A GROUP OF LOW-COST COUNTRY HOUSES 



BY RAWSON WOODMAN HADDON 



IN any consideration of the small and inexpensive coun- 

 try house it is well to remember at the very start that, 



to the architect, far less ingenuity need be brought to 

 bear upon the work at hand in the designing of a very 

 large and expensive building where whatever economies 

 that are practised are the result of choice and not of 

 necessity, or in a very cheap house, where all but the 

 main essentials are 

 necessarily elimin- 

 ated, than is the 

 case with the house 

 of moderate cost in 

 which it is desirable 

 to embody with 

 good design not 

 only convenience 

 and comfort but 

 rigid economy as 

 well. 



And the time 

 spent, therefore, in 

 the designing of a 

 low-cost house, that 

 is, of the type cost- 

 ing less than five or 

 six thousand dol- 

 lars, is quite as 

 great as the time 

 necessary to design one costing from five to twelve or 

 fifteen thousand dollars. 



For this reason it is perhaps a natural result that small 

 houses are seldom designed by architects of anything like 

 national reputation, or, as a matter of fact, by any archi- 

 tect at all, excepting, too often, by men who attempt that 

 impossible combination of which we so often hear, the 

 "architect and builder." 



An exception to this general rule is found in a group of 

 houses recently built on 

 Indian Hill, Worcester, 

 Massachusetts, under the 

 supervision of Mr. Gros- 

 venor Atterbury, of New 

 York City. Mr. Atterbury 's 

 work at Forest Hills, Long 

 Island, and his connection 

 with many such large town 

 planning developments is 

 well known. 



Among the various sub- 

 urban developments that 

 have been undertaken 

 during recent years none 

 surpass while few, indeed, 

 even equal in interest 

 this work which was 



DEVELOPING A BUILDING SITE 

 General view of Indian Hill, Worcester, Massachusetts, from across the Lake, showing the first houses erected. 



recently undertaken by the Norton Company of Worcester, 

 on Indian Hill, a large tract of some hundred and fifteen 

 acres or more of undeveloped land near that city. The 

 development was undertaken in the interest of three 

 thousand seven hundred or so various employees in the 

 company's factories nearby. 



While various developments of a similar kind, some 



larger and some 

 smaller, have been 

 undertaken in 

 Europe that are 

 very nearly perfect 

 from the point of 

 view of good archi- 

 tecture and good 

 town-planning, it 

 is, nevertheless, a 

 lamentable fact 

 that the few devel- 

 opments found in 

 America until the 

 immediately recent 

 years have been, 

 without exception, 

 most noticeably 

 lacking in any 

 qualities of good, 

 substantial design, 

 and in any suggestion, however slight, of rational land- 

 scape or town-planning. 



For the reason, then, that the Indian Hill develop- 

 ment contains within itself all these desirable character- 

 istics, both in the houses separately and as a development 

 as a whole, and because the actual work, while praise- 

 worthy in design, is at the same time economical in con- 

 struction, this development marks a most important 

 period, just as Forest Hills has done, in the history of 



matters of this sort in the 

 United States. 



The pest of the poorly 

 arranged and often wholly 

 uncomfortable as well as 

 unsanitary dwelling that is 

 too often found in large 

 suburbs where even much 

 more expensive housesare 

 erected is by no means 

 confined to any one section 

 of the country or to any 

 one class of dwelling, and 

 for this reason whatever 

 results may have been ob- 

 tained in any development, 

 large or small, are equally 

 of interest to the individual 

 307 



AN IDEAL STREET 



General view showing typical street of delightful suburban settlement. Grosvenor 

 Atterbury, architect and town-planner. 



