October, 1908 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



403 



A good type found on many country 

 seats is the dome-shaped springhouse, or a 

 well-rounded mound. These are frequently 

 banked up with earth and sodded to form 

 a mound of green, that is kept smooth and 

 velvety by frequent mowing, like the fam- 

 ous Andalusia springhouse illustrated; or 

 the banked up earth is planted with some 

 low trailing and blossoming annual, or 

 allowed to "grow wild" with perennial 

 vines, and brier and wild rose blooms. In 

 the mound houses the entrance side is either 

 walled up with stone, or there is a plain 

 wooden entrance-way with only broad 

 doors showing through the picturesque 

 tangle of vines and shrubbery. 



The more stately springhouses of the 

 modern country seat are redeemed from 

 undue "newness" when the spring which 

 they are designed to shelter has an outlet 

 near stately old trees — wide-spreading 

 elms or willows or grand old buttonwood 

 trees that have stood for a century or more. 



In point of cost the perfectly appointed 

 dairy on the estate of J. Ledyard Blair, 

 Esq., at "Blairsden," in Bernardsville, 

 N. J., greatly excels the average structure 

 devoted to this purpose. The thick stone 

 walls display their purpose, however, in 

 suggestive coolness for the interior. The 

 picturesque chimney and the massive pillars 

 of fieldstone, like the walls, produce the 

 charm of local color. 



The section of the beautiful H. J. Ver- 

 ner estate, at Bryn Mawr, Pa., that has 

 been devoted to the dairy, might well be 

 described as a spot full of natural sugges- 

 tions, which have been developed in a 

 strikingly individual manner. Here on an 

 even more pronounced scale is shown the 

 delight in local color and in the typical set- 

 ting of woodland shelter and rocky slope in 

 the background and green meadows with 

 sparkling stream in the foreground. Here 

 the fieldstone construction is hidden during 

 the summer by a luxuriant tangle of flower- 

 ing vines. The stone arches of the porch 

 show through the vines, suggestive of a 

 cool resting place for the dairy maids; and 

 additional vine shelter and seclusion is af- 

 forded by a stately pergola reaching out 

 beyond the stone porch. Down in the 

 meadow slope the charming picture-setting 

 is completed by a shallow brook with 

 stepping stones and vine-covered rustic 

 bridge. 



Even the most elaborate and costly of 

 these perfectly equipped modern dairies are 

 never out of harmony with the old-time 

 ideal of springhouse conception when thus 

 made informal and unconventional by fit- 

 ting perfectly into the picture of their sur- 

 roundings. Although types may vary 

 greatly between the ten-dollar structure of 

 rough field stone and the elaborate Verner 

 structure, they each fit so perfectly into the 

 landscape that they seem to have grown 

 there. In this lies very largely their pe- 

 culiar charm. 



The Springhouse Porch 



Half Hidden in the Ground 



The Door by the Tree Side 



