218 PLANS OF RESIDENCES 



the one shown on Plate XV, on a lot of the same width ; but it is 

 somewhat differently placed on the lot, and the ground arrangements 

 are different in front and rear. One plan provides for a kitchen- 

 garden, and the other for a fruit-yard only. It will be observed 

 that this house, and the basement-house on the other corner, have 

 blank walls adjoining the neighbor-lots, which are not built up 

 to the line of the fence, but leave a space, one of five feet and the 

 other of two feet, between the wall and the lot-line. This is almost 

 useless for planting ; but we deem it essential to give the owner no 

 excuse for that miserable shoddy architecture which constructs a 

 cornice on one or two sides of a building, and leaves it off on sides 

 that are equally conspicuous ; on the plea, sometimes, that the 

 owner who has built up to his line has no right to build a cornice 

 over his neighbor's property. Though these houses indicate con- 

 tinuous blank walls on one side, they are not necessarily so, when 

 this space is preserved ; and if the owner of the middle lot is a 

 reasonable man, pleasant windows and out-looks may be made 

 from the halls of both the outer houses, and from the bed-room of 

 the house on the right. The arrangement of rooms in the upper 

 stories is likely also to call for quite a number of windows over- 

 looking the middle lot, and the fact of ownership of even a very 

 little space in front of them will make it safer for the builder to 

 plan them. If the occupants of the three lots are in friendly accord, 

 the high division fences as shown back of the front lines of the 

 houses, may be dispensed with back to the rear of the same. The 

 blank walls can be covered with the Virginia creeper, and groups of 

 shrubbery arranged at their base to better advantage than our plan 

 shows ; the plan supposing a concert of improvements only in 

 front of the houses. 



The house on the right has the form and extent of an un- 

 usually commodious and elegant town-house ; the main part being 

 25 x 50 feet, and the rear 20 x 34. The front-entrance is quite 

 peculiar, and, if designed by a good architect, will be an elegant 

 and uncommon style of porch. There is a double object in making 

 it of this form. It being desirable to have the entrance-gate at D, 

 where persons passing in will at once have a vista the whole length 

 of the side-yard to the back corner of the lot (as indicated by the 



