February, 1912 AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 49 
“Making The Corer Attractive 
q]| HERE are many ways of making the corner 
of a room attractive. The illustrations here 
given suggest a few of them. Of course, 
one never wishes to spoil the symmetry of a 
well-planned room by any ‘‘afterthought”’ 
that mere ingenuity and not good taste sug- 
gests. Therefore, we can hardly expect to go about our 
rooms cutting off corners simply for the sake of adding to 
them some architectural feature, such as a fireplace, a china 
closet, or a bookshelf. Nevertheless, there are many times 
when the utilization of corner space would prove a means of 
enhancing the beauty of the room, bearing which in mind 
the examples of corner treatment here shown have been 
selected as representative of what one may accomplish in 
this respect. There is, for instance, something particularly 
attractive about the corner fireplace. The cosiness of the 
sort of seclusion one has a sense of, in being within the space 
formed by the walls at right angles is, in itself, enough to 
encourage one to place a fireplace in such a manner as to make 
it pattern after the proverbial chimney corner. Of course the 
placing of a fireplace in a room of extended proportions is 
hardly advisable, since the corner fireplace usually best adapts 
itself to the small room. In connection with the dining-room 
corners one naturally thinks of a china-closet designed after 
the Colonial fashion in such matters as being particularly ap- 
propriate, but here the problem of filling the corner is almost 
the reverse of the fireplace rule, for corner china-closets appear 
best from an architect’s and from a decorator’s view when 
placed in a large room instead of in a small one. Well placed 
bookshelves, especially built in ones, likewise lend themselves 
to making a corner attractive, as one of the illustrations 
here reproduced will suggest to the modern homemaker. 
