HOMES NEAR TO NATURE 



223 



lume 



DECEMBER, 1912 



Number 8 



A Woodland Home Made of Packing Boxes. 



BY EDWARD F. BIGELOW, Arcadia: Sound Beach, Conn. 



NATURE is primitive, and 

 she is never artificial. If 

 one is to meet her with 

 advantage, and to become 

 intimately acquainted 



with her, naturalness and 

 simplicity are the traits 

 that the visitor should possess. A life- 

 long training has given to Mr. William 

 Judson Delap of Stamford, Connecti- 

 cut, preeminently these characteristics. 

 To him anything incongruous, any- 

 thing that does not fit well with the 

 surroundings would be jarring and in- 

 harmonious. He likes to have all things 



suburbs. He is a tree lover. To him 

 every tree on the premises is sacred. 

 He was unwilling to part with a single 

 one, yet he did not want to build the 

 modern, conventional bungalow, nor 

 a country cottage. He solved the pro- 

 blem by building a home in the woods 

 so simple, so incomplex that it is even 

 less complex than a log cabin. It was, 

 therefore, not a matter of economy in 

 lumber, but to carry out an idea, that 

 he constructed a house entirely of 

 packing boxes from his extensive cloth- 

 ing and gentlemen's furnishing store. 

 He did not haul these in one great 

 load after their accumulation in the 



in perfect accord. When he goes to — * -—" ^v-umuiaLiun 



nature, he goes in the best, most primi- back yard, but he took a few at a time; 

 tive and natural of methods. For many 

 years he has been fond of seeking na- 

 ture from a local home in the form of 

 a tent or cabin. As he is a busy man, 

 with a multiplicity of cares, extended 

 trips to distant woods or to the Adi- 

 rondacks consume too much time. 



Then, too, he is a lover of wild nature ~~-^ ^..v* ^w Cl i U iiC ^a^n 



at all seasons of the year. He does not boxes, which made him feel that he 

 believe in limiting his communion with owned not only this section of 1111- 

 nature to a week or two in midsummer, changed nature, but that the house 

 Since he could not bring the Adiron- itself is really his own, the result of his 

 dack woods to Stamford, nor spare own personal handiwork. There is a 

 the time to make extended journeys charm in a thing that you make your- 

 at every season of the year, he solved se,f - 



the problem by building a permanent Contrary to what might be expected, 



home that he calls "Denhurst" in the tIie buildings are not in appearance 

 wildest spot of the woods that he could poverty stricken shanties, but are well 



he ran up into the woods with his auto- 

 mobile, and tacked on a few of the 

 boards and thus gave himself a sort 

 of excuse for frequently visiting this 

 wildness of nature for an hour or two 

 when he could spare the time from 

 the store. Almost unaided he put on 

 board after board from the packing 



find within a few miles of Stamford. 

 He purchased several acres of wild 

 woodland on the well-known Den 

 Road, which, for primitiveness, would 



and substantially built, in good propor- 

 tion, and with harmonious and appro- 

 priate architectural lines. 



Here Mr. Delap and the members of 



take hrst premium in competition with his family frequently resort for rest, 

 any other part of the Stamford recreation and the study of nature. He 



Copyright 1912 by The Agassiz Association, Arcadia: Sound Beach, Conn. 



