AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



January, 1910 



Monthly Comment 



The Unusual House 



[N A general way and as a matter of good 

 taste, the unusual house is a very safe kind 

 of a house to avoid. The bizarre and the 

 grotesque, the odd and the strange, yes, 

 even the unique, are but so many mani- 

 festations of the unusual, and hence dan- 

 gerous things in art, and particularly dan- 

 gerous in objects so large and permanent as buildings. This, 

 however, does not mean that it is best to keep to the hack- 

 neyed, to keep to the academic, or remain satisfied with the 

 commonplace. All these things are dreadful enough; but 

 it does mean that the house which has no other claim for 

 consideration than that it is "unusual" is a very good thing 

 to avoid. 



There are many conventions in building which are abso- 

 lutely unavoidable and particularlv in domestic building. 

 There are combinations which cannot be dispensed with. A 

 house wall is, at the most, a surface broken by openings 

 which are doors and windows. This is the basic form of 

 all exterior design. The wall surface may be of various ma- 

 terials and of quite limitless variety of color; it may be 

 plain or ornamented; the windows may be spaced singly or 

 combined; the doors may be single or double, grouped or 

 apart; they may fill the centre of a row of windows or 

 stand to one side. The possible combination of the essential 

 parts is really most limited. 



Yet few houses look alike, unless designedly made dupli- 

 cates of each other. Their very variableness gives a pleas- 

 ant variety to what otherwise might be deadly dullness. 

 And this variety is, of course, directly due to the skill with 

 which the designer molds and colors his building, decorates 

 his walls and parts, varies their dimensions, accomplishes 

 his whole. There is nothing that need be unusual in any 

 of these operations, nothing that need be unusual in the re- 

 sults. It is the common daily practice in every architect's 

 ofl'ice, and it is exactly the mode which is followed in the 

 production of any house design. 



But let it be imagined that the designer wearies of the 

 good old standards; what follows? He casts about for an 

 "unusual" idea to introduce into his design. Profound 

 thought develops an arch of a form hitherto unknown to 

 man. Deep thinking leads to the evolution of a chimney 

 so utterly new that the fire hearth might have been forgot- 

 ten in contemplating its outline. A dream vagary is given 

 visible form and all the world is called upon to admire it. 

 And the net result is that the occupant of the house becomes 

 known throughout his community as the "man who lives in 

 the queer place over the hill." This, of course, is not an 

 end sought by good building or by good architecture. But 

 it expresses quite well the popular conception of the value 

 of such efforts and demonstrates quite conclusively their 

 futility. 



A HOUSE must have more to commend it than any "un- 

 usual" characteristic. It must be good and interesting. It 

 must be well designed and constructed of good materials 



and in a good way. It must have solid worth. It must be 

 really good. And it need not be commonplace. To be 

 simply commonplace is quite as bad as to be simply unusual. 

 But the commonplace is not obtrusive; it does not demand 

 attention; it does not insist that it be noted. It has, very 

 likely, the surpassing merit of modesty, and shrinks from 

 the attention its more obtrusive neighbor demands as a 

 right. These are qualities not to be despised, and some- 

 times arouse feelings of positive thankfulness in the mind 

 jaded by inspecting one unusual house after the other. 



But the unusual may be pre-eminently desirable and 

 praiseworthy. It is by no means paradoxical that such 

 should be the case. The designers who have left the strong- 

 est marks on architectural history have not been those who 

 followed the beaten track, but those who departed the fur- 

 thest from it. The most rapid glance through the pages of 

 any architectural history will establish the truth of this 

 proposition without argument. Why, then, it may be asked, 

 condemn the domestic designer who goes furthest in the 

 introduction of new ideas? 



Thi: answer is not far to seek. The great designs of any 

 epoch are great not because they are departures from the 

 conventional, but because they are good. This is at once 

 the exact truth and a proper response to the question. It 

 has not been the unusual qualities or the unusual features of 

 their designs which have won universal attention, respect and 

 admiration, but the excellence of these designs and the 

 merits of their parts. In other words, it is the merit of the 

 design which counts, not the strangeness or the newness, not 

 the oddity or the grotesqueness, not the fact that no other 

 building is designed in that way, or that no other structure 

 has a special feature which may be its chief distinction. It 

 is merit, and only merit that wins, and in the contest the de- 

 sign that is simply unusual because it is unusual, fails, and 

 justly fails, to receive any consideration. 



This is a useful lesson to apply to contemporary domestic 

 architecture, for in the hasty nomenclature of the day the 

 unusual is apt to receive more consideration than it is en- 

 titled to. The error arises in supposing that the mere no- 

 tion of unusualness is itself meritorious. There could be no 

 greater error. If a house has any unusual feature that 

 merits distinction — and it is quite possible that this should 

 be the case — it is because this very unusual matter has been 

 designed with care and taste, and has been adjusted to the 

 whole design in a thoroughly artistic and workmanlike man- 

 ner. 



It will doubtless be agreed on all hands that the merit 

 of a cow is the quantity and quality of the milk she gives. A 

 cow with two heads may be a gold mine to its fortunate 

 owner, but it will not be a better cow because of its unusual 

 physical state. So a house that is simply odd with an odd- 

 ness that has no merit to commend it, will be without inter- 

 est or distinction. It is a house that will give greater sat- 

 isfaction the less it is seen and the more it is avoided. And 

 a house of that sort had better never be built. 



