216 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
June, 1909 
Monthly Comment 
The Cost of Home Building 
ANY singular ideas are current on the sub- 
ject of the cost of home building. It is 
not strange that this should be so, for the 
bizarre and the eccentric invariably attract 
attention that the orderly and the sedate 
may never receive. And, perhaps, the most 
singular of all notions with regard to the 
cost of houses is, that a beautiful home can be acquired at the 
most moderately conceivable cost, if one did but know how 
to do it. Doubtless we would all get rich if we could, and 
while the crop of millionaires and other wealthy folk has 
been tolerably abundant in America of late years, and while 
the methods employed by many of these fortunate folk to 
attain their present degree of financial eminence are fairly 
well known, no one will dispute the fact that there are still 
a few left who do not rank in this exalted category, and 
that, therefore, the mere knowing how to do a thing is not 
nearly so important as actually doing it. 
THE clamor for small beautiful houses at small cost will 
not down. It is a delusion quite as widespread as the former 
notion that the earth was flat, and it is quite as difficult to get 
rid of. Very few people can point to such dwellings as 
actually in existence, but immense numbers will tell you very 
positively that the thing can be done, and if you happen to 
be conducting an architectural paper that endeavors to lay 
before its readers good ideas relating to every kind of a 
house and fail to fill your pages with illustrations and 
descriptions of these much sought after structures, you will 
be very pointedly told you do not know your business, since 
everyone is aware that the chief end of an editor is to give 
his subscribers what they want, that, and nothing more. 
Now it happens that there are a good many eminently de- 
sirable things which do not exist, which never have existed, 
and which will never exist. There is the philosopher’s 
stone, for one thing, that could conveniently turn everything 
it touched into gold. There was that famous Arabian travel- 
ing carpet, on which one had but to seat one’s self to be in- 
stantly transported anywhere, regardless of the dangers of 
railroad or water travel or the splendid utility of the wire- 
less. Then, there is the magic cap, the placing of which on 
one’s head made one invisible. But why go on? Most 
excellent devices these, and mighty useful, too, but utterly 
impossible in every way. It is, in short, comparatively easy 
to think of things that might be obtained, but it is very 
different to obtain them, as everyone knows who has made 
the effort. 
THE trouble with the small cheap house proposition is 
that the conditions under which houses are built are not 
understood or appreciated. Moreover, it is not equally ad- 
mitted that good things cost good money. It is true the 
tendency of modern business is not this way. The goodly 
number of people who find intellectual relaxation in the an- 
nouncement of department-store sales have no doubt grown 
to realize that the true standard of excellence for any article 
is its lowness of price. Else why these sacrifices of dollars, 
this distribution of bargains, this cutting of profits? Bar- 
gains can, of course, be had, and good ones, too, but good 
business rests on fair value and honest profits rather than 
on “price savings” and other devices of the cheap merchant. 
THESE methods will not produce satisfactory results in 
house building. One may buy a table-cover at a counter 
sale and throw it away when weary of it without great loss. 
But a house is a permanent structure and can not always be 
disposed of even at bargain rates. It can not be built with- 
out money, and, while it is, unfortunately, not the truth that 
the more it costs the better it is—better artistically, hy- 
gienically and for living purposes—there is a point very soon 
reached below which the cost can not be reduced. The 
proposition is, indeed, very simple; if one would buy a 
handsome dress or a fine coat, one must pay a good price. 
It is precisely the same with houses. A handsome house, 
whether it be large or small, means a money cost that is ab- 
solutely unavoidable. 
Bur the worst of it is the actual cost of building by no 
means represents the total expenditure that will be required 
in any building enterprise. There are a great many essential 
matters that enter into the cost of a dwelling that do not 
appear in the architect’s charges. ‘There is the land, for the 
first thing, the bare price of which may be a considerable 
item, while the cost of beautifying it and reducing it to 
harmony with the structure may be very considerable. The 
cost of furnishing must also be included in many instances, 
while if one is simply removing from one house to another 
there will be a heavy moving charge and great inconvenience 
and loss of time that means a money loss even if little is 
paid out. Nor should the cost of new insurance, the fees 
for title examination, the possible necessity of a lawyer and 
other items, most of which are absolutely necessary, be over- 
looked. Forgotten they are in many cases, but at least it 
should be obvious that if one is building a five thousand 
dollar house a very substantial addition must be made to this 
amount before the final expenditure can be footed up. 
ALL these necessary items, none of which can be omitted, 
make the actual cost of a new house much greater than the 
figures set by the architect. And as these things can not be 
avoided, it follows that if the funds available are limited 
there must be cutting and trimming of the most rigid de- 
scription in the construction cost. It is no wonder, there- 
fore, that the handsome small house, the good looking little 
house, the attractive small dwelling is a rare and quite un- 
known quantity when the lowest possible cost is put upon it. 
One does not need costly embellishment strung, as it were, 
around the new house to beautify and adorn it and make it 
beautiful. This experiment. has been tried time and time 
again, with disastrous results to all concerned. But one 
does need good materials and good taste, and these com- 
modities command a price that is very apt to make the total 
cost much greater than was anticipated at the outset. 
But what would you? A good looking house is a per- 
petual joy. It yields satisfaction to its owner and gives 
pleasure to the beholder. It is a gage of prosperity and a 
measure of means. It displays intelligence and consideration, 
and is to be commended on a hundred different grounds. 
Some one person may have been fortunate 'to have secured 
this result without undue outlay; but this may very likely 
not happen to be the case with the next man who tries a 
similar proposition. "The low price house can, in fact, dis- 
play but a single quality, and that is its inherent cheapness. 
If you want more you must pay more. But the person who 
imagines he can become possessed of a house and grounds 
that look as though ten thousand dollars had been expended 
on them for about two thousand dollars is simply looking 
after the impossible and the unattainable. He is hungering 
for the moon while still trying to remain on the surface of 
the earth. 
