136 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
Farm Buildings—III. 
We have now arrived to the period when the 
farm requires a first-class dwelling to complete 
its range of appointments; and the farmer 
and his family, by their perseverance and 
well directed industry, are entitled to and can 
appreciate the value of a convenient and com¬ 
modious house. Before proceeding to a de¬ 
scription of the design now presented to our 
readers, we offer a few genaral remarks. 
Simplicity in all things should mark the life 
and surroundings of the farmer. Not that he is 
not just as well entitled to surround himself with 
objects of taste and art, and luxury, if he 
can afford them, as the richest parvenu who 
lives amidst the dense population or in the envi¬ 
rons of the great city—but his estate, his occupa¬ 
tion, his enjoyments are in the country. He is 
apart from the throng of society, the whirl of ex¬ 
citement and the vortex of fashionable life. His 
employments are grave, his habits are domestic, 
his leisure serene, quiet, and cheerful. So with 
his family. Estranged from crowds, and away 
from the towns, he should be as independent of 
their immediate assistance to his wants as possi¬ 
ble ; and all about him, in the way of buildings 
and appurtenances which are to be furnished and 
supplied by mechanics and others not within the 
sound of his own dinner horn, should be of a 
character to require little of them beyond the 
contingent labors to which they are of necessity 
liable. In this we mean to say that, surrounding 
himself with everything in the way of building 
which his occupation, convenience and necessity 
requires, and which the means at his command 
will allow, all his structures should be permanently, 
thoroughly and tastefully constructed—not in a 
way to need perpetual alteration, tinkering and 
repairs to which the ephemeral things, called 
dwellings, in and about our cities and villages, are 
frequently subject. The farmer who, intending to 
uild, throws himself into the hands of the nearest 
professed architect, whose practice has only been 
among town or village houses, will groan over 
his mistake whee his money is squandered, and 
b^ sad experience he has found out his folly 
111 erecting the unsuitable tenement and sur¬ 
roundings which he fancied might answer his 
purpose. He m>*st first, of himself, know what 
he wants. Then if he have not the requisite 
taste or ingenuity to plan them himself, he should 
go to a reliable friend who has the taste and 
judgment to pro*»erly advise him, and sufficient 
interest in his welfare to see that he is not 
cheated, nor coaxed into plans unsuitable to his 
objects. Herein we do not charge the professed 
architects with dishonesty, but we know that, 
in designing fa'm buildings, so predominating is 
their disposition to finery, and display, that they 
unwittingly sacrifice a deal of economy, con¬ 
venience and comfort to tawdriness and show 
—“style,” “effect,” or “ good-keeping,” as they 
may choose to call it. And out of this grows 
the thousand and one gimcracks, with grotesque 
shapes, stilted roofs, filagree trimmings and tin¬ 
sel appendages of every sort hitched on to them, 
which tend only, as situated, to make them ridicu¬ 
lous. We can point to any number of such, all over 
our thri'ty farming districts Within a year after 
completion the aid of a mechanic of some sort, 
and more often several sorts are called in, and 
a perpetual run into tow n after trifling articles 
is needed, and scores of mechanics' bills are to 
be paid in rectifying defects which never need 
have existed, and which a sensible plan and 
style of building, at first, would have obviated- 
Thus, then, our farmer has entailed upon him 
an endless succession of discomforts, vexations 
and expenses as a penalty for his own folly by 
entrusting his designs to incompetent hands. 
This may be severe talk, we admit, but we 
speak from stern experience and full observa¬ 
tion in the premises, and well knowing the truth 
in the matter. We may be met by the remark 
that “ there must be an observance of architec¬ 
tural rule, and form, as laid dorvn in the differ¬ 
ent orders of architecture by the great masters, 
and they must be adhered to, or the whole 
thing is a failure!”—to which we reply, that it 
is utter nonsense. Such remark may apply to 
many public buildings, erected for certain pur¬ 
poses ; but we have never yet seen a country 
dwelling, either designed in the books or actually 
built in the pretended style or order of a par¬ 
ticular architecture but what has been violated a 
score of times in the monstrosities or absurdities 
hitched on to it by the conceits of a quack ; and 
let the design be Grecian, Gothic, Norman, Tudor, 
Italian, Moorish, English Cottage, or whatever 
else it may be called, ten to one more or less of 
each are mixed up and huddled together in a single 
structure, when applied to a first-class country 
dwelling, and which the unfortunate owner fancies 
is a “ pure model ” of its illustrious original pro¬ 
totype ! 
We simply say that a country dwelling cannot 
be built purely in either of these-given styles, 
consistently with the demands of our American 
climate, and the due economy and convenience 
of an American farmer. The Italian, taken al¬ 
together, we consider the best adapted to Ameri¬ 
can use, as being comparatively cheap and per¬ 
mitting additions at a future day, if required, 
without violence to the general effect of the 
original structure ; but the Italian roof is nearly 
flat, or of such moderate elevation as to be a 
serious hindrance in passing off our heavy rains 
and snows, and protecting us from the effects of 
the severe and extreme frosts to which we are 
subject. Therefore, we must adopt the steep 
roof, and Americanize the style, and thus modify 
it, as we must all these foreign modes of architec¬ 
ture, to meet the wants and demands of American 
climate and American life. 
After such remarks, we need only say that in 
the design we now offer to illustrate our ideas of 
what appertains to a first-class American farm¬ 
house, we have studied the fitness of things to 
their proper use; that economy in structure, con¬ 
venience in use, and due comfort to the occu¬ 
pants are the chief requirements consulted. 
General plainness, with a due regard to orna¬ 
ment, and thorough substance throughout, are the 
prominent features of our plans; in short, an 
adaptation of building to our circumstances. As 
such, we introduce on the next page a perspective 
view of our first-class farm dwelling-house and 
its immediate appendages. 
This is a full two-story house, with walls of 
twenty or twenty-two feet bight above the lower 
floor, forty-four feet long, and thirty-eight feet 
wide, with a rear wing one and a half stories or 
sixteen feet high, and thirty feet long by eighteen 
or twenty feet wide, according to the material of 
which it is built. The house may be built of 
wood, brick or stone, as convenience, or the 
means of the owner may permit. We, other 
things equal, would build a farm house of stone. 
The roof, as in the elevation, is a third, or twelve 
feet pitch, or may be reduced to a quarter pitch, 
is broadly and liberally thrown over the walls, 
projecting full three feet beyond, on the main 
building, and two and a half leet over the kitchen¬ 
wing, and two feet over the out-buildings. In¬ 
deed, the roof should be a prominent feature of 
the farm house, and its appendages, as it is of 
these, with no moie breaks in it than what are 
absolutely necessary to give it an agreeable 
effect—as in the gable-roof before us, over the 
balcony, or the front verandah—to obviate the* 
otherwise monotonous line of the eaves. For, 
wherever a break is made in the roof, tin, zinc, 
lead or copper gutters are requisite to take offihe 
water running down the shingles, and prevent 
leakages; and these are expensive, and unless 
thoroughly laid, and well soldered, liable to fre¬ 
quent openings needing repairs. The upper part 
of the rear-wing-roof runs into the rear roof of 
the main dwelling, in the same way as the front 
gable. The chimneys should be within the 
body of the house, to give out to the adjoining 
rooms all the heat they absorb, and break out of 
the building at the peak of the roofs, as in this, 
thereby allowing the least possible chance of 
leakage, which is difficult to guard against where 
they come out in the declining line of the roof, or 
midway of its slope. Such arrangement of roof, 
and chimney, we conceive to be altogether the 
best, and sanctioned by long experience in the 
occupancy of dwellings so constructed. The front 
verandah is eight feet wide, and of such length 
that the projecting eaves shall reach to near, or 
quite the ends of the building. Tbe end windows, 
where not immediately protected by the roof, are 
hooded. The rear or kitchen verandah is six feet 
wide, running the whole length of the wing, and 
adjoining the woodhouse m rear. 
ACCOMMODATIONS ON FIRST FLOOR. 
The interior accommodation does not require 
extended remark. Entering the front door into 
a hall 8 feet wide, the right leads into a parlor, 
or library, as may be most desirable, 16 feet square 
with a small closet attached, accommodation for 
a stove, afire place at the chimney, and lighted 
on two sides by a window in each. On the left is 
a sitting room, 18x16 feet, lighted, and warmed 
like the opposite room, with a door leading into the 
family kitchen. The ceiling of these rooms, as 
well as those in rear, in the main body of the 
house is 10 feet high. A flight of chamber stairs 
leads from the main hall into the chamber hall 
above, and at its end a door goes into the main 
kitchen. On one side of the kitchen is a family 
bed-room or Nursery, 16x13 feet, with a closet, 
and fire accommodation either by fire-place or 
stove, at choice. The kitchen, ,or chief family 
room, is the grand economical feature, however, 
of the interior, as it should be of every farmer's 
dwelling ; and we shall be excused, if in describ¬ 
ing it, we go somewhat into detail. It is literal¬ 
ly the farm-house “ Exchange.” It is occupied 
first in the morning, and last at night. Here is 
done the chief cooking and getting up of the fami¬ 
ly requirements for the table, the house-work, 
and the gathering at meal-time. It should be spa¬ 
cious in room, accessible to the other usually oc¬ 
cupied apartments, light, warm, and comfortable. 
It should have a liberal, open fire-place, an oven, 
and a cooking stove, with ample room, light, and 
convenience for the use of all—in short, every good 
farmer, and housewife know the solid satisfaction 
and comfort of a well situated, spacious, and con¬ 
venient kitchen for every day use. It is, indeed, 
the farmer’s living-room—indispensable: and with¬ 
out it, indoor work never goes right. 
Our kitchen, therefore, is 27 feet long, and 16 
feet wide. It has two windows at one end, and 
one at the other, causing us to place the rear-wing 
a little more on one side than we otherwise would 
have done, to gain this end window. It has an 
open fire-place, and oven adjoining, and a separ 
ate flue with a thimble above, to let in the pipe ol 
the cooking stove, which may be in the back part 
