January, 1908 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



Notable American Homes 



By Barr Ferree 



; The Pines," the House of Philip S. Sears, Esq., Prides Crossing, Massachusetts 



'LONG drive in the woods, through a forest, 

 if not exactly impenetrable, at least dense 

 enough seemingly to swallow one up ; beau- 

 tiful woods, such as the soil of Massachu- 

 setts seems to produce in a special abund- 

 ance; woods soft and quiet, with scarce a 

 house to indicate man's presence, and only 



the hard dry roads to show he has been here and at least visits 



here, if he does not permanently remain within these leafy 



shadows — all this is but a foretaste, and a most delightful 



one, to the pleasure that awaits one who visits Mr. Sears in 



his charming pine-land home. 



Apparently there is no reason why his home should stand 



exactly where it does. There is no much traveled roadway 



leading to it; there is no other house close beside it; its site, 



surely, is not more beautiful — for 



here is so much beauty — than a hun- 

 dred others near at hand. It is more 



to the point, beside these unnecessary 



academic speculations, that the house 



stands just where it ought to stand 



— -in a clearing in the pine woods, an 



opening only sufficient to give it space 



and room for its attendant garden 



and terrace. As for its entrance, the 



forest comes almost to its front door, 



a dear untidy forest, with disheveled 



ground, gentle hillocks of moss and 



piles of pine needles, and all the wild 



delights of the wildland. 



Surely if one knew nothing of the 



house, had not seen it pictured in pho- 



tograph or roughly described in words, one would pause in- 

 stinctively at first sight of it. It gives one — and it certainly 

 gave me — the same delight as the discovery of some rare 

 flower, blooming alone in the dense dark woods. Like a 

 rare orchid it raises its soft yellowed walls in the center of a 

 great tree wreath, standing all around it like sentinels to 

 guard its simple beauty. It is a house to be seen to be ap- 

 preciated to the full, seen with the odor of the pine needles in 

 one's nostrils, and with the soft green of the trees decking it 

 in the near-by distance. 



Let me say at once that this is a lovely and exquisite house. 

 It is a house of absolute simplicity and perfect directness. 

 Take, if you will, the entrance front, the front by which it 

 may be judged, although the house is so sequestered that 

 each front belongs to the owner alone. There is not a single 



The Terrace Front Has Three Stories, with Simple Dormers in the Sloping Roof 



The Porch on the Terrace Is Furnished as 

 an Outdoor Living-room 



bit of ornament on this whole front. 

 There is the doorway, it is true, but its de- 

 tail is of the simplest possible description, 

 so simple that its very seventy but enhances 

 the importance of its curved summit, with 

 its glazed tympanum and its lantern that 

 projects without and within. The curves 

 above the doorway have, therefore, an in- 

 tensely decorative character because they 

 offer a beautiful contrast with the severity 

 of the remainder of the front. 



So also the great triple window above it 

 has a special significance and a decorative 

 value it would not have were its neighbors 

 of the same shape and form. It is not 



