The Garden Magazine, March, 1922 



25 



and jigsaw ornament, behind their patches of patchy lawn, and 

 watch the trolley car go by and do not hear the wood thrush in 

 the dusty Maples, and all their inner life has the thinness of 

 weak tea, the flavor of remainder tea leaves with a slight taste 

 of sugar. It flourishes in shady suburbs where one may follow 

 mile after mile of asphalt sidewalk and see no house or surround- 

 ings with any charm of personality whatsoever — expense, vain- 

 glory, considerable comfort, but nowhere any magic or sensitive- 



THE problem of the Olcott house — a problem skilfully solved 

 by Mr. Charles Barton Keen — was to design a simple, 

 inexpensive dwelling on a prominent corner lot overlooking a 

 large park, adjoining which were a number of rather expensive 

 and showy residences; to avoid competition in any sense of dis- 

 play; and to develop the property according to its opportunities, 

 with an individual, distinctive home, suitable to its site. 



In both the Olcott and the Graham-Clapp house (also of Mr. 



CHAUNCEY 



OLCOTT 'S 



SARATOGA HOME 



A rather widely known 

 example of the best type 

 of small house which 

 faces inward on its gar- 

 den; the architect here 

 again being Mr. Charles 

 Barton Keen of Phila- 

 delphia 



ness, any brooding secret, or any of those 

 slow growths that find their way upward into 

 blossom wherever one's heart is planted. The 

 suburban place generally looks like what it is, 

 something whose architect was Haste and its 

 owner Indifference. 



Now, an owner who likes to sit on his back 

 porch and look at his flower garden, rather 

 than on his front porch and look at the street, 

 is one whom any architect with any fineness 

 about him would prefer to build for. The so- 

 cial reformer may complain that it argues 

 inferior "social mindedness," and "unsocial 

 mindedness" is coming to be as appalling a 

 charge as it once was to be called heretic or 

 an infidel. There is an answer to this charge, 

 and a fairly complete one, the whole argu- 

 ment of it would take us a long way round, 

 but it may be summed up in this axiom, 

 namely that the finest social results come from 

 seeds which are first planted and secretly spring up in persons. 

 From which it seems to follow more or less logically that, 

 when we have put our porches behind our houses instead of iri 

 front, and turned our backyards into gardens, and have taken 

 to the intensive contemplation of the results of our own doings 

 there, in place of the superficial inspection of other people's 

 doings in the street, we shall have set our faces toward a better 

 civilization. 



Keen's design) the front necessarily faced north or northeast; the 

 best exposure then was to the rear, thus making it necessary, 

 or advisable, to develop that side, to put there the living porch, 

 flower garden and other decorative features. In the Olcott 

 place the garage, stable and pergola are treated to frame the 

 picture and form a background to it. In the Graham-Clapp 

 place this rear outlook was developed to have an interesting 

 foreground, with a background to form a screen and shut away 



