14 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



July, 1906 



beauty of the whole. One does not, therefore, look for large 

 estates in Tuxedo Park, but one looks for — and finds — many 

 houses of distinguished merit, for much architectural skill 

 and genius have been lavished on Tuxedo, which, in a cer- 

 tain sense, may be regarded as a museum of full sized models 

 of the best work in country houses of the best American 

 architects for two decades or more. 



One may be quite certain that when that most individual 

 of American architects, Mr. Wilson Eyre, Jr., of Philadel- 

 phia, was called upon by Mr. Deacon to design his Tuxedo 

 house for him the creative fancy of the architect found 

 much to inspire him in this beautiful land. But he certainly 

 gained nothing from the most suggestive of his neighbors, 



themselves. If, perchance, he adds, as he has done time 

 and time again, a note of carved ornament, it is a bit of 

 sculpture, charming in itself, a real note in the whole fabric, 

 and yet occupying a subordinate position. In other words, 

 the very simplest of Mr. Eyre's houses have a charm due 

 to their inherent simplicity. It is architecture of a very high 

 order, the supreme test of the architect who lovingly welds 

 his rude building materials into a resultant that wins ad- 

 miration through the sheer ability displayed in their use. 



These qualities are admirably brought out and very 

 beautifully illustrated in Mr. Deacon's house. It would be 

 difficult to imagine a building more completely devoid of 

 the extraneous additions with which most architects are ac- 





The Quiet Entrance Front is a Remarkable Study in Irregularity and Variety 



for Mr. Eyre designed a thoroughly individual house, admir- 

 ably adapted to the hill-side site on which it is built, and as 

 completely characteristic of its designer as it is individual in 

 its design and captivating in the quiet simplicity of its parts. 

 I doubt if we have any architect who gets as much out of 

 buildings as buildings as Mr. Eyre does. Thoroughly alive 

 as he is to the artistic possibilities and realities of the related 

 arts of painting and sculpture, he nevertheless believes — 

 as his numerous buildings amply testify — that in seeking for 

 architectural grace in buildings the building as a building — 

 in its structural parts — must be graceful and beautiful. 

 Hence his houses are studied with consummate art, his plain 

 walls, his simple outlines, his spacing of voids and solids 

 are conceived with a penetrating skill and yield a charm in 



customed to obtain their results. It is a long, low house, as 

 has been intimated, on the side of a hill which descends so 

 sharply that of level building area there is nothing at all. 

 And it is perfectly plain. That is to say, it consists of four 

 plain walls in which various doors and windows have been 

 cut. 



True, no house has as yet been built which, in its elemental 

 parts, was more than this, but Mr. Eyre has emphasized his 

 elements by leaving them in their elemental state but so spac- 

 ing and proportioning them, so arranging and combining 

 them, that his elementary treatment has exactly that effect 

 of interest and art which its designer contemplated from the 

 outset, an effect that could be reached in no other way, and 

 which — let copyists beware — could have been obtained by 



