Homes of American Artists 
By Barr Ferree 
“Red Oaks,” the Summer Home of John M. Carrére, Esq., White Plains, N. Y. 
) HE homes of architects are quite apt to have 
3 an interest to the inquisitive public some- 
what beyond their individual merits. ‘The 
basis of this belief is obvious: architects, 
whose lives are devoted to the building of 
houses and other structures, are popularly 
supposed to devote the best fruits of their 
abilities to their personal use. Moreover, in their own 
homes, the architect may be allowed a freedom in arrange- 
ment and design that he rarely has when working for a client. 
These, and other reasons, doubtless account for the interest 
such homes excite, although, after all, the simple fact that 
it is an architect’s own house is the most important reason 
of all. 
However curious one may be concerning the homes of 
architects, criticism is immediately disarmed before the very 
lovely and altogether delightful house that Mr. Carrére has 
built for his summer’s use in Westchester County. There 
are few houses anywhere more simple or more delightful 
than this. Built scarce more than three years ago, its low 
stone walls seem always to have nestled behind the ancient 
apple orchard that screens it from the roadway. It is a 
house that, as will presently be disclosed, combines many 
successes and advantages; but in no way is it more successful 
than in presenting an old-time flavor in a modern way. It 
is, in short, a house that produces the old-time spirit, rather 
than the old-time forms, and it shows an application of this 
spirit to modern conditions and necessities in a thoroughly 
charming way. The success of this designing is much 
greater than is apparent; for, while the old forms and 
methods are everywhere abundant and have often been most 
copiously used, the revivifying of the old spirit is a much 
rarer art, the rarest, indeed, of modern architectural per- 
formances. Mr. Carrére has certainly accomplished this 
with extraordinary facility and perfect charm in his delight- 
ful country home, and this is at once its most penetrating 
and obvious quality. 
Most observers of buildings will doubtless approach this 
house with sundry preconceptions as to what kind of a 
dwelling this very successful architect might have built for 
himself. Whatever these may be they will be quickly dis- 
sipated. Mr. Carrere would doubtless vigorously deny the 
suggestion that this is scarcely the kind of a house he would 
have built when he returned from Paris—was it twenty- 
five years ago ?—and began the erection of the splendid and 
stately structures that have made his firm famous and 
brought him the fine rewards of a brilliantly successful pro- 
fessional career. The point is academic and need not be 
discussed ; it is more pertinent to remark that the creation of 
a simple old-time American country house in the midst of 
the matured career of the foremost apostle of the French 
school in America is a splendid triumph of catholicity in de- 
sign and a really superb demonstration of the designer’s 
masterful resourcefulness. And to live in this house, and to 
delight in it shows that, after all, it is pure beauty that is 
the fascinating aspect of architecture, not the arrangement 
of grandiose forms or the solving of complicated problems. 
Of both of these Mr. Carrere’s work yields the amplest 
testimony, yet while these matters are completely absent from 
vA eM N&GaNy 
his own house it is easy to see that the multitudinous ex- 
perience of one of the most extensive and most varied archi- 
tectural careers in this country have been but the prelimi- 
naries to the creation of this very beautiful house. 
In other words, Mr. Carrére not only knew what he 
wanted, but he knew how to secure it. It is a fact that 
should lift the home of every architect from the world of 
the commonplace and put it in a class by itself. Often 
enough it does, but I hazard the suggestion that it is seldom 
so delightfully done as here. The property consists of about 
thirty-five acres and comprises both open fields and wood- 
lands. It was practically devoid of buildings and there 
were, therefore, no encumbrances to interfere with the crea- 
tion of a country estate of moderate size. ‘The house stands 
back some distance from the public highway, so that little 
more than its roofs and chimneys are visible above its 
screen of apple trees. The gardener’s cottage is almost di- 
rectly on the road; to one side is the garage; beyond it is 
the barn;'on the other side, a spacious strawberry field, en- 
closed behind a picket fence; farther in is the tennis court. 
The entrance driveway is pleasantly bordered, right and left, 
with thick growths of rugosa and other roses. 
The house is a low spreading structure built in three 
wings. The first of these, which is nearest the public road, 
contains the hall, staircase and living-room; beyond it, 
toward the wood, is the kitchen wing; at the back, and at 
right angles to the other two, is the third wing containing 
the dining-room. Of land there was a plenty, and of com- 
pact building there was no need; so the house was spaced out 
upon the land with great ampleness of area, and yet with a 
keen eye to convenience. The chief rooms are thus not only 
spacious, but amply lighted by windows of generous size, 
and they are so related to each other that while each part 
is convenient of access there is quite a marked sense of isola- 
tion that is as rare as it is agreeable. 
It is built of stone, rough cut and laid in thick mortar. It 
is ‘‘Red Oaks”’ stone, since it was blasted out of the ground, 
and much of it was obtained from the space now occupied by 
the cellar. It is two stories in height, with a pointed roof 
containing the attic; in the dining-room wing this is elabor- 
ated into “dormitories,” a couple of great open rooms in 
which the beds are separated by curtains and which are 
delightful camping grounds for the young people of the 
house and their guests. The roof is thus higher here and 
is broken by a row of large dormers on either side which 
do not appear in the other parts. 
And the house is all house; that is to say, it is simply walls 
and openings. There are no architectural features; no em- 
phasizing of parts; no ornamental fronts; no notes of 
emphasis. Everything is plain and straightforward, directly 
simple and charming in its simplicity. It is true there is, at 
the end of the living-room, and hence on the first part of 
the house as it is approached, a great square porch, enclosed 
within a wrought-iron railing, with wrought-iron supports, 
a floor of Welsh tile, and a ceiling of wood painted blue with 
white beams; a similar porch serves for the carriage en- 
trance, but, save these, there are no external features of any 
sort. 
The windows have sills and lintels of gray stone that so 
