HOUSES. AMERICAN COUNTRY-SEATS. 



365 



that simple instrument, man; and, in the course 

 of a friendly-conversation, persuaded Mr. Lap- 

 ham to have the entrance-story low-studded, 

 with a little reception-room beside the door ; to 

 use the whole width of the house frontage for a 

 square hall, with an easy, low-tread staircase, 

 running up three sides of it ; to paint the draw- 

 ing-room white, introducing a little gold here 

 and there, with, perhaps, a painted frieze under 

 the cornice garlands of roses on a gold ground 

 and a white-marble chimney-piece, treated in 

 the refined empire style. Laphain " respected 

 a fellow who could beat him at every point, and 

 have a reason ready, as this architect had ; and 

 when he recovered from the daze into which 

 the complete upheaval of all his preconceived 

 notions had left him, he was in a fit state to 

 swear by the architect." The most brilliant 

 American example of the possible influence of 

 the architect over his client, was the late Mr. 

 H. H. Richardson, a characteristic specimen of 

 whose genius is seen in the illustration (p. 363) 

 of the lodge of Mr. Frederick L. Ames's house 

 at North Easton, Mass. 



For parlors and bedrooms, the most fash- 

 ionable style of decoration is Louis XVI ; 

 there are two French establishments on Fifth 

 Avenue, New York city, which devote them- 

 selves entirely to Louis XVI work. For din- 

 ing-rooms and libraries the fashionable finish 

 is in the styles of Henry II and Francois 

 I. In city-houses it is not uncommon to sac- 

 rifice two feet of the parlor to the hall, in or- 

 der to give the latter apartment the appearance 

 of a comfortable sitting-room. The styles 

 known to young architects as the "Bloody 

 Mary " and the " Mother Hubbard " have seen 

 their best days. An example of pure Louis 

 XVI is a drawing-room recently renovated by 

 Mr. H. O. Avery, the architect. The wood- 

 work was cleaned with acid, an<J then sub- 

 jected to an enamel finish ; the walls are a 

 shrimp pink, with Lyons silk in panels deco- 

 rated with rosettes and intertwined ribbons in 

 relief. The curtains, also of Lyons silk, manu- 

 factured after the architect's designs, show a 

 pattern of nosegays held up by ribbons that 

 float over a pink field. On the cream-tinted 

 ceiling are square panels of Louis XVI pat- 

 terns, surrounded by twined tulip-leaves. The 

 cornice, once a modern classic motive, is now 

 French, with intertwined leaves of ivy. Metal 

 sconces appear between the panels of the 

 walls, at a height of six and a half feet from 

 the floor. All the wood-work has received 

 five coats of paint and three of varnish, and 

 then been rubbed down to its enamel finish 

 with pumice-stone and oil. The old black- 

 walnut furniture, once covered with dark- 

 claret satin, has been painted pink and uphol- 

 stered with Lyons silk, like that of. the panels 

 of the walls; and the general effect of the 

 room is of cream and gold. This revival of 

 Louis XVI decoration began with the Vander- 

 bilt rind Goelet houses in New York city. It 

 extends even to the carpet, which in the draw- 



room just mentioned is in shrimp and cream 

 a Louis XVI. reflex of the patterns of the ceil- 

 ing and the walls manufactured by Temple- 

 ton Brothers in Scotland, after the architects' 

 designs. A simple and inexpensive method 

 of treating the interior of a seaside cottage, is 

 seen in the illustration of several rooms at 

 North East Harbor, Me., designed by Mr. W. 

 R. Emerson. It may be added that the Ameri- 

 can architect of to-day desires to have charge 

 of the decoration within the house and the 

 landscape-gardening around it. Both the ar- 

 rangement of the grounds and the finish of the 

 interior walls are parts of his principal scheme. 



To many visitors the most interesting contri- 

 butions to the third annual exhibition of the 

 Architectural League, in New York city, De- 

 cember, 1887, were the designs for country- 

 houses by William Convers Hazlett, Clarence S. 

 Luce, Charles T. Mott, Charles A. Rich, Rossi- 

 ter & Wright, Brunner & Tryon, John Calvin 

 Stevens, Wilson Eyre, Jr., and Bruce Price. The 

 object of the league is u the promotion of archi- 

 tecture and the allied fine arts," and among 

 the committees was the Loan Exhibition Com- 

 mittee, which gathered from various private 

 sources nearly two hundred oil paintings, 

 water-color studies, and pieces of sculpture 

 and of furniture. Most of the members have 

 spent years in study in Europe, particularly in 

 Paris, and so great is their confidence in their 

 productive resources that they show freely to 

 one another, twice a month, all their new de- 

 signs. American architects have hitherto been 

 loath to exhibit their unexecuted designs, for 

 fear that they should be stolen. The league 

 now numbers one hundred and twenty mem- 

 bers, residents of New York, Boston, Philadel- 

 phia, St. Paul, St. Louis, Albany, Portland, and 

 Buffalo, and is in a highly prosperous condi- 

 tion, its annual exhibitions attracting the best 

 artists and the leading amateurs. 



We now proceed to describe in detail some 

 representative country-seats of the new epoch. 

 The late Mr. Charles J. Osborn's house at 

 Mamaroneck, New York (Messrs. McKim, 

 Mead, & White, architects) holds the rank 

 of a modern feudal castle. The plan is L- 

 shaped, the length one hundred and fifty- 

 three feet, and the width one hundred and 

 forty-four feet. The large, round parlor- 

 tower, fifty-three feet high, and twenty-three 

 feet wide at its greatest diameter, is the prin- 

 cipal feature of the building as seen from Long 

 Island Sound. The material of the main walls 

 is grayish local stone in the first story, and 

 shingles in the second story, which projects 

 about two feet, and is supported on corbels of 

 rough stone. Through the entire depth of the 

 building is a driveway, fifteen feet wide, under 

 a stone arch, whose keystone is thirteen feet 

 above the ground. The entrance to the house 

 is within this driveway. 



Panels of pebbles and cockle-shells, set in 

 gray plastering, appear above the arch. A 

 series of casement windows opens into the 



