CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE 



THE TERRACE HOUSE 



UCH has recently been written on the improvement which it 

 is assumed has taken place in recent years in the design and 

 adornment of the home. If the prevalent use of "art" wall- 

 papers and " art " furniture, and the continuous construction of 



" art " villas may be taken as an evidence of progress, there may 



indeed be some reason for congratulation on a national advance in this 

 important matter. But to the better informed this artistic progress is a 

 mere chimera and only evidences the ignorance of the general public as to 

 what constitutes beauty and fitness in domestic surroundings, and the 

 commercial acumen of the various tradesmen who pander to the popular taste. 

 It is true that here and there, in isolated instances, houses are built and 

 furnished with modest comeliness, but in the rank and file of building, in the 

 average home of the average family, modern progress has chiefly consisted in 

 the substitution of spurious art for confessed ugliness. 



A great part of this rank and file of modern houses is made up of row 

 upon row of terraces houses built on plots of standard width and designed 

 on a standard plan, so that an absent-minded occupant of one of them might 

 be excused for entering his neighbour's house in mistake for his own, and 

 would find little in its interior arrangements to undeceive him. All this 

 regularity and similarity might find some excuse for itself if it represented 

 the final outcome of a logical scheme. It has again and again been urged 

 that the standard plan represents the best solution of the terrace problem, and 

 that attempts to modify it have not been successful. If it were conceded 

 that in the planning of the terrace house it is first of all essential that there 

 should be a seldom occupied sitting-room with a bay-window commanding a 

 view of another similar bay-window on the opposite side of the street that 

 kitchens and other compartments of the house connected with domestic 

 service are shameful things, and should be hidden at the back, regardless of 

 aspect that the interior of the house should be subdivided as far as possible 

 into as many little apartments as possible, which, though they must needs be 

 small, may at least be lofty that the comfort of the family is really quite 

 a secondary matter in comparison to the proper respect due to furniture, 

 for the proper display of which the house is built, &c. &c. one might, 

 perhaps, then admit that the stereotyped plan is the best that can be 

 arrived at, and it is in accepting these unwritten canons without question 

 that attempted modifications have failed. One of the primary factors which 

 induces variety of plan is the aspect of the houses; but this question 

 is not considered at all in the plan of the terrace house. In view of the 

 importance of sunlight in the principal rooms, it seems unreasonable that 

 the houses on the north side of a road should be of the same plan as those 

 on the south. In the case of a terrace with a north aspect towards the 

 road, is it really the best arrangement to make the principal sitting-room 

 sunless, and in this case, at any rate, is it desirable to place there the usual 

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