10 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



July, 1905 



Monthly Comment 



MERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



comes to its readers in this number as a mag- 

 azine that is at once old and new. It is old 

 in so far as it is the first issue of a new series 

 of the Scientific American Building 

 Monthly. Unlike other magazines, there- 

 fore, it has, from its first present issue, an assured and wide 

 support, the support of an established clientele and the 

 prestige of many years of successful publication in another 

 form. But, save for this relation to its predecessor, the 

 magazine is wholly and completely new. 



The Home is the watchword of American Homes and 

 Gardens — the home as a place to be located and built, to 

 be designed and constructed, to be furnished and arranged, 

 to be adjusted to its environment, to be adapted to individual 

 and personal needs; a place to be lived in, a place in which 

 the manifold duties and activities of the country life are 

 centered and originated. This programme is a broad one, 

 for it leaves nothing untouched that relates to the physical 

 aspect of the home, and is directly concerned with the in- 

 fluences these conditions have upon the home life itself. 

 And the outdoor environment of the house will have equal 

 attention in these pages, the gardens and fields, the streets 

 and roads, the villages and towns. For the modern house 

 is not a structure standing apart by itself, an object apart 

 from every other object; but it is distinctly related to every- 

 thing adjacent to it. All these matters come well within 

 the scope of this magazine, and all will be adequately treated 

 in it. Our programme will, therefore, be developed in the 

 broadest way. 



The American home — the house, its furnishings, and its 

 garden surroundings — has a strongly marked individuality, 

 whose charm has won for it a well-earned and widely ac- 

 knowledged reputation. The free use of the connecting arch 

 and the portiere within the house, and the wide-spreading 

 porch without; the broad sweep of lawn or garden, un- 

 walled and bordered by the public way — these are distinctive 

 characteristics which will be richly illustrated and described 

 in American Homes and Gardens, by photographs of 

 the best work of the architect, art dealer, decorator and 

 landscape artist, as combined in typical examples. For- 

 tunately the growth of the American people in artistic ap- 

 preciation has kept pace with their growth in wealth; they 

 have made free use of their broader opportunities for travel; 

 and their houses are being steadily enriched with intelli- 

 gently selected art treasures, and decorated in those styles 

 which have gained a wide acceptance as being true and en- 

 during. This has been done without any sacrifice of the 

 distinctly American features of our domestic architecture. 

 These facts will be abundantly demonstrated in the pages 

 of the new magazine. 



The best domestic work of our leading architects will be 

 illustrated with a wealth of illustration and a completeness 

 of detail attained by no other publication. So, too, the most 

 interesting gardens of America will be presented with the 

 same care, and numerous special articles on matters relating 

 to the home and garden will add to the magazine's value. 



American Homes and Gardens looks back upon a 

 successful career of twenty years. The first issue was dated 

 November, 1885, an d the magazine was then known as the 



Scientific American, Architects' and Builders' Edi- 

 tion. This was in the early days of architectural periodical 

 publication, and neither the material nor the mechanical 

 means was at hand for adequate presentation of architectural 

 themes. Twenty years ago is by no means a remote epoch, 

 yet the domestic country work, which is now so representa- 

 tive of the best thought of our architects, was then quite 

 undeveloped. There were no photographic reproductions 

 in this first issue, but it contained two colored plates and a 

 " detail " sheet. The new magazine evidently filled a place 

 and met a want, for in less than a year a small country house 

 — published in the number for October, 1886 — attracted so 

 much attention that the entire edition was quickly exhausted, 

 necessitating a republication of this design in the issue for 

 December following. The incident is of value as demon- 

 strating, at a very early day, the public appreciation of the 

 new publication. 



Once begun, the Architects' and Builders' Edition of the 

 Scientific American embarked upon a prosperous and 

 busy career. The first photograph was printed in the num- 

 ber for July, 1888, and from that time onward every ad- 

 vantage was taken of the rapidly perfecting art of reproduc- 

 ing photographs, until the magazine became universally 

 recognized and appreciated for the beauty of its illustrations, 

 a feature that has always had the most careful attention and 

 to which the success of the publication has been largely due. 

 The next most significant event in the history of the magazine 

 occurred with the issue for January, 1902, when the name 

 was changed to the more harmonious form of the SCIEN- 

 TIFIC American Building Monthly. The history of 

 the magazine from that date to the present is too freshly 

 in the minds of our readers to need further comment. Each 

 issue in the past has been marked by an improvement over 

 the preceding issue, and this record, continued for so long a 

 time, is sufficient warranty for the future which American 

 Homes and Gardens has for its readers. 



A group of illustrations in the first issue of the Scien- 

 tific American, Architects' and Builders' Edition, 

 reproduces several new buildings then ranked as among the 

 most prominent in New York. It is a highly significant fact, 

 and most flattering to their architects, that each of these can 

 be so ranked to-day. They included the Produce Exchange, 

 the house of Mr. W. K. Vanderbilt, the Dakota Apartment 

 House, the Eden Musee, and the Central Park Apartments, 

 now known as the Navarro Flats. These constitute a not- 

 able group of buildings. The Produce Exchange was, for 

 many years, the largest brick building in America, and still 

 holds its own, both in size and in architectural merit, among 

 the great structures of the Metropolis. Mr. Vanderbilt's 

 house, although not then nor now the largest private resi- 

 dence in New York, is still one of our most beautiful private 

 city houses, and a dwelling of quite unusual architectural 

 grace. The Dakota well holds its own among the gaudy 

 and ornate splendors of later apartment houses. The Eden 

 Musee is an excellent type of the contemporary French 

 architecture of its day. The Navarro Flats are certainly 

 imposing and are more restrained in treatment than it is 

 likely they would be were they to be built to-day. They con- 

 stitute an interesting group of buildings that, notwithstand- 

 ing the vast changes in New York architecture since they 

 were built, is still interesting and important. 



