February, 1906 
M\tERtGAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
103 
Helps to Home Building 
The Simple House 
IMPLICITY is one of the choicest and 
rarest of qualities in house design. It is so 
rare that its surpassing merits are little un- 
derstood. It is the fussy, overornamented, 
aggressive house that attracts attention— 
4 which, of course, is something quite different 
from winning admiration. The simple house has completely 
opposite characteristics. It is simple, quiet, unassuming, un- 
aggressive; it is modest, retiring, gentle; it is restful, peaceful 
and satisfying. Are not these qualities to be desired in a 
house? Are they not precious facts well worth their cost? 
For the primary purpose of a house is not to be seen but to 
be of some practical use. It is a shelter and a home. It is a 
shelter first of all and in the earliest sense; it is a home be- 
cause civilization has developed the home idea, of which the 
house, from this point of view, is but the expression. There 
is nothing in these elementary principles which requires a 
house to be fussy and extravagant, loud and boisterous, self- 
assertive and aggressive. These are simply vulgarities that 
have been thoughtlessly added to the house from time to 
time, without thought of its own meaning and without regard 
to the real effect they produce. 
Almost from the earliest times of which history tells us, 
mankind has given his house a more or less ornamental char- 
acter. hese attempts, at the first, were so exceedingly crude 
that to modern eyes they have no ornamental quality and 
would not be so classed did they not indicate a manifest at- 
tempttobemore than the strictly utilitarian. The development 
of the ornamental aspects of house building proceeded apace 
with the development of the structural aspects. As man 
learned how to build better and more sumptuous dwellings 
he knew the better how to apply ornamental ideas to them, 
and hence designed houses which were not only suited to the 
needs of the epoch in which they were erected, but which were 
often beautiful and imposing. 
But this beauty was not slapped on, piled up, thrust in; it 
did not take the form of impossible roofs, of strange shapes, 
of carved bits added for no reason at all; it was not something 
added on “for show.’ Not one of these, nor any similar 
circumstance, led in the development of the ornamental aspects 
of houses. The cardinal fact taught by the history of 
domestic architecture is that whatever beauty a house has 
had in any period previous to our own has been due to its 
structural qualities. That is to say, good ornament is not 
put onto a building, but is developed from its structural lines. 
This certainly is not what is done when a string of fret- 
work is hung around a house, or when a cornice is supported 
by meaningless brackets, or when odd roofs and strange 
towers are added for no purpose whatsoever save for their 
“looks.” This is not what happens when structure is de- 
parted from, when truth and dignity are subordinated to 
“‘fancy’”’ ornaments. 
It is impossible to depart from the structural in any archi- 
tectural undertaking with any degree of safety. Architecture 
is construction, although some very good critics think con- 
struction only becomes architecture when it has a certain 
ornamental or beauty character. No one should avoid this 
contention with more alacrity than the house builder, for 
unless he does so he will immediately fall into the fatal error 
of overornamenting his house in order to transform it into 
what he supposes will be a work of beauty and of art. Poor 
ie 
art, that it must find such excuses for its being! Poor archi- 
tecture, that it must look to such means for its attractiveness ! 
Poor house builder, that he can be so ignorant and so deluded 
as to what is best for him to do! And poor us, who may have 
to view his handiwork day by day, marvel at its singularity 
and ponder over what sort of a person could be responsible 
for it! 
The home builder must remember that he is responsible 
for his house to himself. ‘There are other responsibilities he 
assumes in home building, but the public will, in every case, 
hold him entirely responsible for anything he builds. Hence 
the importance that is attached to the exterior of houses, for 
it is by the exterior that the merits of any house will be 
measured by every one who has not entry to it. Hence also 
the passion for external beauty, the desire to live in a hand- 
some house, the wish to surpass one’s neighbors in the 
elegance of one’s abode and other rivalries of like nature, 
some of them harmless in themselves, some of them of no 
especial importance to any one, but all helping in the move- 
ment for notable outsides. 
If this is really the tendency of the day, what chance has 
the simple house? It has exactly the same chance that a well 
made tailor-made gown has among the frills and furbelows 
of the fancy dressmaker. The comparison, perhaps, is a 
homely one, but it is not far-fetched. It expresses the exact 
truth: the simple house is the tailor-made house. It has dis- 
tinction in its sobriety; it has merit in its quiet; it has charm in 
its obvious retirement. 
The simple house ts, of all houses, the most difficult to de- 
sign. It calls for more thought, it demands more care, it 
necessitates greater study, it requires greater effort. It is 
never an easy task to design a good house, for no good work 
of any sort is produced without effort. But it is a particularly 
dificult matter to design a simple house, because the effect 
of the whole is to be produced by the house itself—by its 
structural parts—without any help from adventitious orna- 
ment, fancy parts, or extraneous ideas. 
The simple house must not only be simple, but it must be 
good. Its simplicity is not that of mere bareness—that is 
something quite different. Simplicity in house design does 
not mean a mere denuding of ornament or its deliberate 
omission; it means that the house must be designed in a simple 
way that is also beautiful. Simplicity of design is based on 
structural development. In the hands of the skilled designer 
these structural lines become also lines of beauty. The con- 
struction, therefore, becomes beautiful construction, and the 
simple house is achieved in a natural, beautiful way. 
Plainness, severity, commonplaceness, barrenness, must not 
be confused with simplicity. “There must be artistic effort or 
the house will be completely wanting in external merit. A 
fussy house will not necessarily be made beautiful by stripping 
it of its ornament. It may be bettered—at least it will be 
rid of unnecessary parts. The evil is more deeply rooted than 
that; it lies in the very bone and sinew of the house, and the 
remedy, if there can be a remedy, must be applied to the 
whole structure. 
Mere plainness in house building has no positive qualities 
of excellence. A house that is merely plain, and with no other 
quality, has nothing else to recommend it. The simple house, 
on the other hand, has beauty in its simplicity, a beauty due 
to its fine lines and to the harmony of all the parts. 
