June, 1909 
The 
Summer Home 
of 
Arthur 
W. Hall, Esq. 
bind 
By Bessie P. Lee a ae 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
239 
Crystal Brook 
Long Island 
Bind 
Photographs by 
John Clifford 
White painted settles are built at either side of the entrance doorway 
HE cottage under consideration grew up out 
of the ground, “without a thought of the 
morrow,” as naturally as a clump of field 
grass. The construction is of plank. This 
gets rid of the studding, and, as there is 
no lath and plaster used, this is quite a con- 
sideration. Only on the partitions upstairs 
does the studding appear, and there it is most convenient, 
being used as shelves or a sort of glorious catch-all. 
The outside of the cottage is battened over the joint of 
the big boards, and stained green with Cabot creosote, while 
the upper half is shingled, and that and the roof left to 
weather the beautiful gray of the seaside shingle. 
We enter through a small hall, off which is a large and 
convenient coat closet. And then we come at once upon the 
“Cantie Hearth, where cronies meet,” which, with the 
twenty-foot window-seat just opposite, are the features of 
the living-room. We made up our minds that after all the 
bric-a-brac and “things to dust’? of town, that our country 
home should be deliciously bare and chastely empty. And we 
succeeded, there being nothing much in the room besides the 
fireplace and the window-seat, except some good plain rocker- 
chairs, stained a fine, dirty worn-out blue to match the wain- 
scot in the room. These, with a table which can easily be 
moved out on the porch, where all the meals are served, a 
few other tables and quantities of pots, jars and vases for 
the heaps of flowers which grow all on the landscape, make 
the room a perfectly easy place to take care of. 
The house is built of battens for the first story and shingles for upper floor 
