28 AMERICAN 
yO MGE:S 
AND: GARDENS 
January, 1906 
Helps to Home Building 
The Unusual House 
The practical effect of the new and the unusual in art succinctly explained —A needed warning to home builders 
IVE me something out of the ordinary,” is 
not an unusual instruction to architects. ‘‘ I 
am tired of Colonial, tired of Queen Anne, 
tired of Jacobean, tired of the buildings I 
see,’ yawns the client. ‘‘ Give me some- 
And the 
forth a study in l’art nouveau, or, greatest triumph of all, 
presents an original design of his own which may have pre- 
sented itself to him in a vision during a nap after an unduly 
hearty dinner. Rest assured, if this is the case, that the de- 
sign will give every evidence of its origin! 
So far as houses are concerned, the craving for the un- 
usual—and the new thing in architecture is very apt to be 
the latest essay in that art—rests on a complete misappre- 
hension of art and its meaning. No art of any kind, be it 
architecture, painting, decoration or sculpture, is good simply 
because it is new. ‘The new in art does not mean the latest 
work to be wrought, the latest picture to be painted, the 
latest statue to be carved, the latest house to be built; but 
it means something which is unlike that which has been done 
before. It must be really new, not something that is simply 
the latest thing to be done. 
But any new idea in art must have merit in itself before 
it can be recognized as having artistic quality. It is im- 
possible to get away from this limitation, for anything un- 
artistic is simply not art. Now, the unusual has no art 
quality in itself. Unusual is a quality that appertains to 
many things, and may be quite as characteristic of a murder 
as of a building or a picture. Anything that is unusual ts 
something out of the ordinary, strange, weird, uncanny, 
unlike anything else. If any one wishes a house that can 
be described by any of these words he will undoubtedly be 
content with a structure that can be described in no other 
way. And what will art have to do with it? Art is not 
measured in such terms, nor is beauty nor anything else of 
art significance. It is weird and strange, and that is the end 
of it. In itself, therefore, there is no merit in an unusual 
house that has this one quality especially developed. Arrtis- 
tically, the unusual house—if that be the quality especially 
emphasized in its design—has no real excellence, and what- 
ever merit it may have certainly does not come from any 
unusual quality, but is due to other reasons. Why, then, be 
unusual at all? 
A building, to be interesting, must have interesting quali- 
ties. The qualities of the most penetrating interest in a 
building are artistic. It may have merits of usefulness and 
value, and these may be very great; but they are not nec- 
essarily apparent, certainly not on first view, and may only 
be manifest through attentive study and minute examination. 
A building being by nature a useful structure, these qualities 
are of paramount importance; but they have not the visible, 
self-evident value of the artistic qualities that present them- 
selves in a glance and which are always immediately 
apparent. 
If the unusual is emphasized in a design there must be a 
lessening of the artistic qualities. “The most capacious de- 
sign has its limitations; the crowding of ideas, the joining 
of too many elements in one design, is as harmful as pure 
vacancy. If any bias, therefore, is given toward the un- 
usual, there must be less of art, because the unusual is not 
artistic. ‘There certainly, to put the case in its mildest form, 
will be less of the artistic than would have resulted had no 
especial emphasis been laid on the unusual. 
These are some of the theoretical reasons which show 
how thoroughly unnecessary the demand for an unusual 
house is; but there are practical reasons which are of as 
much importance. There is a very decided disadvantage in 
being a marked character. The man who can not walk 
down a street without attracting the attention of all be- 
holders is much less fortunately situated than the unobserved 
person who may walk for miles without engaging the notice 
of a single passer-by. A greatly disfigured man, a cruelly 
marked cripple, are much more to be commiserated, and are 
more commiserated, than those not so marked or injured. 
The unobtrusive person has the advantage every time. His 
comings and goings are at his own pleasure and are not 
chronicled in the daily press. He has a liberty and a free- 
dom, a peace and quiet, that the marked man never has. 
It is probably an advantage to be a personage, but it has its 
drawbacks—and they are not few. 
It is exactly so with houses. An unusual house is one that 
is not like other houses. It stands apart from all other 
buildings. It invites attention, and invites it deliberately. 
It impresses its character upon its surroundings. The street 
or road on which it stands is the street or road on which you 
will find such and such a house—you can’t possibly mistake 
it, for there it stands, in all its gaunt unusualness. And this 
quality is not only characteristic of the house, but is trans- 
mitted to its inmates. You become known as the man who 
lives in the queer house around the corner. From living in 
a queer house it is but a step to be considered queer your- 
self. The strange characteristics of your dwelling become a 
part of your own individuality. 
This is a distinction that appeals to no one. It is fate 
that is not relished. It is renown that is not appreciated. 
It is reputation that is not wanted. It puts a mark on the 
house and on its inmates that will grow more and more un- 
comfortable, and which, at some unexpected time, may re- 
sult in positive harm. ‘These are some of the things one’s 
house may do for one, and they are things no one cares for. 
And there is another reason. ‘The unusual house, the 
house decidedly unusual, appeals only to the person for 
whom it was built. It is saturated with individuality and 
with idiosyncrasies. It is odd and strange and weird and 
uncommon because these qualities particularly appealed to 
some one person. No other person is likely to be interested 
in the same kind of queerness, and hence the unusual house, 
after its owner has wearied of its oddity, becomes a burden 
to himself and his family, as firmly fixed as the old man of 
the sea upon the shoulders of the unwilling Sinbad. 
This presents the problem in a very simple and direct 
manner. Real estate has value as long as it is marketable. 
The value of a house as a place of residence is, of course, 
very great, but even that value is measured by the selling 
value of the property. No one wants to build a house that 
will not sell—at least no one wants to go into a real estate 
venture that may mean a final loss. To build an unusual 
house is the surest way to invite disaster. It is a house that 
will interest no one except the person who builds it or for 
whom it is built. And this is true whether the unusual 
qualities be external or internal. 
