Residence at Southampton, L. I. Mr. Goodhue Livingston Owner and Architect 
Photograph by Mattie Edwards Hewitt 
PORCH FURNISHINGS, FABRICS AND AWNINGS 
MARGERY SILL WICKWARE 
Consulting Decorator 
Partaking of the Garden Yet a Part of the House, the American 
Porch, Likewise the House Awnings, Should Accept Garden Dominance 
||N FURNISHING a porch the first thing of all is to 
% realize its purpose. Is it a general summer living- 
^ room, lying between the garden and the house — or per- 
haps the sea and the house? Or is it a morning lounge? 
Or an evening rendezvous? Is it designed for warm weather 
alone, or is it one of the winter-and-summer, casemented affairs 
that are practically as much a part of the house and its general 
life as any of its more formal rooms? Is it on the north, south, 
east, or west side? And finally, what, is its architecture? 
When these questions are put it is quite evident that the answers 
are going to have a lot to do with the manner of handling the 
particular porch in question. 
The architecture is a vital matter in two ways. One is in its 
relation to design and period, the other its effect on exposure. 
Certain porches are almost wholly protected from hard and 
driving storms by reason of their design as well as their position, 
others are almost wholly exposed to them. This perhaps more 
than anything else must be the first thought, when it comes to 
the details of furnishing. No greater burden can be imagined 
than the porch furnished so elaborately or in such a way that a 
rainstorm is the signal for wild scurrying, in the instant of the 
first spatter of big drops. On the other hand, it is quite im- 
possible to do anything worthy the name of decorating on a 
porch unless one has pretty free rein and is unhampered by dis- 
tracting considerations of this kind, once a scheme is evolved and 
decided upon. All of which sums up to this; choose your 
scheme to fit all the circumstances — which of course include the 
purpose of the porch as well as the degree of its exposure to the 
elements. You cannot start with only one of these in mind — or 
if you do, you will come to grief. 
W HATEVER else may be true of a porch, its sense of out- 
doors and its inviting coolness on a hot day are requisites. 
Subdued colors however are not necessary to insure the latter — 
this cannot be too greatly emphasized — but I do insist on its 
colors being brought into harmony with its off-lying garden or 
view. Its lines too — the general basic lines of its entire com- 
position — should be harmonious with the garden or whatever 
the off-scape may be. And nothing ought ever to be introduced 
that shuts out the sense of outdoors; yet again this does not 
mean that beautiful fabrics are taboo, or that everything need 
be completely open to wind and weather. 
My porch ideal indeed consists of several seeming contra- 
dictions but I know that they are not actually contradictions, 
for I have realized them too many times. Suppose we take a 
case in point — a Southern residence where the purpose of the 
household was to live on one of the great porches of the house 
practically day in and day out during five months of the year. 
Every stray breeze must be caught and made the most of, but no 
vagrant winds could be allowed to scatter books and papers and 
tear things to pieces generally. Something better and more genu- 
inely beautiful than the very ordinary and somewhat vulgar 
“ solid comfort ” ideal of the tired business man — who is not that 
sort of person at all, more often than not! — was demanded (and 
239 
