February, 1 9 10 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



45 



Notable 



American 



By Barr Ferree 



Homes 



"Hill Stead," the Estate of Alfred Atmore Pope, Esq., 





Farmington, Conn. 





iMODERN house at Farmington is so much 

 of an anomaly as to be quite unthinkable, 

 did it not actually exist. The fine, old- 

 time character of this quaint old town is 

 of so penetrating a quality that, it would 

 seem, even the new buildings must be per- 

 meated with it. But strongly developed 

 as this quality is here, it is obviously impossible to retain it 

 to-day unless one builds in the old way, steeps oneself in the 

 old traditions, and conforms, as far as modern necessities 

 permit, with the old ideas. It is, of course, not impossible 

 to do this, but it may be frankly said at the outset that it 

 has seldom been so well done as Messrs. McKim, Mead & 

 White, the architects of Mr. Pope's fine house, have real- 

 ized here, supplemented with the zealous assistance of Miss 



Pope, to whom much of the interior treatment is due. And 

 now that the house has been built, the grounds laid out and 

 planted, the whole estate brought to a fine condition of 

 flourishing maturity, it is easy to see the leading factors 

 that, in the creation of this beautiful house and grounds, 

 dominated the ideas of the owner and his architects. It 

 is not necessary to set them down in order of importance, 

 but it is very apparent that here were considered comfort 

 and convenience, ampleness of size, a feeling for the past, 

 a love of fitness, and a regard for quiet in design that was 

 content with agreeableness of result without any appeal to 

 over-elaboration. 



That the house is of a type generally called "Colonial" 

 goes without saying; yet, as a matter of fact, its prototypes 

 are rather the farmhouses of the early Nineteenth Century 



It is precisely the kind of house one would naturally look for in Farmington 



