AMERICAN ESTATES AND GARDENS 



The center is filled with a hall, reaching from front to front. The walls, which have a white 

 paneled wainscoting finished with a mahogan) cap, are covered with light buff burla]) and 

 support a beamed ceiling. The stairs are contained in a separate hall, which opens directly 

 from the main hall to the left of the north doorway. Directly opposite is the studio — 

 Mr. Squier's own room — a delightful apartment, finished in maroon, with a bay window. 

 It opens directly on to a covered ])orch, which is enclosed within the walls of the house. 

 On the south front the spaces on either side of the hall are filled with two great rooms — 

 the drawing-room on the right, the dining-room on the left. Both have paneled wainscots 

 in white, and walls hung with silk of greenish hue. 



The House of George S. Graham, Esq., at Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. 



The house of Mr. George S. Graham, at Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, is a splendid type of 

 the large brick country house. It is a thoroughly brick building, deep dark red in color, in 

 which stone is used for the trimming in so suppressed a manner as to in no way affect the 

 identity of the brick construction. The Indiana limestone which has been chosen as the 

 co-ordinate material appears only in the frame of the main doorway — and a charming bit of 

 stonework it is, too, beautifully designed and exquisitely carved — and on the window frames, 

 and the summits of the btittresses, and the capitals of the piers which uphold the brick arches 

 on which much of the upper story is carried. 



The house is very large, with a delightful silhouette due to its varied outhne, the scale 

 being so great that almost every room, certainly the chief rooms on the ground floor, occupies 

 a wing of its own. It was a task of no small difficulty to harmonize such a plan into a single 

 homogeneous building, but the picturesque results fully justif}' the great expenditure this 

 system entailed. A very distinctive feature of the exterior is the brick porches, supported on 

 piers carrying round arches and strengthened with corner buttresses. The second story is 

 built out flush over these arches, which have an impi-ession of strength quite unusual in resi- 

 dential buildings. The house, it should be added, stands on the summit of a hill, and is 

 a conspicuous landmark in its vicinity. 



Notwithstanding the great size of the ground area, the plan is very direct and simple. 

 The hall is vaulted, rectangular in plan, and extends straight through the house from the stone 

 doorway to the porte-cochere on the other front, which is reached through a vestibule, vaulted 

 like the hall. It is finished in oak, with a high wainscot and pilasters to carry the vault. The 

 stairway immediately adjoins the stone doorway, and is placed in a bay window, which forms 

 a turret attached to the doorway tower. A passage at right angles to the hall opens on to the 

 reception-room on the right, and leads to the dining-room immediately in face. The recej)- 

 tion-room is white, the dining-room dark oak. The latter has a paneled wainscoting and 

 a beamed ceiling. The adjoining wing is given up to the kitchen and its dependencies. 



On the farther side of the hall is the library, which fills the entire space from outer wall to 

 outer wall. It is sunk two feet below the level of the hall that a greater height may be obtained. 



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