File:American homes and gardens (1911) (18131576506).jpg

Title: American homes and gardens
Identifier: americanhomesgar81911newy (find matches)
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors:
Subjects: Architecture, Domestic; Landscape gardening
Publisher: New York : Munn and Co
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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1 he front of the house at St. Martins, with its commodious upper and lower pillared porch, suggests architecture of the Southern plantation type down, supplied this part of the fabric. The practice of despoiling old houses of their woodwork, or of anything else they may contain, cannot be too heartily deprecated or too severely condemned but, when a building is actually in the hands of the wreckers, it is surely the part of wisdom to save the good things. To the right, a wide doorway opens into the reception-room—a business-like apartment, quite large enough for seeing such folk as one does not wish to urge to prolong their visits. From the reception-room a door admits to the library, whose big southern windows look out upon the garden. One commendable feature about the library is that it can be shut off entirely from the rest of the house and guarded against intrusion—likewise the onslaught of well-meaning, but misguided housemaids, in whose eyes books and papers are fair game for duster and besom rather than the things that really do need cleaning. Passing on through the reception-room as an antecham- ber we go through a wide, generous doorway, down three low steps, into the living-room—the very heart and center of the family life and, as it should be, the pleasantest place in the house. The delicately spindled bannisters at the side of these steps make one of the most characteristic touches of an uncommonly interesting room. The mere act of de- scending into the atmosphere of genial cheer gives one the feeling of settling down into a comfortable family nest. Two windows on the north—one on each side of the fire- place—two on the south, giving on the garden, two on the west and between them a glass casement door opening on the porch, admit a flood of light all day long. Half-length white curtains, with inside draperies of figured cretonne. deck the six windows and the porch door. The peacock and foliage design of the cretonne, carried as it is around three sides of the room, produces the illusion of being in a bower, particularly as there is no distracting note in the wall-paper, for here, as elsewhere throughout the house (save in the nursery, the maids' sitting-room and one or two of the bedrooms), the paper is of a modest, striped, pale buff, chosen with the intent that the walls, being all alike, should present merely an agreeable, inconspicuous background and not attract notice by a change of pattern from room to room. On the north side, equipped with a crane and of sufficient dimensions to do justice to a wide family circle, is the fireplace, set in a mantel of good Colonial type, with reeded pilasters and central panel. Several rare old English bookcases of carved oak diffuse an air of intel- lectual substantiality from their shelves and are the solid "right worshipfuls" of the commonwealth of furniture. Sofas, easy chairs, secretaries and all the rest tell a tale of thorough comfort and convenience, while the little tea- table near the lounge is an earnest of perennial hospitality. Two children's chairs, side by side against the wall near the steps, call to mind Southey's remark that "a house is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment unless there is a child in it rising three years old and a kitten rising six weeks." The children, at least, of this household can be vouched for. As to the rest of the furnishings "for enjoy- ment" it may be confidently stated that everything about the establishment plainly proclaims it was meant for whole- some ease. Some people inhabit houses; others live in homes. This abode is everywhere instinct with the spirit of home. Every inch of the house is meant to be used and lived in, and is. There is, heaven be praised, neither parlor nor drawing-room but a living-room. Here is complete emancipation from the frightful domestic ideals of a period, now happily past, that prescribed a parlor, a region of starched gloom and perverted furniture, to be followed later by its lineal descendant, the oftentimes no less dread- ful drawing-room, where one's coffee after dinner would be chilled by the marrow-piercing frigidity of the surround- ings though the thermometer, if it were consulted, might register eighty. Speaking of dinner and coffee brings us to the dining- room, which we enter from the hall through a pair of glass casement doors so placed as to balance the French window opening on the terrace at the other end of the room. Three excellent paintings form the only adornment of the walls and are the more effective for the absence of distracting objects. The design of the bricks on the hearth is worth notice—set in broad bands of cement, they are laid swastika- wise, each swastika revolving about a small, square tile at
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1 he dining-room is simply, but very attractively and elegantly furnished The note of simplicity is, perhaps, most emphasized in the large hallway

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