HOW A SUCCESSFUL SUBURBAN HOUSE IS BUILT 



BY RAWSON W. HADDON 



WHEN we see a thoroughly successful house — one dislike fur hcuscs in which one must go through one 



that seems well designed and conveniently plan- bedroom to get to another, or other equally uncomfort- 



ned — we are apt to be so much interested in the al)'.e errors in design, 



external successes that we give little or no atten- In the American house of today — just as in the Ameri- 



tion or consideration to the 

 less prominent details of 

 construction which made 

 very largely for the gen- 

 eral success of the work. 



In our admiration of the 

 structure we, as mere 

 spectators, are apt to think 

 far more of how well pro- 

 portioned a room is, or 

 how convenient the stairs, 

 than of how carefully the 

 building materials have 

 been chosen to assure dur- 

 ability and consistency 

 with the general design of 

 the house. 



Of course, good design 

 and substantial construc- 



\'ievv of the DeVrics h.-me. B. E. Mutler architect. Rt^cl r ^s.s will even- 

 tually he grown over the lattice in a s litl mass to the tup of the first 

 stij y windows. 



can house for the last two 

 hundred a n d fifty-odd 

 years — wood is the most 

 generally used and most 

 successful building mater- 

 ial. But the earlier build- 

 ers used onl_\- that material 

 nearest at harid, whi,;h 

 they could cut down within 

 hauling distance of the 

 building site or that which 

 they could buy in their im- 

 mediate neighbor hood 

 while we, today, not only 

 have greater facilities for 

 transporting material to 

 fit our requirements of de- 

 sign and exposure or ex- 

 pense, but we also know 



lion are of quite equal importance to the home builder, more about the comparative durability of various sorts 

 and in the extreme case, a slightly less well designed but of wood and their adaptability to various purjjoses. 

 carefully built house would be preferable to one that is The successful architeL-t does not use haphazard 



well designed but not substan- 

 tially constructed. 



And structtire must be as 

 carefully considered by the ar- 

 chitect as must the design, and 

 a thorough knowledge of the 

 comparative merits of various 

 available materials is as essen- 

 tial to his success as a thor- 

 ough knowledge of the rules and 

 theories of architectural design. 



When you build your house 

 you will do well, in selecting an 

 architect, to choose a man 

 whose horror of flimsy beams 

 and undersized or poorly se- 

 lected studs is as great as his 



FIRST fLOOR PLAN 



First floor plan of the Warner house. 



methods in choosing his mater- 

 ials and each piece of lumber 

 that .goes into the building is 

 used because experience has 

 shown the architect that the ma- 

 terial chosen is the best fitted to 

 stand all the conditions imposed 

 upon it in the part of the build- 

 ing where it is fotmd. 



For this reason it seldom hap- 

 pens that any single kind of 

 wood is used throughout the 

 house, and instead of being a 

 white pine or cedar house, many 

 woods will be used, each in the 

 place where it will give the best 

 results, and vour house will have 



View of the Warner house. Bernard E. MuUer architect. 



5EC0ND -FLOOR PLAM 



Second floor plan of the Warner house. 



093 



