November, Ig11 
house, is, beyond, a large coatroom, and then an office- 
room, which is finished in red and white. 
The marked simplicity of the entrance front is some- 
what modified in the development of the water front. 
There is still, it is true, the same absence of ornamentation 
and the same vigorous massing of the parts, but the latter 
show greater variety, and the whole effect is distinctly more 
festal in character. Each end of the main portion of the 
house is here projected forward in two wings, two stories 
in height, with great projecting roofs, broken in the center 
with small gable ends. The first story of each wing con- 
tains a loggia, with three round arches, above which a 
balcony is projected below the triple window of the second 
story. The most interesting feature here is unquestionably 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
399 
old locust trees stand guard around it. The slope to the 
water's edge is but a short distance away, and is so pre- 
cipitous as to be almost vertical. Very beautiful it is here, 
the white house rising in massive grandeur in the back- 
ground, the warm green of the grass, gently shaded by the 
fine old trees, and down below the glistening waters of 
Little Neck Bay. It is a rare and lovely site, of real and 
penetrating beauty. 
Withal, as one approaches the house at ‘‘Sunshine,” there 
is not at any turn a sense of that forbidding formality which 
is one of the crying faults of much of the American country 
home architecture in the past—happily the past, for the 
architects of the present appreciate the fact that dignity is 
ever inseparable from true home-feeling as expressed by 
The tapestry-walled dining-room of “‘Sunshine’’ is one of the finest and most spacious rooms in the house 
the colonnade which connects these wings, and which is 
carried along the outer margin of the intervening space, 
thus creating an open court behind it. The roof of the 
porch, which is covered with red tiles and is within lined 
with wood supported on beams, is carried on massive 
columns of cement. The woodwork is all exposed here and 
is painted pea green, the whole arrangement affording a 
brilliant color-note exactly where it is most effective. A 
broad flight of steps leads directly to the lawn, the piers at 
either end being decorated with reclining lions. There 
are open terraces beyond the loggias, one at each end of 
the house, and the steps, which descend to the right and 
left, have rearing lions on either side supporting shields. 
All the outer space here is beautifully grassed, while 
just beyond the house a double and triple row of slender 
the house and grounds. Even the great chateaux of France, 
the pretentious villas of Italy, the castles of Germany, the 
palaces of Spain, and the manors of England teach us that 
the quality of livableness can be expressed in the dwelling 
of great proportions as truly as it can in the cottage. In- 
deed, we are striving to remove from even those of our 
country places which have had the misfortune just to miss 
the sense of being homes as well as show places, that for- 
bidding coldness of aspect that charaterizes our worst 
period, not of mere architectural construction, perhaps, but 
of endowing the dwelling, great or small, with a sense of 
permanency, as though it had been and would continue to 
be lived in for many more generations. Therefore houses 
of this sort can hardly fail to command our respect in the 
light of the budding ideal of American home-making. 
