BUILDING AN ATMOSPHERE OF STABILITY INTO THE HOME 



631 



item, the 100 per cent Anglo-Saxon home atmosphere. 

 And assuming that the house does possess an atmosphere 

 that is a desirable one, the question naturally is, "How 

 was this secured?" This also will be easy, in the present 

 instance, to explain. 



For, if you will look back on your own experience, 

 you will probably discover that some one house, one in 

 which you lived or where you visited, and which remains 

 connected most firmly in your mind with the pleasant 

 memories of cheerful home life, was a house somewhere 

 in the country, surrounded by broad fields and great 

 trees or it may have been a house in a country or sub- 

 urban village or town surrounded, but to a smaller ex- 

 tent, with the same things. 



Certainly, the chances are, it was a frame house, rather 

 large, and there were trees around it and flowers near 

 the walls and down at the road there was a fence. Now, 

 if you are a true American, and possess the memory of 

 that particular house, you may be sure that the memory 

 has been lingering around in your head and has, un- 

 known to you, been standing as your measure of com- 

 parison in all your thoughts of what home ought to be. 



For this reason it will be plain that there is no cause 

 for surprise when you fail to respond to some houses as 

 readily or entirely as you do to others. Or that a gran- 

 diose stucco house or an imposing stone one does not 

 measure up to your ideals in the same way that a little 

 white frame house nestled down among autumn tinted 

 leaves and bright flowers will seem to touch certain 

 chords that tell you at very first sight that you 'would 

 be happy in that house, that it would l^e a home for you 

 and for your children, and if you look into the matter 

 as far as that (which you should) a home for your 

 children's children, or at least, some, or one, of them as 

 well, and not simply, as too many houses are, a mere 

 sheltering roof and nothing more. 



So there are psychological reasons why you, as a real 

 American with a love and respect for good American 

 traditions, must respond to this house in Cranford that 

 I have chosen as an example of how an architect may 

 compel our interest in his work by appealing to mental 

 apparatuses of which we are entirely unconscious. 



Our interest, of course, is aroused more by the echo 

 of that house that we knew long ago, but the appeal to 

 it is through the house before us and this house in turn 

 takes on an interest as a "visible memory" of the othe*- 

 one. 



Not by the house alone is the interest brought about, 

 but by it in connection with the other details that the 

 architect has arranged : The trees, for instance, and the 

 hedge, and the dormer windows (to remind us of old- 

 time sport in attics) and chimneys that guarantee fire- 

 places to sit around on winter nights. All these things 

 go to make up the impression and one without the others 



A near view of the door shows us that in order to get Colonial atmosphere 

 it is not necessary to go out with a pencil and rule and make an exact 

 copy of an old example. 



ruLJT fuxia. PLAN. 

 First Floor Flan, House at Cranford, N. J. 

 Hollingsworth and Bragdon, Architects. 



^tcoND fux)it Plan. 

 Second Floor Plan, House at Cranford, N. J. 

 Hollingsworth and Bragdon, Architects 



