December, 1911 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
427 
The house at St. Martins, the home of Mr. Paul Crompton, faces away from the roadway in order that the front may command the lovely view of 
the surrounding country, an arrangement that homebuilders having similar sites might do well to bear in mind 
A House at St. Martins 
An American House of Distinction in One of Philadelphia’s Most Attractive Suburbs 
By Harold Donaldson Eberlein 
Photographs by Jessie Tarbox Beals and T. C. Turner 
ITH a patron saint to keep watch and ward 
and drive away all evil sprites, the house 
before us ought to be a place good to live 
in, even if its material charms were less than 
they are. St. Martin, the patron saint of 
the neighborhood, instead of lingering about 
the church hard by that bears his name, has favored this 
house and taken up his permanent and visible abode on the 
eastern chimney, where the white background well sets off 
his coppery complexion. Approaching from the north, 
south or east, he is the very 
first thing to catch the eye 
and his presence confers up- 
on the house a distinguished 
individuality. It was a pret- 
ty conceit, and appropriate, 
to fix him there, cut out of 
sheet copper, caught at the 
one supreme moment of his 
life, performing the act that 
entitled him to canonization, 
or rather, the act that evi- 
denced his fitness for saint- 
hood—dividing his military 
cloak with his sword to give 
away a half in charity. Some 
undiscriminating folk have 
mistaken him for an imp— 
perish the thought !—others 
have waxed facetiously in- 
One of the most inviting entrance doorways of the house at St. Martins 
genious at times at good St. Martins expense, all of which, 
however, only shows how strikingly he marks the spot 
so that none may pass unheeding. 
The site at the corner of St. Martins and Hartwell 
Lanes, near Philadelphia, would not have proved unusually 
attractive unless it had received the most careful treat- 
ment. 
To begin with, the lot, 130 feet by 240, was not large, as 
suburban places go, and yet it was necessary to put thereon 
a house of goodly proportions, designed by Messrs. 
Duhring, Okie and Ziegler, 
of Philadelphia—a house 
whose Long Island proto- 
type stands in extensive 
grounds—and at the same 
time it had to be kept from 
looking out of scale to the 
premises. This result was 
gained by breaking the mass 
into three sections—the main 
portion of the house and the 
two wings, the eastern or 
kitchen wing of two stories 
and the western or living- 
room wing of three, there 
being enough difference be- 
tween the roof levels to 
avoid the effect of extreme 
length. The dropping of the 
living-room windows agree- 
