July, 1 913 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



Vll 



AUGUST NUMBER OF AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDEN 



THERE are few problems in domestic architecture of 

 greater interest to the American home-builder that that 

 of the remodeled house. In these days of overcrowded 

 cities, when the true homemaker seeks the greater quiet 

 of suburban and rural districts as a tonic for the nerve-strain 

 incident to our over-keyed business life, the house in the 

 country makes an appeal to one too strong to be denied. 

 It is not possible for everyone to build from foundation 

 to chimney-top a house for himself, but many of us find that 

 the old-fashioned homes of others will, with a little re- 

 modeling, give us premises as delightful as any we might 

 have planned to our fancies. 



EVERY year an issue of American Homes has devoted 

 a number of pages to articles dealing with the subject of 

 remodeled houses. In the August number of American 

 Homes the opening article (by Mr. Joseph Bernard Pear- 

 man) will describe an old Dutch Colonial house of historical 

 interest in Hackensack, New Jersey. The original character 

 of this house has been retained in the modeling with great 

 success by its owners. A remodeled Colonial Cottage in 

 Vermont will also be described and illustrated with photo- 

 graphs of the cottage before and after remodeling. Another 

 interesting example of the remodeled farmhouse is of the 

 country home of Mr. William L. Otis of Waterford, Conn., 

 will serve as the subject of an interesting article, as likewise 

 will the home of Mr. William Watt of Nyack, New York. 



THE Collectors' Department of American Homes will 

 contain an article on an unusual collection of bird cages 

 of all countries and all periods. This is the little known 

 collection of Mr. Alexander W. Drake of New York, and 

 will be described by Mr. Robert H. Van Court. "Old 

 Time Pipe Stoppers" is the subject of another article of 

 interest to collectors. A third article in the "Collectors' 

 Department" will be on the subject of "Wax Portraiture," 

 a well-known art of the 17th and 1 8th Centuries. "Small 

 Bronzes For The House" is the title of another article of 

 special importance in the consideration of the decoration 

 of the modern home. This and all the other articles in 

 the August number will be exquisitely illustrated. The 

 centre-page feature will display many types of dormer 

 windows. The August issue will also present an unusually in- 

 teresting essay by Charlotte Cowdrey Brown — "A Long 

 Bloom in a Hardy Garden, as well as the usual "Around the 

 Garden;" "Within the House" and "Helps to the House- 

 wife" departments. 



SAVING OLD ST. JOHN'S 



THERE are few cities the world over which have under- 

 gone the sweeping architectural changes which have 

 marked New York's civic progression. With the area 

 growth of this city the influence of the newer building styles 

 has swept like a returning tide over the original areas. The 

 Dutch style of early Colonial times gave way to the Classic 

 style, and the Greek school stepped aside to give way to the 

 Colonial style. Then the French influence of Baron Hauss- 

 man began to sway construction and to prompt recon- 

 struction with the present day interest in the Gothic style 

 for public buildings already exerting an influence upon other 



structures. In the course of this incessant change many 

 noble edifices have been sacrificed until it has almost seemed 

 as though nothing would be left to us as monuments to our 

 yesterdays. After holding its own for over a century, old 

 St. John's Chapel seems marked for destruction. Fifty years 

 ago E. L. Henry, N. A. painted a picture of this famous 

 church but even then workmen were engaged in breaking 

 the ground in its vicinity for the foundation of an ugly 

 freight station. The Chapel, an outpost of Old Trinity, has 

 fallen in the path of an apparently inflexible city street sur- 

 vey, and it has been declared that the portico must be torn 

 away to permit the widening of the street on which it fronts. 

 Naturally St. John's without the portico would be mutilation 

 impossible to permit. Fortunately no condemnation pro- 

 ceedings have been instituted by New York city, and al- 

 though the Trinity Corporation seems to persist in a leth- 

 argic attitude towards the matter, there is still hope of sav- 

 ing to New York and to America one of our most beautiful 

 and most interesting historic monuments. 



The community and the city would do well to turn to 

 emergencies of the sort as they have often been met in 

 London and elsewhere in England as well as upon the Con- 

 tinent. A careful inspection of St. John's Chapel reveals 

 the fact that it would be absolutely practicable to retain 

 the portico by lowering its floor to the required grade level, 

 cutting through it and sustaining the pillars by pedestals, 

 and it is to be hoped that if the city persists in considering 

 it absolutely necessary to widen the street immediately be- 

 fore the premises of St. John's, at any sacrifice to the 

 building, this suggestion will be met by the authorities as a 

 solution of the problem of perpetuating this historic edifice. 



THE BOY AND THE BOOK 



"[7 ROM Miss Anna A. MacDonald of the Pennsylvania 

 JP State Library at Harrisburg comes a story of the in- 

 terest in books shown by one little boy living in Grbver, 

 Pennsylvania," says a writer in the N. Y. Times Book 

 Review. The boy had found Mr. Seton's book, "Two Little 

 Savages," in the traveling library sent out by the State jinsti- 

 tution. When the book had to be returned he asked the 

 local librarian to get it for him the next time the set of books 

 came to town. Moreover, he asked the librarian if he 

 could not buy the book, and she found a copy for him for 

 twenty-five cents. Luck was against the boy, however, and 

 he could not get the necessary quarter, and when, after 

 earning it by selling papers, he returned to buy the book, it 

 was gone. When the traveling library came through Grover 

 again, however, the little boy got the copy of "Two Little 

 Savages," and, like a monk of old, began making a manu- 

 script copy of it, spending most of his Summer vacation at 

 the work." It is a source of gratification to note that 

 incipient Lincolns and Websters still spring from Colum- 

 bia's soil! 



Inadvertently the name of the architect of the house 

 of Mr. Albert H. Canfield, of Bridgeport, Conn., was 

 misspelled upon page 166 of the issue of American 

 Homes and Gardens for May, 1913. The architect of 

 this house was Mr. Ernest G. Southey of Bridgeport, Conn. 



