r>44 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Dec 



A SIDE-HILL COTTAGE. 



We present this week another of the beautiful de- 

 signs of Messrs. Cleveland and Backus Brothers, of 

 New York. They cannot fail to afford important 

 suggestions to many who are about to build in the 

 extensive circle of our readers. 



"Our second hill-side plan is meant for a position 

 below the road. The principal front is therefore 

 on the higher side. Such a situation has usually 

 less of descent and abruptness than those to which 

 the former design is suited. Gentle swells by some 

 valley side, or on the outer margin of a plain, often 

 furnish sites will adapted to this plan. 



The internal arrangement, as shown by the plan, 

 needs but little explanation. The windows open- 

 iag on the verandah and on the small balcony at 

 the end, are long, and are hung on hinges. The 



PRINCIPAL FLOOR PLAN. 



basement has a fuel cellar, F, a vegetable cellar, V C, 

 a closet, C, and the important rooms, L R, and 

 K. In the attic plan there are four bedrooms and 

 as many closets. These rooms are ten feet high in 

 the highest part, but two feet and nine inches at 

 the side ; a result which is due to the lower pitched 

 roof. The stairs are of a compact form, and occu- 

 py but little space. 



The position of the upper flight determines that 

 of the lower, and makes necessary the recess in 

 the stone wall as shown by the basement plan. 

 Where so close a calculation is required, as in this 

 case, a small alteration in one part of a staircase 

 without a corresponding change in some other, may 

 just spoil the whole thing. Indeed, few changes in 

 a plan are safe, or likely to be successful, unless 

 they are considered with minute and judicious ref- 

 erence to their bearing on every other part ; and 

 this is about equal to original planning — a thing 

 more easily talked of than done. This point has 

 been alluded to already, but it is so important that 

 we venture to give line upon line. 



The position, on the whole, most eligible for this 

 house is one in which its shaded side should face 

 the west, and its jiarlor windows look out upon the 

 south. The road might wind round its southern 

 end, with a sufficient space between for shrubbery 

 and lawn, while the garden might stretch down to- 

 ward the vale. 



Upright boarding is the proper covering for the 

 sides of this btijlding, though clapboards might be 

 used, if specially preferred. But there are some 

 objections to this once almost universal mode of 

 covering wooden walls, and we may as well state 

 them here. 



In the first place, clapboards form a sort of hor- 

 izontal ruling, and it is a well-known effect of such 

 ruling that it shortens and flattens, to the eye, the 

 surfaces on which it is laid. Now this result is di- 

 rectly the reverse of what is often intended, and 



