AND GROUNDS. 133 



We have remarked in a preceding chapter on the impractica- 

 bility of furnishing plans for grounds of uneven surfaces, or for 

 those which have trees growing on them, without an .accurate 

 survey of all these features. The plans which follow, therefore, 

 pre-suppose bare sites, and rather level ones ; but the study of 

 arrangement on these will be found to embrace most of the ques- 

 tions that interest those who are forming or expecting to form 

 suburban homes. 



PLATE I. B. 

 Plan for a Compact House and Stable on a Corner Lot 128 x 220 feet. 



Reference has been made to this plate in Chapter IX for 

 the purpose of illustrating a mode of planning the grounds on 

 paper, and working from the paper plan. The lot has an 

 area of less than two-thirds of an acre. The main house is 

 thirty-six feet square, with a kitchen-wing twenty-two feet wide, 

 carried back under a continuous roof to form the carriage-house, 

 wash-shed, and stable, in all sixty-four feet in length. We be- 

 lieve that it is rarely that so many of the requirements of a 

 pleasant house are brought within so small an area. Doubtless 

 most lady-housekeepers will rebel against the thought of having 

 the carriage-house and stable in such close proximity to the 

 dwelling. It is the only plan in this work thus arranged ; but in 

 our north-border States we believe it to be a wise arrangement ; 

 not only vastly more economical in construction, and convenient 

 for the family and their servants, but also, in the hands of a good 

 architect, capable of adding greatly to the attractiveness of the 

 house by giving it an air of extent and domesticity that so many of 

 the box-like suburban houses of the day are totally wanting in. We 

 do not believe there is any more need of being annoyed by flies or 

 smells from a stable than from a kitchen ; and if the latter can be 

 kept so that it is a pleasant room to have within ten feet of living- 

 rooms, where doors open directly from one to another, we know no 

 reason why the stable may not be within fifty feet, where there are 

 no direct connections, and four or five intervening partitions. One 



