HOMES AND GARDENS 
The home of Dr. Dwight E. Marvin, at Summit, New Jersey, is an unusually successful example of the gambrel roof type 
Ame, 
Ras 
NX 
of house 
A Colonial House in New Jersey 
By Robert H. Van Court 
Photographs by T. C. Turner 
HE never ending quest for the small house 
that is well designed leads one to country 
and suburban homes of every possible type. 
There are some architectural styles, how- 
ever, which may be successfully used only 
for large and extensive buildings, for one 
can hardly imagine a small suburban cottage of Gothic or 
Italian Renaissance design. Other styles of architecture, 
upon the other hand, seem particularly suited to small coun- 
try homes and other buildings of a somewhat intimate and 
domestic character, and of these types none is more popular 
or more widely used than what we know as the “Dutch Col- 
onial”’ style. 
The chief characteristic of this type, of course, is the 
“sambrel” or double hipped roof, but it is interesting to 
note that while this kind of roof seems to have been in- 
vented in America its use was not confined to the region 
immediately about New York where Dutch influence pre- 
vailed. It occurs also in numerous old farmhouses through- 
out New England, and several well-known examples are 
still standing near Medford, Deerfield and other old locali- 
ties in Massachusetts. The famous Hancock Mansion, 
which for generations was one of the landmarks of Bos- 
ton, was also built with a gambrel roof, somewhat high in 
pitch and lighted by dormer windows. A gambrel roof 
which is really Dutch, however, is almost invariably pos- 
sessed of certain lines by means of which it may be readily 
identified. Its dimension from the ridge-poles to the point 
where the downward slope begins is nearly always much 
shorter than the length of the slope itself, while in the case 
of the New England example the two dimensions are very 
nearly the same. The slope of the Dutch gambrel drops 
with a very graceful curve—it is never precisely straight, as 
the New England roof invariably is. 
At Summit, New Jersey, Mr. Benjamin V. White, a New 
York architect, has built for Dr. Dwight E. Marvin a house 
which embodies the characteristics of the New England 
rather than of the Dutch gambrel roof, and which is in 
many ways a successful example of this very pliable style, 
and the place is particularly interesting by reason of the 
beauty of the site as well as the tasteful designing and plan- 
ning of the house itself. A low hill or knoll rises gently 
from the roadway. ‘The soil is rocky and in many places 
there are boulders which appear above the surface of the 
ground. A dense growth of forest trees and underbrush 
surrounds the house and affords a background, providing a 
delightfully rural setting for its carefully studied archi- 
tecture. 
Owing to the slope of the ground a straight walk directly 
from the street to the entrance doorway would have in- 
volved a flight of steps near the house. “Ihe approach has 
therefore been planned with a curving walk which enters 
the grounds at one side, avoiding the slope, and leaving the 
greater part of the space surrounding the house for a lawn 
