. They rank, however, very close to these two in the opie} AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY minds of owners and architects. But that aspect of Georgian and Adam is now emphasized which most nearly corresponds to the mental moat and drawbridge of the other styles. One might say that the accepted style in city architecture deriving from Eng- lish ancestry is Adam in its iciest mood, its most upstage manner. Ital- ian, French and English say the same thing architecturally in three different tempos, with force and vigor, with aca- demic grace, with reticent precision. Of the seven styles discussed in previous chapters of the country house this leaves four unaccounted for, the THE BANDBOX Mediterranean, the Colonial and the An amusing example of the conversion of an old stable, S : opposite the J. Pierpont Morgan residence on East 36th two picturesques, Elizabethan and Street, into a week-end maisonette for the convenience of Mr. and Mrs. J. Kearsley Mitchell of Philadelphia when Modern. in New York The Mediterranean model applies only to the sub-tropical por- tion of our country and has obtained no foothold in the cities. The Colonial is hopelessly out of mood. The picturesque styles have here and there won an oc- casional triumph, a victory due to the personal genius of the erecting architect— all of which merely goes to show that general rules remain general. Even in ex- amples of this style a rigid restraint of the more flamboyant exterior detail is very obvious. There is another and entirely different mental factor which has to be taken into consideration in any discussion of the modern American city house. That is the change in social habit which has made the city residence of a family of less importance than the country estate. Two generations ago social and family life centered around the city house, where more than two-thirds of the year was passed in residence. Social usage then decreed both that the city house should express the ey ae AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY family’s social standing and that it should be adapted for the enter- taining that might be de- manded of it. Among the many things which are charged against the automobile, it is undeni- able that it has made the country house and coun- try life possible. Now- adays the city residence is really a habitation of convenience, sometimes no more than an over- night stopping place in the passage from one country spot to another. Large entertaining is no longer done in the home, either as a cause or an effect of the present ade- W. F. DOMINICK, Architect SUTTON PLACE View of the community gardens in Sutton Place through the dining room window of Mr. Henry Lorillard Cammann’s residence. The effective archi- tecture of Queensborough Bridge across the East River is seen through the window, which opens on a little balcony with steps leading to the garden quacy of our hotels and catering arrangements and their numerical increase. As this chapter is being written, plans have been filed in New York for the destruction of two mansions socially historic in New York, those of Vincent Astor and Mrs. Hamilton Fish, and the erection of apartments on their site. Comment upon this move in the New York Times summarizes the whole movement of which these sales were an indication. After speaking of the number of persons socially important who now reside in apartment houses on Park and Fifth Avenues, the article goes on: “The majority of the persons mentioned own fine country homes on Long Island, in Westchester county, and in New Jersey. The apartments in town are their temporary city homes and they combine all the luxuries and con- L 353 J AMIERDLCAIN HOMES \O:F TOs DIAw veniences of the elaborate private house without the care of maintenance, occu- pancy by caretakers when the family is away, and also freedom from taxation—in itself no small item when involving property rating anywhere from a hundred thou- sand to a million dollars. The willingness of Mrs. Vincent Astor and Mrs. Hamilton Fish to see their private homes give way to the modern type of cliff- WALKER & GILLETTE, Architects A CITY PROBLEM Stairway in the residence of Mr. Charles E. Mitchell at 933 Fifth Avenue. The circular staircase was first developed in the medizval fortress palace where economy of space was essential. The same restrictions exist in a New York City house dwelling domicile shows also how greatly sentimental values in the old city homes have been weakened. With the home life centered chiefly in the country the utility value of the town house is lessened and the new generation is apparently not shocked at the changes which a practical view deems necessary.” While this and other alterations of important building sites in New York City in all probability do not as definitely mark the passing of the private home in New York as newspaper writers seem to think, still they are unquestionably indicative of a changed point of view the influence of which is going to be more and more felt. The show place type of city house has certainly gone into the discard. They tend more and more to be on smaller scale, more easily and more inexpen- sively managed. Such places, for in- stance, as the Harvey Dow Gibson house, a residence exquisitely modeled to be on small scale throughout, are architectural straws showing the trend of inclination. A moderately small place, perfectly done, is the mood of the moment. There is one factor in human nature, however, which must be taken into con- [ 354 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY sideration in the discussion of city houses as it had to be in a discussion of country places—that is the irrepressible urge towards the picturesque which will out. The compromise effected in the city between the ever present dread of exposing oneself too much to the street and the desire for an injection of the non-academic into one’s home has found expression in New York in the development of the backyard. Its changing from a place of flag stones, damp earth, and ailanthus trees into a thing of beauty was found impossible unless one could pick one’s neighbors and be surrounded by friends. This led, naturally enough, to the devel- opment of the community backyard or, in more dignified parlance, the commu- nity garden development of which New York City can to-day show several suc- cessful examples. Foremost in popular fame, though not in chronological se- quence, is the Sutton Place development associated with Mrs. Vanderbilt. Sut- ton Place is situated where Fifty-seventh and Fifty-eighth Streets overlook the Kast River in one of those curious spots characteristic of New York and presum- ably of all large cities, in which a locality has been forgotten in the build- ing development of the surrounding town and has relapsed into the condition best characterized in the language of previous generations as shabby genteel, retain- ing, because no one has thought to WALKER & GILLETTE, Architects ANOTHER EXAMPLE Hallway in the residence of one of the architects, Mr. A. Stewart Walker, 823 Lexington Avenue. This is another view of a very expert handling of the stair- case in a narrow city hall. The entrance to the resi- dence is seen on a subsequent page change it, certain picturesque qualities of an earlier time. Along come some indi- viduals or group of individuals who see the pictorial possibilities of the spot rather L 355 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY 4 fgets ORNAMENTAL IRONWORK IN THE CITY HOUSE As a concomitant to the supreme simplicity of style preferred in the modern city house there is developing a tendency to use ironwork to supply decorative interest. These two photographs illustrate the work of Samuel Yellin, of Philadelphia, and the outer and inner doorway of the William McNair residence on East Seventy- ninth Street, a photograph of which appears on a later page in this chapter than the surroundings, buy up the property and, because of its comparatively low cost, are able, with economic success, to remodel existing buildings or erect new ones, based on a community garden and a conscious use of prearranged architec- tural attractiveness impossible to warring individual owners. There is another example of this sort of thing in Turtle Bay Gardens, in the East Forties between Second and Third Avenues, and other parts of town show traces of the same influ- ence, developments around Washington Square and one, the pioneer of the move- ment, on East Nineteenth Street. Whether these developments express a mood that will endure only the passing of events in the next two generations will prove. Perhaps no one illustration gives a better idea of the possibilities which Mrs. Vanderbilt had the foresight to see in Sutton Place than the view of Queens- borough Bridge through the medium of a window in the Henry Lorillard Cammann dining room. ‘This establishes the pictorial element immediately. Mr. (3564 AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY Cammann’s residence was formerly a flat house, which has made a depth of seventy feet possible and, incident- ally, introduced some difficult problems in the way of getting light into the in- terior. The chief point in the plan- ning, however, was to take every ad- vantage possible of the panorama of the river, surveyed over a private mutual gar- den. Obviously the principal rooms would be located on the river front. The dining room illustrated is on the first or entrance floor, the glazed doors opening onto a balcony from which a few curved ITALIAN GATE steps lead into the garden. The illus- Wrought iron gateway in the handsome Italian resi- : : : dence of the late Isaac Guggenheim at Port Washing- tration gives a hint of the terrace and of ton. The design has exactly the suggestion of floridity the bridge, as has been stated. Miss ieee ap ee hae Anne Morgan remodeled numbers 3 and 5 and Mr. Joseph E. Willard, formerly our Ambassador to Spain, rebuilt Mr. Frank Griswold’s old property at number 9. Mr. Cammann’s residence is number 7, so that Miss Morgan and Mr. Willard are his immediate neighbors. Mrs. Vanderbilt’s residence is on a corner, as shown in one of the illustrations. Sutton Place is, actually, a little two-block thoroughfare running from East Fifty-seventh Street to East Fifty-ninth Street along Avenue A. A generation or so ago this was the center of a charming home district and to-day, as is steadily being realized, it has very special attractions. Sutton Square is a con- tinuation of Fifty-eighth Street. The homes of Dr. Stillman and Professor Joseph P. Chamberlain of Columbia University are on Sutton Square. The garden view should be visualized as looking South, over the same community garden which is seen through Mr. Cammann’s dining room, looking East. The illustrations from the residence of Mrs. Alice McLean, at 125 East 54th Street, are symbols of the other community developments which are giving certain streets on the East side of New York a new domestic value. [ 357] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY In the discussion of city architec- ture it is entertaining to note that a minor facet of the new tendencies is a some- what sudden reawakening to the possibil- ities in wrought iron. As will be seen in the illustrations of Hunt Diederich’s work in metal, this provides another op- portunity of getting the individuality of the artist into the house. There has been a period in our architecture when he was arbitrarily shut out of it. We like to think that he is beginning to creep back, reOny ROR TON or in the case of such wild and merry Soran designed for Mey Chava Cary Ramer he geniuses as Hunt Diederich and Robert by Dna plod arches nercuuoy W. Chanler, to dance in, almost by sheer force. Gradually we are beginning to lose our fear of color and our suspicion of personality. It has become a convention to respond joyously to Czecho-Slovak pottery, Scandinavian linens, Moscow-Chauve Souris tea rooms, and early Ameri- can hook rugs for our informal and _ intimate houses or rooms. This should give the artists a loophole. Such vivid fellows as Winold Reiss (talented pupil of Franz Von Stuck) have been given the walls of res- taurants and hotels to play with. Chanler, with Cow ge of the Kingore Galleries his customary gesture, A FENDER SCREEN : : by Ep A screen designed for a very wide fireplace by Hunt Diederich, whose metal flings his multiplicity of silhouettes used for various utilitarian purposes are very well known. In . this stag fire screen the figures are cut out of sheet iron and finished in an Howers, birds, and beasts interesting patine characteristic of his work 358] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY sunrooms and But it is Died- erich who is the artist over screens. of such utilitarian neces- sities as lighting fixtures and andirons and fire- screens. He is audacious and fertile in invention, highly skilled in design and craftsmanship. He has tremendous force, smallest even in his pieces. He has a spirit Avenue home of Mrs. James Byrne. art in them than many a fabulously priced painting does not stand in the WINDOW GRATING One of the three window grates designed by Hunt Diederich for the Park The fact that these screens have more way of their humor or their ability to entertain of fun which is in the real Gothic mood. There are brains in his work. As has been said in the chapter on the Decorative Room, it is a privilege to be able to buy an artist’s brains. And Coantisy ; of the iors Galleries A COSSACK DANCE A screen by Hunt Diederich in which the figures are drawn on copper and cut out by hand. The individual genius of this artist has done much to revive an interest in wrought iron and other metals it is just as well to remember that all art did not die with the carvers of Colonial detail! the solarium is by Warren Davis, who In the Thomas Lamont house has decorated it with the very plastic dancing figures which he has managed to make so distinctive from the work of other artists who are more anemically in- Unfortu- nately the room photographs too unsatis- terested in the same subject. factorily for reproduction. The Lamont residence is one par- ticularly suited to the expression of an artist’s individuality because it is, itself, a free and highly sensitized version of one of the early English styles. It is [ 359 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY Photos. by M. E. Hewitt DE SUAREZ & HATTON, Architects HOME OF MRS, ALICE McLEAN A garden view of Mrs. McLean’s town house at 125 East 54th Street. This is a very characteristic photograph of one of the most recent developments in New York City architecture. The point is the community backyard garden of which this is a very architectural example never stupid and never stereotyped, either in- side or out. Its enrich- ment is restrained to the taste of a day which would find the prototype of the style too overpow- ering in conjunction with New York’s congestion. The wall surfaces of plain grayish plaster are valuable as suggesting space and quiet. The heavy Gothic fireplace of ancient stone shown in one of the illustra- tions would seem ele- phantine and overornate in between huge tapes- tries and flanked with ornate Louis XIV chairs. The plain walls give it room; therefore it is monumental, not clumsy. It is a style which needs a firm hand. In the Lamont residence it is under perfect control. The house has been planned for handsome effects in lighting. In the morning there is a wealth of sunlight through the leaded casements of the bay windows noted in the exterior view, into the hall and great living room across the front of the house. The library is grave, dignified and handsome, as it should be. The little solarium, at the top of the house, is deliberately withdrawn from the Jacobean influence and pretends to be only an informal and pleasant breakfast and luncheon room. In harmony with the tendency of New York to reclaim the [ 360 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY waste area of the back- yard, there is a garden, with a wall, a cloistered walk, a door and a plant- ed space between two gables. The architects have, evidently, a feel- ing for the city garden. Mr. A. Stewart Walker’s own house on Lexington Avenue has its main en- trance on the side street, through _ beautiful wrought iron gates, into a little garden court. This house is an altera- tion; and a very clever one. In Mr. Walker’s resi- dence the economy of space makes for original- HOUSE OF MRS, ALICE McLEAN 1 7 This view and that on the opposite page show the effective manner in which ity of plan and detail. two New York City houses have been remodeled into a Sevententh Century Italian type. An example of the little house of the gentler Italian period His problem was a lot twenty-foot wide on the corner of a main street. The way he has run his stairway straight up against the party wall is shown in one of the illustrations. This is the stairway from the basement entrance hall to the living rooms on the first floor. It becomes a winding stair up to the bedroom floors. This practically eliminates the stairway, or, at any rate, removes it from its usual stellar position. The kitchen, following an idea which would have rendered our grandfathers aghast, fronts on the main street. The entrance hall is inviting and unusual, largely because of its low proportions. The furniture has been chosen discreetly and placed against a yellowish plaster wall. A very perfect small city house designed by these same esti) ae AMERICAN HOMES OF Sb Oe DRY architects is the Harvey Dow Gibson residence. Its chief beauty is the scale which has been maintained in every detail. This has necessitated the spe- cial designing of every chande- lier and fixture. The doorways in the house are particularly good. In the dining room a precise and aristocratic little Adam-Wedgwood mantel has been designed in the spirit of the Wedgwood candelabra it supports. A door to this room is in the Adam manner and has ee ee 2 little carved basket ornament as a central motive of the frame ak a ural Record Gielen aia while the panels to the doors MR. OTTO H. KAHN’S RESIDENCE themselves are painted in color At 1100 Fifth Avenue. The chaste and severe beauty of this i splendid, seample of the dialiad styles seed copesialy woes ang a ee out the house is a genuine feel- ing of personal interest and a unity which makes it a rather unique thing. The genuine beauty of the town house of Mrs. Willard D. Straight, with its handsome architectural backgrounds for early American and modern Spanish paint- ings’ and its sense of decorous hospitality, is in the greatest possible contrast to the palatial severity of the Otto H. Kahn residence and medieval exuberance of the home of Mr. Arthur Curtiss James. Mrs. Straight’s residence might have been built around the portrait of George Washington, so in key is it with the England that Washington knew. Yet it houses the famous big Zuloaga panels very becom- ingly, which might not have been expected from its British premises. Everywhere it has been handsomely done. Mr. Kahn’s house might have been conceived around his fine collection of Italian primitives. The portrait of Giuliano de’ [ 362 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY Medici by Botticelli alone might have inspired such a building. The architecture of the residence derives from the early Sixteenth Century in Italy; Giuliano was murdered a century or so earlier in Florence (1478). It is an ideal style for a house of this size in a city of the heterogeneous character of New York, as has been said in an earlier chapter. Its effec- tiveness is based on broad prin- ciples of mass and light and shade. It is a style which pro- vides for imposing vistas, for views such as are_ possible on J. ARMSTRONG STENH across the inner court; which cums encourages the discreet use of MR. OTTO H. KAHN’S RESIDENCE The inner courtyard. The Kahn house is one of the few city residences on a grand scale which has been erected in New York in recent years. The stairs at the left lead onto the terrace rich furnishings, which pro- vides a reason for gorgeous bindings for valuable volumes. It is, in fact, the type of house that carries with it a definite responsibility. It is planned so thoroughly in the spirit of ancient Italy there is in its bearing a certain haughty insistence that nowhere shall its amour propre be offended. There can be no doubt that it is one of the most interesting examples of the large city house in New York. Its stern architectural aloofness will not be relished by those who are for more genial moods. To those who re- spond to it, it is welcome as a relief from the pretty and the chic. It offers, as has been said, magnificent opportunities in the way of a background for furnish- ings and pictures in scale with its size and its character. It is a style which makes no concessions; makes no welcome gesture. The entrance to it is formidable and characteristic. There is no abatement of formality outside of the living rooms. [ 363 ] aNUeAY YI Zurypoojzsao voe119} B@ pue jANOD JoUUT 94} MOYS o3ed Surpaoeid vB UO SMITA OYJ, °*3O21}S 4SAy-APOUIN UO “BoUBIZUS BBeTIIeO UTeU dy} SoyeoIpur ABMIOOP BUT, “BoLIaUIY UL Uses 9q 0} JoUUUT ULI -[®}] peuterjsor ATataaos ay} Jo satdurexa aatssoiduy ysour oy} Jo suo ynq APD YIOX MON url sivak YuadaI UT payoora jsedSIq ay} Jo Guo ATUO jou st souaptsar ayy, ‘“Ainqusg YyUse7zXIG 94} Jo Saovped APO ueTTeI] Jy} UT UoTyeAdsuT s}I SoylI9A snoy S.uYyeY “IJ JO MITA [eIIUT SIU, HONAGISAY SNHVM “H OLLO ‘YUN AO AAVOVA HLNOS peypIy “ASQOHNALS ONOULSNUV “CL pLoosy ywingoazwyoup ayy fo fisazunog FURST OR Courtesy of the Architectural Record J. ARMSTRONG STENHOUSE, Architect MR. OTTO H. KAHN’S TOWN HOUSE This is the stairway to the tower from the second floor landing. It has the palatial scale and grandeur expected of the style and emphasizes the place which the central stone staircase holds in the scheme. The staircase is a legitimate architectural emphasis on the impregnable solidity of the building and its feeling for stonework IOqYsIou B JO DDUIPISAL IY} SoyeVoIpUL 4J2T BY} 3e OoTZA0d ayy, *}PYSII JY} 4e SI JoUIpPIseI JY} 0} VDUeA}UA wT, ‘aeyUOIZ MOIIeU B UO VsnNoy AjID B JO vIIB pdzII1}]S91 94} 0} PayIns [Jam AOA VINyaTYOIe Jo ad} B SI YY + ‘aUOSOUTI]T VULIpPUT ur passoidxd se aj44s Uel[e}] 94} JO o[durexe sWIOSpuLY puke poUTeAjsal B SI SIY], “OsvoIYD “yIVg Upoour] Ivou ‘aALIq] PI0YS Bye] 91ST IV HONACISHY S.YIVIE LL GUVMdA “UN speyyoy “ALIHM F GVAW ‘WINN Da rh Suauraesice ie Keite: e's Re a coer ' Some com com! 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E. Hewitt ALBERT JOSEPH BODKER, Architect RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. OAKLEIGH THORNE At 783 Park Avenue. Another example of the neo-classic French manner which has been very successfully adapted to the narrow frontage of a New York street. It will be seen how allied this house is in spirit to the Adam, as has been noted in the illustration of Mrs. Hayward’s residence, Yet it is derived from the style which we know as Louis XVI. It has much of the quality of a little palace @© Lenygon & Morant H. VAN BUREN MAGONIGLE, Architect RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. WILLIAM McNAIR The exterior of the McNair residence at 5 East 79th Street shows a simplification of the French Renaissance type which is almost English in its restraint. The detail around the windows and the baskets of flowers over them, carved in the stone itself, have that little flourish which we feel to be so gracefully and elegantly French. The house shows the fineness of proportion and the sensitiveness to line which is the real basis of the style aanqooyyore AYO YIOK MAN FO USfOTPePe Sursnure sy} speoaer ydeaSoqzoyd oy} uyese o1ofyY *30919S YWYSJo-A}XIG ye onueAY YIe_ SMOYs UOlye1}SNqT! ay, ‘Sasnoy Jusujrede eqeuorysey pue adie, Jo Zurpyinq oy} ur AYoryo poussouod St YOIYM o1vJysno10y} YAOX MIN pedopaasp ATUIe1 B UO soAnqon.ys MoU IY} JO UO ST SIYT, “SLAMOT[OF IfoY} pue WepY SAoyjJoIg ey} Jo SoueU oy} YPM pozeloosse e][Ays YsI[SuG I[ssvpo-oou sy} Jo uorjeydepe AjID Ulapou y MUOA MAN “AONAAV MUVd NO AONACISAY speyyory “HOIUGTV ¥ ONVTAG sqqey, £q ‘0104 Ayo B1q & JO JIT BY} OF SUOTJOvIA TeINyeU 94} JO aatssatdxa AIA SI JEY} SUOTJVALIOp IssepD Isoy} UT ‘azIT AWD Jo soryrxetduiod puew JoWKyO pue aslou oY} Wolf [BMLIPYYIM & S9DUIdTJII AOJ Burpoosz we st stay, ‘aNOY UMO} JURSE[9 d10UI oY} IOJ So[A}S podiozoid oy} SuoUe SI oryM ‘afqreul pue yormq ut podoyaasp daoy ‘aouaprsea Ayo Jo odAy WepYy 9} JO UOTZPeIYsSNTT Surjsotoqur AtoA YW ‘onUIAY UIT OSIL IV ASNOH NMOL S.LHOIVULS ‘d GUWTIIM ‘SUN sqqat, 4q “ov0Ud speyypoIy ‘HOINGTV ¥ ONVIAC St sane mare Photo. by Tebbs DELANO & ALDRICH, Architects HALL IN MRS. WILLARD D. STRAIGHT’S TOWN HOUSE This is a very effective Adam hallway which has been adapted to the necessarily restricted space of a city house. It is interesting to compare it with views of hallways of a somewhat similar spirit shown in Chapter Five, in which chapter are also included other interior views from this house Jajdeyo oy} UL Jaljiva UMOYS SI asvoIteys oyy, ‘AJNeIq OJ soin}xy pue SSuIYsTUINJ JO s[lejop IY} fyUsUIBAOUI VAIS 0} UO pal -I1 ST LOO poze][esso} ey, ‘poyeuue pue Surrep ‘aydurs A[puelq aouo ye ST SIT, ‘[eIyeTed oy} spaeMoy suoTyeatdse ou sey YoryM ‘asnoy A}IO B 0} aTqQIssod aovds Jo JuauTjoT[e Tensn vy} UL AvMT[eY ay} YIM Op 0} YeYyM ‘SAronb [eussja yey} JO UolyNTOs Surureztozus AIOA & ST SIYT, ‘MNUGAY UO}SUTXIT CoB FV ASNOH NMOL SMAWIVM LUVMALS ‘V “UW NI TIVH spoypoIy “ALLATILO ¥ WAWIVM Photo. by John Wallace Gillies WALKER & GILLETTE, Architects MR. HARVEY DOW GIBSON’S TOWN HOUSE At 52 East 69th Street. This is one of the most consistent and most complete “little” houses in New York. Everything in it is scaled with the greatest care to the size of the building and the individual size of the rooms; there is about it everywhere a perfection of miniature elegance Photo. by M. E. Hewitt RESIDENCE OF MRS. WILLIAM K. VANDERBILT At 1 Sutton Place. Miss Anne Morgan’s residence is next door, in Number 8, at the left. Miss Elisabeth Mar- bury and Miss Elsie De Wolfe live at Number 13 in this famous reclaimed waste land of New York. The houses represent the Colonial English type which is really Adam 2 4 é Lavi: t MURPHY & DANA, Architects TWO RESIDENCES ON SUTTON SQUARE The homes of Dr. and Mrs. Edgar Stillman, at Number 6, and of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph P. Chamberlain at Num- ber 8, Sutton Square, are designed as a unit and yet are completely separate. By allowing the plans to overlap each residence is given large living rooms on the second floor with a view of the water and garden Architects MURPHY & DANA, THE GARDEN FRONT OF NUMBERS SIX AND EIGHT o Bae =e an — ES ae) Ses So oO Heo ers "bp ASS 25 eof 3 262 aon Ce g8 Zs =| It overlooks a common gar The style of the bu cellent idea of the community garden development wh 3 ss edge! o Aa B 4 ~~ nN ee an v a oO or Be & 4 Ayo oF ~ S nancy 22 uo} pois esos >) nn Ooms o 2 29 i=] aa Simin te oe 3 Pa Ee S [ov la; “id © 25s Hp g Photo. by John Wallace Gillies WALKER & GILLETTE, Architects RESIDENCE OF MR. THOMAS W. LAMONT At 107 East 70th Street. An example of one of the few Elizabethan Picturesque styles which has been suc- cessfully translated to a New York environment. It represents one of those occasional triumphs, a victory due to the personal talents of the architect, as remarked in the text. The style is most definitely Jacobean, with its exuberance tamed just enough to render it creditable in a New York locale Jaydeyo sly} UL UMOYS a10Jai9Yy} SI }L puv vsnoy A}19 sy} JO suoryepu, oy} Aq pouTUIa}ap st [Tey ey} JO ANOJUOD ayy ‘aoUaptsel s4Yyste.}g PARTIIM ‘SIL UL Sy ‘drysuvus}zeso ul ysatoqUL paataet ano Jo Joord JoyJouR ST SsadoNs S}[T “YIOMpPOOM UBaqooVe Plo ey} Jo AyouLzUOds oy} YPM LIPVAVYD UL 9q 0} PoUsIsap Sf YIOMpoom oy} JO 4Sod dy} PUL pUL[SUY WorJ YSnoIq useIos onbiyue ue Jo Youg spusose doUapIsed oy} Jo ABMATEIS OIL J, LNOWV'T ‘M SVWOHL “UW AO FONACISHU speyyuy ‘ALLATUS ¥ UANTVA ased o}1soddo 943 uo uMoYs st Sutuado poyore oy} YSno1y} Uses [Tey yeas oyy, ‘sede Yarep yz Jo dn-yeo1q oy} JNoge we Av[NsUIUSg UeTe}] VY} JO ONstaajpoereyo poow sutyuezAq-o[e}] 94} UT ST Trey sty} suryeods AT[e1ousxn ‘sui10z poyrdumns 10f souasazoi1d Jeraues oy} 0} 4seayUOD Ut SuTppInq Azo ut sotduexs yUsIAIND Ss} sey opAjs JueAOQqUIVY 94} yey} MOYS 0} 19}deyd sty} UL pasn st UOTyeIYSNTT VY J, *}0013S YUTU-A}XIG jseq GE Je VoUIPISE SoWEL ‘IJ, JO D1NzeOJZ SNoaI1093 Ard ¥ SI [Tey IoUeAYUA OUT, HSNOH NMOL SHNVE SSILYND YWOHLYV ‘SUN syo}!:OIV ‘SNATIOO ¥ NO'TIV WIMEH “A ‘W Aq ‘0V04g > ‘ % A Photo. by M. E. Hewitt ALLEN & COLLENS, Architects MR. ARTHUR CURTISS JAMES’ TOWN HOUSE This great baronial hall is reminiscent of an architecture which takes precedence of Elizabeth but for which mod- ern nomenclature has provided no set title. It reflects in spirit the big monuments of English architecture of the late Fourteenth and early Fifteenth Centuries and might be called Medieval, Gothic or early Tudor. Its eccle- siastical insinuation is due to the fact that it is a style which has been preserved to us largely in our churches WALKER & GILLETTE, Architects RESIDENCE OF MR. NEWELL W. TILTON This living room in the town house of Mr. and Mrs. Tilton at 154 East 62nd Street, New York, is an example of the cleverness with which our architects are handling that momentous problem: how to get a big room into a typical narrow city house. The illustration shows a room two stories high which is the entire width of the residence JOHN RUSSELL POPE, Architect CONSERVATORY IN A WASHINGTON RESIDENCE This conservatory in the home of the late Mr. John R. McLean in Washington, D. C., has been conceived and executed in the spirit of the very late Italian, providing one of the best back- grounds possible for the growing of flowers. The Neptune was executed from the architect’s sketches by Ulysses Ricci, a young Italian sculptor CHAPTER SIXTEEN THE DECORATIVE ROOM AFTER fifteen chapters devoted to the exterior, the interior, the gardens, and the outbuildings it seems as if there should be very little left to say about any aspect of American homes of to-day. There is however. Human nature being what it is, provision always has to be made, in architecture as in any other human problem, for the variant, the impulse which will out and which will not conform to routine. Why is it, that once or twice a year even the soberest of us will do ourselves up in fancy costume and, as if released by the ritual of that act from the restraining contaminations of everyday life, cavort around a ballroom in a manner that our good sense tells is both absurd and ridiculous and yet all the while derive an appreciable quantity of very real amusement from the fact? Ever since we have any record of domestic architecture there has been an urge, after the code was entirely perfected, after proportions had been set up and scale decided upon, to take a little portion of the house apart from the scene and play with it. The hanging gardens of Babylon probably originated because some restless member of the king’s harem got tired of the sun-baked brick regularity of her corner of the palace. As a matter of fact, up till now this feeling has more or less generally expended itself upon the gardens. When the architects of the Italian villas first discovered that they could play with water they seem to have gone fey inventing Coney Island tricks by means of which unfortunate visitors were drenched with water from overturning urns, hidden orifices, sun dials, grilles and so on. French and English taste never seemed to see as much hilarity in an unexpected sprinkling as did the Italians; and water surprises, while they exist, were never overwhelmingly popular in either of these countries. When an [ 386 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY Englishman of the last century wanted to be original, however, he also turned to the garden, and he dropped therein a building, a summer house, a gazebo, or a lookout tower in a style that he felt was picturesque and hoped was Chinese. The so-called rustic summer house, with which we are all familiar, is mentally a direct descendant from Sir William Chambers’ Chinese pagoda at Kew. Even in Colonial times, however, there developed a feeling that certain rooms deserved an enrichment of treatment, a handling as if they were a focal point of attention rather than as if they were part of an architectural whole. The first decorative rooms in modern consciousness were created during the Colonial era when some daring housekeeper first had the courage to cover the walls with that very startling and supremely decorative block wall paper which we still cherish as one of the most effective of the Colonial traditions. The minute any room in a house, by reason of something individual and characteristic only of itself, stands apart from the rest of the structure and makes so distinct an appeal because of some artistic quality of its own that it is remembered as a distinct thing, it is a decorative room in the sense of this chapter. In a decorative room the architectural consciousness of the house does not intrude. It is properly as detached a unit as if it were in a museum. To explain further, we might refer back to the H. H. Rogers Italian villa at Southampton discussed in a previous chapter. There are some rooms therein, specifically the breakfast loggia, with the walls most effectively frescoed in the Italian manner, which are not considered as decorative rooms within the meaning of this chapter, inasmuch as they are a part, and a very conscious and effective part, of the architectural scheme of the whole building. The decorative room proper is a work of art rather than of architecture. As art they cannot be codified and dissected and no attempt is made to do either in this chapter which is, essentially, in the nature of an appendix to its predecessors. The photographs attached hereto are those of some of the most suc- cessful attempts at creating a decorative room with textiles, with stonework, or with painting which have come to our notice. The two photographs of Mrs. William Hayward’s city house show a boudoir with walls hung with taffeta and a reception room planned as a foreground to tapestries. Both of these are very 387d AMERICAN: HOMES O1F | TO2D Ag effective as decorative units. A room based on the use of wall paper as a decorative center is seen in the photograph of the Sabin place at Southampton. The Italian manner of fresco decoration which we casually refer to as Pompeian may be observed in the breakfast room of the Hanna house and in the garden loggia from the Deering place at Miami. Another room in the Hanna house has been lined with marble in the Italian manner. Whether these rooms pass the pragmatic test only their owners could tell you. Looked at in a photograph they are beautiful and effective. Probably the most generally successful decorative rooms are those in which the background is supplied by an artist; something that has been given over to an artist to play with. It was a happy thought, for instance, to turn over to the talent of the late Howard Cushing, the small oval sitting room illustrated from the resi- dence of Mrs. Willard Straight. It is quite evident that it has been delightfully done, the delicately French Chinese renderings of the panels maintained in a high key in colors suited to the canary woodwork. Knowing Mr. Cushing’s gift for pleasant color harmonies, and the taste with which he was able to express his feel- ing for decoration, it is a simple matter to visualize the charm of this little ladies’ dressing room. In the mural decoration shown of Mrs. Whitney’s bedroom, by Robert W. Chanler, we have one of our pioneers in this work in America at his best. The Chanler screens are known to everyone who is at all in touch with the art of this country. Mr. Chanler made an impression in this form of art even at the famous Armory Show, which introduced the cubists and other wild ones to New York. Which was a good deal of an accomplishment. In Mrs. Whitney’s deco- ration he is in a soberer mood than we are accustomed to find him nowadays, though in an interesting one, with his formal perspectives and his opposing phan- tasmagoria of mille fleur foreground and the pageantry of richly caparisoned knights. In the decoration for the Coe breakfast room the artist has allowed him- self greater liberty. Here he is more the familiar Chanler, undeterred by any sense that he must be architectural. He uses his elks and bison as an enrichment against an idealized Rocky Mountain scene with the zest and imagination for which he has gained so much respect from his fellows. One of the most promising signs of our artistic development in this country L 388 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY is, perhaps, the fact that we are beginning to give our artists a chance. For a while the policy of building houses which absolutely excluded everything but an ancient floral or fruit or farmyard painting from its rooms seemed to sound the death knell of the painters. Recently there has been a tendency to take advantage of their imagination by turning over a room to them to develop in its entirety. Most artists have, themselves, charming homes. Which is largely why they get driven out of them, ultimately, by the rich; as witness the rise of rents in the direction of Washington Square and the difficulty of obtaining proper studios to paint in. It is because they have the ability to create an atmosphere out of them- selves, with frequently very little to do it on, that they give something to their homes, whether in the city or country, that others see and want to acquire. The point is that, if they have the vision and knowledge to create a charming back- ground for themselves, they have the vision and knowledge to create it for others. A certain number of persons are coming, as we have said, to realize this; not enough, but a few. Gardner Hale, an artist of most aristocratic and beautiful ideas, has had an opportunity to do some delightful rooms. The late Paul Thevanez, a young artist with a most amusing line of thought and very smart themes, was per- mitted to do very witty and skilful murals in certain residences before an untimely death cut short his development. Sert, the Spanish painter, overwhelmed New York with the exhibition at the Wildenstein Galleries of the huge murals which he had painted for the Cosden residence at Palm Beach. Claggett Wilson was turned loose in the music room of Mrs. Alfred Rossin in New York to provide a background for the modern music which is the preference of Mrs. Rossin. It is a very fine thing to do and, frankly, a rather magnificent privilege; that of inviting an artist to leave his skill, his brains and his imagination on your walls. For it is the artist’s imagination, his personal and unique way of seeing things and of feel- ing them, that is the really precious thing about him. Of course, the point is, to be careful in the selection of your artist. A stupid artist will do stupid things. And a stupid mural is inferior to the blankest of blank spaces in artistic content. At least the blank space will have its shadows, its lights and shades. The murals which we speak of with enthusiasm are in not a single point of design or thought allied to the languishing females sitting squashily on comfortably disposed clouds [ 389 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY which were wont to an- noy the ceilings and side panels of an earlier gen- eration. The two illustrations of as many sides of Mrs. Rossin’s music room in her town house on East Sixty-eighth Street are delightful examples of what can be accom- plished by faith; faith in an artist. Claggett Photo. by M. E. Hewitt Wilson was allowed to MRS. WILLIAM HAYWARD’S CITY HOME : ‘< ° shut himself up in this This attractive boudoir is loosely hung with gray silk and the chairs are upholstered in oyster color, relieved with cochineal. The painting by Nattier room with two assistants over the sofa is in his customary harmony with these colors for a year or more and work out his own salvation. Mrs. Rossin herself never saw the room until the day of its informal opening to some of the artist’s friends. Mr. Wilson and his collaborators were, therefore, free from tedious interruptions, from waste of energy and the time thrown away on step-by-step explanations. As a result Mrs. Rossin has the best of everything that the artist has to give. In the least vulgar sense in the world, she has her money’s worth. So that her courtesy to the artist has a very practical and com- monsense result. It was like being shut up in a very comfortable monastic chamber, with the freedom to create any sort of an atmosphere. The reward is a graceful and imaginative modern version of the spirit of the early Florentines with esthetic and engaging fancies in the allegorical panels, in the beautifully drawn details, in the introduction here and there of architectural motives. The room is designed with remarkable success as a whole and keyed to the ideal of providing a genuine work of art that would, at the same time, remain quite definitely a background. It has its grand moments and its precious moments. But it is always in scale and never out of character with the purpose for which it has been designed. It is the most [ 390 ] AMERICAN HOMES OF TO-DAY complete work that Clag- gett Wilson has yet ac- complished. While Robert W. Chanler is best known for his screens he has decorated rooms for a number of important houses, including a Greek frieze for Mrs. William Temple Emmet, and rooms for Mrs. John Jay Chapman and Mr. ARTHUR S. VERNAY, Decorator Lloyd Warren. In the MRS. WILLIAM HAYWARD’S CITY HOME screens for Mrs. Harry Mrs. Hayward’s town house at 1051 Fifth Avenue is rich in fine tapestries, . 5 : books and art. This is a detail of the reception room. The tapestries are Payne Whitney s studio two of a set of three great Louis XV Beauvais picture cloths from the J. Pierpont Morgan Collection which we are illustrat- ing, he uses an adaptation of old tapestry ideas, illustrating ancient wars and ancient pageantry.- Picturesque knights and legendary castles are modeled in relief and touched with gold, against a background of handsome depth. In many of Mr. Chan- ler’s designs the effect of gold is given by the manipulation of ivory colored paint to give the sense of gold, the gold being used very slightly or not at all. In Mr. Joseph B. Thomas’ big living room in his house just West of Mr. Chanler’s, on East Nine- teenth Street, in the famous colony of brick and green shutters and bay trees, Mr. Chanler has designed a series of figures representing the characters of a Passion Play given by the Yale Players. He had the problem here of bringing his modern work into proper relation with an old Italian triptych over a stone mantel. He has had more freedom in the little rathskeller in Mr. Thomas’ house where his famous series of historic polo panels have their being. Here the artist has had to suit his panels to such antipathetic influences as an Italian court outside and brick walls and Virginia hams swung from the crossbeams inside. At first he tried the effect of white figures on blue grounds with little success. Finally he accepted the dusky ool AMERIGAN HOMES? OF TVOeD AY 4 Weis, — blackness of the old beams themselves and set his ivory figures in re- lief against a similar inky hue. In the handling of the subjects the artist shows his feeling for ornament and his ability to express motion in dec- orative terms. In these panels are Arabs, with a mosque in the back- ground, Indians with their caravans, the Rus- ts sians, Japanese, Chinese and Americans — all playing the game—the latter with the straight lines of the pier at Nar- ragansett cleverly brok- on. OK : a DELANO & ALDRICH, Archit M, EB, Hewitt om Arene'S en by an ornamental RESIDENCE OF MR. AND MRS. BERTRAM G. WORK At Oyster Bay, Long Island. ‘The delicately fantastic painting is done directly on the walls in the true fresco manner by Gardner Hale. It is, of course, the charming sort of French thing that is inspired by an admiration of oriental art handled with occidental sophistication frieze formed of ladies’ parasols. Mr. Chanler paints on both wood and canvas and will work for a month to get a ground exactly right for his figures, always striving for a beautiful skin or peau. In the end he obtains a sense of lacquer, either flat, as when he works on canvas, or a high luster, when he works on wood. - Abram Poole, an artist of much taste and a feeling for wall spaces, is doing a series of panels for Mr. Marshall Field’s new home. So it might seem that the artist is coming into the home once more. There can be no just blame of the archi- tects for their elimination of the gold-framed easel picture from the houses they design. It was a very sensitive New York artist who once remarked to me that [ 392 | ates CeAT Nem Osi KeseeQ Hel Om DeAqY he was certain that no- body in America cared anything about art. “If they did they would never be able to eat in dining rooms with gold frames sticking out of the walls like sore thumbs.” Gold frames are dificult. They fret even the artists who put i them on their pictures. | But artists have to live, and sell paintings with gold frames on them. If we are coming to a sense, as Mrs. Rossin and others have come, that the way to eliminate the gold frame is to put the Gillies CROSS & CROSS, Architects THE CHARLES H. SABIN HOME wall and build the room A detail of the breakfast room in the Sabin residence at Southampton show- 5 ing the interesting use of scenic wallpaper in combination with a restrained around it, then we are ar- little English mantel, English furniture, and a decorative screen in the Chinese manner, all of which blend into a thoroughly successful whole painting directly on the riving at a very real ad- justment of the relation of the artist and the architect. The Decorative Room, therefore, may prove one of our finest future contributions to the modern home because it allows for originality. The Decorative Room might become the legiti- mate playroom of the lady of the house, her retreat from the architect and the interior decorator, where she could try out her own amusing schemes, with, per- haps, some young artist to help her. Her theme could be delicate, fantastic, mod- ern and feminine, based on a water color by Marie Laurencin, or one of Benito’s tiny and adventurous black cats. Or she might start her room on a McEvoy water! L 393 J a WALKER & GILLETTE, Architects RESIDENCE OF MRS. L. C. HANNA This is the breakfast room in the home of Mrs. Hanna, which faces Wade Park, in Cleveland, Ohio, It is painted in the manner of the old masters, directly on the plaster. The views through the arched openings of the ter- races and gardens are in character with the decoration. The floor is also in pleasing ornamental relation ARR 2 TRAITEMENT IR. © M. E. Hewitt PAUL CHALFIN, Architect MR. JAMES DEERING’S RESIDENCE The garden loggia of Mr. Deering’s residence at Miami, Florida. 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