September, 1910 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



359 



The garden Iront of the house 



The Country Seat of G. St. L. Abbott, Concord, Mass, 



By Barr Ferree 



,HE origin of the charming home of Mr. 

 G. St. L. Abbott, at Concord, Mass., was 

 an ugly little four room farmhouse. It 

 was known as the Haggerty homestead, 

 and when Mr. Abbott began his building 

 operations with his architect, Mr. P. B. 

 Howard, of Boston, he built around the 

 old structure. Two of its outer walls and half of its roof 

 are still standing, and partly enclose the kitchens and serv- 

 ants' rooms of the present house. Mr. Abbott speedily be- 

 came convinced that a better way would have been to have 

 begun his own house as a new building from the founda- 

 tions, since within a year after his purchase he had to build 

 a farmhouse. He has asked me to point out this initial 

 error as a warning to others and I gladly pass it on. 



The old Haggerty house faced the road, which lies north- 

 west of the house; as Mr. Abbott desired a southern ex- 

 posure, he turned the old house over to the use of his 

 servants, and built what was practically a separate house 

 for his living-rooms, standing back to back with the old 

 house, and opening to the southeast. The avenue coming 

 in from the road ends in a large circle to the east of the 

 house, and to reach the front door one is obliged to walk 

 about thirty feet along a wide brick terrace which separates 

 the house from a good sized garden extending all along 

 its front. 



Originally the house consisted of a dining-room with a 

 den to the southeast of it, a hall and a vestibule connected, 

 and a living-room; but before Mr. Abbott had lived there 

 three years his family outgrew the house as originally 

 planned and the "big-room" — the room with the tapes- 

 tries — the present sitting-room was built to carry the much 

 needed bedrooms above it. This is a marvelously satis- 

 factory room. It is about forty-five feet long by twenty- 

 five feet wide; the windows on the long side overlook the 

 garden, commanding beyond it a view down the Sudbury 

 River valley, and the large window at the end looks south- 

 west into the orchard, and full into the glow of the winter 

 sunsets. The woodwork is oak. 



The treatment of the walls of so big a room was a diffi- 

 cult problem. Obviously the proper thing would have been 



oak paneling from floor to ceiling. But building is as ex- 

 pensive as it is amusing; so the oak paneling was relegated 

 to a castle in Spain, which it still embellishes, and Mr. and 

 Mrs. Abbott set themselves to considering temporary ex- 

 pedients. 



One end of the room was filled with bookshelves, reach- 

 ing to the ceiling, which satisfactorily disposed of so much 

 of the problem; but the long stretch of wall on the fireplace 

 side was rather a poser until Mrs. Abbott happened to 

 stumble on a couple of tapestry panels which exactly fitted 

 the great spaces on each side of the fireplace; these are 

 modern pieces, but very dignified in design and harmonious 

 in color. 



The other two sides of the room being largely taken 

 up by windows, there remained very little wall space to deal 

 with. The first intention was to leave it in rough plaster, 

 unstained. But this, though perfectly satisfactory in the 

 staircase hall, looked crude in the big room. The spaces 

 between the timbering about the fireplace were covered with 

 gold "tea-chest" paper put on over the rough plaster; to 

 prevent the plaster cutting it, the paper hangers pasted on 

 first a cheap wall paper, face to the wall. Seeing this, the 

 problem was solved. More of this cheap paper was 

 ordered, and all the rest of the walls were covered with it. 

 The rough plaster gives it a very pleasant texture, and it 

 has yellowed with time, thus bringing it into excellent 

 harmony with the oak and the tapestry. 



The covering of the furniture presented another rather 

 troublesome problem; it was impossible to furnish such a 

 big room at once — for that matter it is not completelv 

 furnished yet! Yet it was necessary that there should be 

 some dominant note of color — preferably rather a striking 

 one — that might oppose itself brilliantly to the monotone 

 of the walls. In this dilemma, the thought of turkev red 

 occurred, that being a standard color, to be obtained at all 

 times, in all fabrics, and unlikely to fade; so the whole 

 room, window curtains and all, was done temporarily in 

 turkey red cotton; the window curtains have since been re- 

 placed by silk in the same shade, and several of the chairs 

 covered with damask, but the original turkey red still per- 

 sists in corners. 



